procrastinateUser: procrastinate

  1. Why we made this site 2007-02-22 16:39:38 papersmith
    Damn it Paul, you beat me to it. I slapped together a reddit clone last summer in reaction to its diluting startup content, but I went on to travel for a month and have been procrastinating from finishing it up ever since. Nevertheless, I really appreciate that you are opening this to public.

  2. (Not) To Do List 2007-03-06 02:00:45 Alex3917
    I think he's wrong on ToDo lists. Trying to keep everything you have to do in your head reduces the available cycles you have left for productive work. This is the main idea behind Getting Things Done.

    I think news.yc is truly on the forefront of procrastination technology. It's the ultimate in infotainment, because you aren't getting anything done but yet there is something about it that makes you feel not completely unproductive.

    I think this is a good principle for evil web startups to incorporate. Trying to get the same entertainment and addictiveness of WoW, but with less of the feeling of wasting your life (even though you are).

  3. Does reading this raise your chances of success? 2007-03-15 05:26:21 nostrademons
    Reading and keeping up with the news is kinda odd. 99% of what you read is absolutely useless. It will never make a difference in what you do, and you'll probably never use it. However, that remaining 1% can save you *huge* amounts of time or open up massive opportunities.

    Just a couple examples where procrastination has changed my life.

    When I was 16, my family went shopping at the Tanger 2 supermall in Riverhead NY. I hate shopping. So, I did what I normally do: I found a bookstore, grabbed an interesting book, curled up on the floor, and read half of it by the time my parents got back. On that particular occasion, the book was "Learn Java 1.0.2 in 7 days" or some other tripe like that, the year was 1997, and the Java wave was just taking off. One book led to a second and third, and then a whole shelf full, and eventually an internship at MITRE corporation.

    While on the job, I was asked to learn Perl. A couple years later, immediately after high school graduation, my math teacher's wife was starting a company and had an immediate need for some Perl programming. In the year I spent at that company, I got to experience a dot-com run exclusively by teenagers, 3 different business plans, all the tribulations of a startup, and eventually an ugly VC takeover.

    While slacking off at that company because I had no work to do, I found Fanfiction.net and the Harry Potter fandom. I read a whole bunch of fics, then my workload picked up again and I promply forgot about it. I went back to it during college, and ended up joining FictionAlley.org, which was just starting at the time. Over the 4 years that I volunteered for FA, I saw it grow from 2,000 registered users to 100,000 registered users, from one machine to three, had my first experience managing teams of software developers and got to take my first major project from conception to completion.

    Separate thread - at an internship after my freshman year, I was goofing off at work and reading Ward's Wiki. I ended up getting pretty involved in housekeeping there after the internship ended, and struck up a few friendships. One of them led *directly* to the startup I'm currently employed at, via a couple of internships.

    Now that I'm co-founding a startup of my own, I'm finding that all the different internships and threads and so on pull together. I know what to expect in terms of growing a community. I've had experience with 2-3 different technology stacks (and found they all suck ;-), but at least that led me to one I'm reasonably happy with). I know all about scaling concerns and breaking an app out over multiple boxes. I've got some experience in judging whether a business model will fly or not. (I think our business model sucks, BTW, and really doubt it'll get us off the ground, but we've gotta start somewhere.)

    All of this came, in some way or another, from procrastination.

    Incidentally, running a startup seems much the same way. The vast majority of stuff you do is worthless, but the 1% that pays off really pays off big. Unfortunately, you have no way of knowing what that 1% is until you try it. People talk about how Bill Gates got lucky with the IBM deal - the thing is, Microsoft had a zillion balls in the air at the time, and if they hadn't gotten lucky with IBM they might very well have gotten lucky elsewhere.

  4. Students give up social networks for Lent 2007-03-31 00:39:58 BrandonM
    I don't think it's the keeping in touch that is bad. I think it's the extreme situation (which I have personally seen) where people spend hours per day going around Facebook to look at people's pictures and profiles. Usually this is some method of procrastination employed when a major paper is due or there is an exam the next day.

  5. Pairwise and Y Combinator: Do you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur? 2007-03-31 07:54:03 euccastro
    TBH, my feeling about this stuff is that it belongs in nazi research labs and Cosmopolitan magazines, rather than as a screening tool in business where you want the best people. If I was considering applying to anything (Y, a job at a company), being presented with this would disappoint me and set off Dilberty alarms.

    Now, this is fun stuff to burn some minutes while procrastinating! Here are my results:

    http://www.likebetter.com/quiz/results?quiz_id=1125255845&user_list_id=6

    Some things that the test got backwards:

    - I'm more a listener than a talker,

    - I never smoked (I clicked on the hemp pic because I like intense green :),

    - I think I'm more into books than my score there suggests,

    - I like mild food rather than spicy,

    - I do like and have pets,

    - I'm not really that urban. I'm more comfortable in villages or small towns.

  6. Paul Buchheit: "Perfect" is the enemy of "good enough" (also, the future of entertainment) 2007-04-15 04:52:47 gibsonf1
    Interesting point. I agree that the biggest procrastination inducing disincentive to starting creative work is the preconception in the creator's mind that "this will be a great thing - I will make it perfect", etc. I learned while designing in architectural school that the key to good design was to strip away all preconceptions about a problem before starting - which is dramatically harder than it sounds. The preconception of a quest for perfection before starting is the most important one.

    However, once you have "programmed" your conscious mind with the problem, allowed your subconscious to crunch on it and give you the first draft of a solution to the problem, the quest for making it as good as possible is key to actually having it be good. With that first solution, you can then refine it, with the idea of making it increasingly better. The question then is when do you stop (or go live) - a very important point. The beauty of web development is that you can think of the project as an evolution toward being very good from somewhat humble beginnings. This makes it that much easier to come to the good-enough point faster than in the past stand-alone application days, but then continue improving as long as the project continues to be exciting. The "lets make it better" drive is a really important motivator, at least it is for me.

  7. What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you? 2007-04-16 10:11:31 bootload
    I added this question [0], [1] after reading the 'How do you come up with your ideas for startups?' [2] and 'What is your idea filter? How can you tell if one of your ideas is worth pursuing?' [3] posts. So you now have some suggestions on how to get your ideas and how to filter them, so what is your hard, best problem?

    Example:

    A previous problem I was working on was to reduce the cognitive overload of everyday tasks on desktop users [4] by capturing user input and only displaying information that is important now or in the immediate future. Using combinations of NLP, integration with desktop tools and novel user interaction taking cues from Adventure games. [5]

    Reference

    [0] I was going to title it 'what's the hard problem you're currently working on?' but this title from pg's article 'good & bad procrastination' is better.

    [1] pg, 'Good and bad procrastination'

    http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

    [2] arasakik, 'How do you come up with your ideas for startups?'

    http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=12995

    [3] amichail, 'What is your idea filter? How can you tell if one of your ideas is worth pursuing?'

    http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=13035

    [4] Using word processor, email, hand written notes, calendar, phone. It's based on the idea that if you capture lots of small bits of important information, work out what they contain, phone numbers, peoples names, you can get the machine to do the hardwork & spit out the necessary information just in time as it's needed.

    [5] But things have changed since then and I've moved on to some different hard problems after the bloke I was working with decided to take the safe route and do his PhD on the same topic.

  8. You and Your (Great) Research 2007-04-16 14:10:20 bootload
    The transcript of the talk is not by pg, but Richard Hamming. [0], [1] I found this particular talk poking through the links on 'Good & Bad Procrastination'. [2] Does anyone have a definitive list of pg articles on the site? It never ceases to amaze how many I find going through the links.

    Reference

    [0] Richard Hamming Obit., 'Richard Wesley Hamming, mathematician, pioneer computer scientist, and professor'

    http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/alumni/hamming/index.html

    [1] Wikipedia, Richard Hamming, 'Hamming code, the Hamming window , Hamming numbers, Sphere-packing, Hamming distance'

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hamming

    [2] pg, ''Good & Bad Procrastination'

    http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

  9. What salary/equity do I ask for? 2007-04-19 05:37:56 nostrademons
    "You have more free time now than you probably ever will again."

    I haven't found that to be the case. I have much more time available to work on my own projects than I did in college. Perhaps not in absolute terms, but in terms of usable get-code-out-there blocks.

    In college, I found that homework always got Parkinson's-Lawed so it took up all my available time. Either I was actively doing homework, or I was procrastinating on homework and couldn't justify working on other productive projects instead. Plus, available time in college tends to get broken up into 1-2 hour blocks between classes, after activities, before dinner, while waiting for friends to go out to a party, etc.

    Now that I'm working, I have significantly less actual free time, but everything I have is mine. There's no work to take home, nothing hanging over my head when I'm not at work. And it's generally in large chunks, too. It does kinda suck not having a social life, but it does leave decent-sized blocks available for a startup.

  10. (Re)writing Reddit/Y.News in CakePHP 2007-04-23 10:13:46 BrandonM
    I wonder how many of these posts we will see. Why spend time showing that you can duplicate a site using a certain platform when you could theoretically build an entirely new site in the same amount of time? Of course, the hard part is figuring out what you need to be coding, but I definitely subscribe to pg's philosophy of letting the code tell you. That is, just set out to do something on the platform of your choice and before long, you'll find yourself doing something interesting.

    Then again, this is probably a generalization of the procrastinator in all of us, that part of us that spends hours every day doing pointless activities, later lamenting that we don't have enough time to do X.

  11. (Re)writing Reddit/Y.News in CakePHP 2007-04-24 02:15:51 rami
    Hey BrandonM, I am a big fan of CakePHP, the only problem with Cake is the lack of documentation, that's why i wrote this tutorial. I believe in giving back to the open source community, whether by writing code or writing tutorials. Also you make a good point about procrastination, guilty :), I will also give Lisp a try, especially that more developers are adopting it now.

  12. How much hacking one should know before starting a startup? 2007-04-29 22:08:40 sharpshoot
    Here's a quote i live by "action is a powerful drug". Momentum builds momentum, procrastinating that you haven't got the right skills is baseless. You don't know until you actually start doing it.

    Remember, a startup is the only job you can do without being qualified for it :) You'll never have enough skills and everything opens up a new can of worms.

  13. Who are you and what do you do? 2007-05-03 11:38:10 PStamatiou
    I'm Paul Stamatiou and I'm a 20 year old undergrad at Georgia Tech majoring in Computational Media, I'm an avid tech blogger (link in profile) and am building a party-related web app on the side... and I'm procrastinating from studying for my CS final.

  14. Wasting time on things that really don't matter 2007-06-01 21:49:11 chwolfe
    Amen.

    For a much broader view on things that don't really matter, check out:

    http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

  15. My favourite PG essay 2007-06-01 23:15:06 comatose_kid
    I really like this one because it explains how an undesirable human characteristic (procrastination) can actually lead to great things if channeled appropriately.

    It also arms me with an appropriate response to my dear wife's objections when I push off things to work on my project.

  16. All Transactions are based on Trust, part 2 - Why del.icio.us works better than reddit 2007-06-14 20:39:55 cmars232
    The exception to this article's premise would be subreddits, like programming. Niche groups like programming.reddit or del.icio.us do feel like they have a higher signal-to-noise ratio. I've gotten some great links from programming.reddit, or here, for example.

    Main reddit is where I go when I'm bored and procrastinating.

  17. Just sent my resignation letter and this is my plan. 2007-07-24 17:48:14 jpmann
    Sounds like an excellent justification for flaky procrastination. You can follow this plan and hope the things you learn on the way can be applied to your startup. Or you can take your best idea, work hard to build it and learn as you go.

  18. Just sent my resignation letter and this is my plan. 2007-07-24 23:07:52 euccastro
    Thanks for your comments. I was aware that the initial delay in starting up can be seen as procrastination. I myself am not sure that's not the case, and that's the main reason why I bounce my ideas here. Maybe my comfy self is fooling me, but can it fool the YCnews swarm? ;) Let me add some more context, which I left out of the already long first post.

    One crucial reason for quitting my job is indeed to focus on learning tasks I had set for myself. It's lack of focus, not time, what has been dragging me so far.

    The first task is to finish absorbing SICP. I have read the book and watched the lectures before, but only as a quick first contact, skimming most of the latter parts and not doing the exercises. I've found that even this light exposure has made me a much better programmer. This time I'm going more exhaustively, writing down short summaries of the chapters and doing all the exercises as I find them.

    As for math, I'm more interested in building some math muscle and intuition, rather than any specific knowledge. I have started reading Concrete Mathematics, by Knuth et al., and I find it very demanding but practicable. With my weak math background, this would take forever, and be too easy to put on hold, if I did it on the side of more urgent obligations. I tried.

    I have other books and learning tasks in the backburner, but yes, those I can learn on the side. The above are the ones I want to finish before letting other focus consuming projects into my head.

    I've found that the Archy-like editor project is a good playground for the ideas in SICP. The design is sound and well specified, so I can focus more on the programming part. I plan to use this as my hacking environment in the future.

    I hope to be done earlier than four months with the tasks above. I'll try and hit two months, but I must admit my estimates are often short by a factor or pi, so a 2x padding seems right for a strict timebox.

    There are other topics to reply; I'll do so in replies to the appropriate comments.

  19. Just sent my resignation letter and this is my plan. 2007-07-25 00:22:55 euccastro
    Good point.

    The things I want to learn are fundamental enough that they'll apply to any programming task. I have tried learning as I go, and I agree it's best for most skills, but I've found there are learning tasks that demand more dedication.

    Then again, this may just be my procrastinating self at work. :)

  20. Just sent my resignation letter and this is my plan. 2007-07-25 00:58:25 euccastro
    I intend to work very hard at study and the pet project. I'm not sure if I'm procrastinating, but I'm certain it's not to avoid hard work. It's doing something half heartedly that kills me. These particular learning topics, and this particular project, are things I've been feeling strongly for doing for a long time, and I want to get them behind me so I can be full hearted at whatever I do next.

    As for the time, as I said in other reply I feel I'm more limited by age than cash.

    Thanks for the feedback!

  21. Think you work hard? Think again. 2007-07-25 03:19:28 byrneseyeview
    It's best to use either a constant simple log or an occasional detailed log: I occasionally note nearly everything I do during a single day, so I know how I use my time. But most days I use a brutally simple time-log: one sheet of paper, divided into two sides. One side gets a tick-mark every time I do something I'd normally procrastinate on; one side gets a mark every time I procrastinate instead.

    That's as complicated as it needs to be (but I have a pretty simple job).

  22. Don't Break The Chain 2007-07-25 21:15:48 brlewis
    This principle is why many Lisp hackers fail to make good web sites or applications. Lisp programming can lead to days and weeks of fun programming, so that you break the chain of doing less-fun but important programming. Sometimes the improvement users want most involves non-fun programming. You really have to push yourself to implement it instead of procrastinating by coding something more fun but less desired.

  23. Stuff - Paul Graham 2007-08-01 03:49:40 paul
    Procrastination works well for me. Instead of not buying stuff, I just put it off until later, repeatedly.

    In some ways, having money actually makes it easier to not accumulate stuff, because you don't feel as pressured by "good deals".

  24. Do you live under the fear that a YC company is about to demo what you working on? 2007-08-10 04:27:28 david
    If you don't, try to convince yourself that you should. I've found paranoia to be a very effective way of beating procrastination.

  25. Liberal Arts Professors on Attending Grad School--Is it the same in Comp Sci? 2007-08-19 09:32:38 RyanGWU82
    I thought I was going to have "a lot of free time" in my master's program, but it really doesn't work out that way. All my other grad school friends tried to warn me, but I didn't listen.

    In school you're busy 24/7: doing schoolwork, worrying about schoolwork, or procrastinating on schoolwork. At least when I was working full-time, I would leave the office at 5-ish and not worry about work for 16 hours.

  26. "She Said Thank You" (Avoiding Procrastination) 2007-09-05 03:03:14 leoc
    Why would she? So you can avoid procrastinating by not feeling the urge to procrastinate? Isn't that entirely useless advice?

  27. Aaron Swartz: Sweating the Small Stuff 2007-09-17 19:34:52 staunch
    This post seems like a pretty transparent attempt to justify his procrastination. It's a really easy trap to fall into. Actually releasing to the public is like selecting the "Hurt Me Plenty" option in Doom, it's not an easy thing to do.

    My partner and I took turns emailing this quote to each other as a reminder to keep ourselves intellectually honest:

    "Perhaps the most important reason to release early, though, is that it makes you work harder. When you're working on something that isn't released, problems are intriguing. In something that's out there, problems are alarming. There is a lot more urgency once you release. And I think that's precisely why people put it off. They know they'll have to work a lot harder once they do." -- Hardest Lessons #1

  28. Are you going to change the world? (Really?) 2007-09-20 16:55:13 zach
    It has to be mentioned:

    http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

    http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html

    But you know, I just want to pipe up in defense of us pipsqueaks. I run a website that helps people find a home to buy that is at most, if it works great for them, maybe 5% or 10% better or cheaper (your pick) than what they could have gotten otherwise. And even then, only in the LA area. Is that really about the best thing I (along with my co-founder) could've been working on the last two years?

    I'm going to say yes, and here's why. Three reasons. One, opportunity. I work with semi-realistic options -- it's not productive of me, a 90's college dropout, to pursue medical research at this point. But I have ten years of experience programming and I do at some point need to put food on my family, as the saying goes.

    Two, passion, or you could say just motivation. This is a problem that I have faced, my parents faced, their parents faced. I know the technology can make it better and am fascinated with the possibilities. I believe passion is immensely important to making the most of one's talent.

    Three, getting the ball rolling. As an innovator in a little bitty part of the gigantic web, one who can only implement a tiny fraction of the things I want to, I know I have a limited impact. But twenty years from now, for all I know, people around the world could be using stuff like what I'm pushing into the market. I have no idea what impact that will have.

    So hey, if I make money, I would appreciate that, but I really think I'm doing what I want to do with what I've got regardless of that. But if you have the interest, let me hear more about your pitch for what I or someone like myself could be doing instead, because this is, after all, a subject of vital interest.

  29. Are you going to change the world? (Really?) 2007-09-20 17:18:21 Shooter
    Good for you, dude. That's awesome! It sounds like you ARE making a difference with your site. And there really is no need to feel defensive. Like I said, I was just trying to start a discussion...and maybe prompt a goal or gut check.

    I'm not necessarily trying to push anyone to do something different or 'better' with their life. I mean...who the hell do I think I am? [Nobody.] I just asked the question because I think everyone sometimes forgets to evaluate their place in the world and what they can accomplish when they are really focused on one thing. It's like speeding on the highway and missing the scenery. And I also don't like to see wasted potential, especially when it is just because someone never really thought about what they were doing and why. And I was also just curious.

    I'd read the procrastination article, but not the Hamming one. Thanks for the pointer.

  30. Founders at Work - Xobni Beta! 2007-09-21 15:51:06 lkozma
    Don't want to be mean with Xobni, but considering all the buzz and all the effort that went into it, there are some questions I have to ask. Most importantly, what's the point in all this? What's wrong with e-mail? I get a fair amount of e-mail, read it, delete/archive it, and that's it. Then GMail does a fine job searching your archives. To be honest, I just watched the video, although I got a beta invitation, haven't tried it as I don't use Outlook.

    So what's the point in all these analytics? It seems like searching the bible for patterns. So I can find out that my friend sends more e-mails during the day than when he is sleeping. Big deal, I don't care, it's his life. I write him whenever I want, and he responds whenever he wants. That's the whole point in e-mail, it's not disruptive. Then you can see who sent you the most e-mails. Again, I couldn't care less. Glad I'm done with it and I can do something else. I forgot someone's name. Great, if I'm asking a favor, I can pretend I knew it all along. I assume most people who spend too much time in Outlook do it to escape work and to procrastinate, much like reading reddit. If that's the point, a new toy is really useful. To be fair, the previous attachments function does look useful.

    Finally I have an honest question. Ok, Xobni is a nice tool, but what's there in it that couldn't have been done without the million-$-investments?

  31. Greetings Y folks! Simple life-hack in exchange for your collective advice! 2007-10-06 21:29:55 NSX2
    Hi! I just finished reading this short, sweet, easy-to-read book called "One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way" by Robert Maurer. It's a psychologist's attempt to figure out why "Kaizen"-based (micro-plans, small steps, continuous action) approaches to project management seem to consistently succeed where other, much more sophisticated approaches never take off.

    Executive summary: Kaizen works because people actually take to it and implement it. They do so because making teeny weeny plans sparks the higher order creative parts of the brain necessary to get things done, whereas big, complicated, sophisticated long-term plans cause stress, which in turn stimulates parts of the brain which were wired to shut off the higher orders of the brain so we can focus on running away from hungry predators ("fight or flight"). This in turn leads to "brain freeze" as different and competing sections of your brain literally start fighting with each other for brain resources (sugar, magnesium, etc.) which leads to procrastination which leads to the big, complicated plans never being put into action.

    Solution? Make ridiculously small plans to overcome procrastination and bypass your brain's built-in resistance to doing things people need to do to succeed in the modern age.

    Example: Next time you feel flustered, just make it your goal to sit down and write 3 lines of code, then go have fun with your Xbox. Easy, right? Too easy, perhaps. Then you think to yourself, "Well, that wasn't so bad. I guess I can write a lot more than just 3 lines ... maybe I can do half an hour's worth of coding." Next thing you know, the sun will be coming up and you'll wonder how you spent the whole night working without even noticing. Sounds too good to be true, sounds silly even, yet this guy's figured out exactly how the brain's wiring gets in the way of modern work and how to bypass it.

    Another gem: the manual egg timer. Thing with turn dial. Set to 5-10 minute bursts of intense activity, as in "I'm going to bust my ass clearing my email inbox for just 5 mintues" ... funny how easy it is to keep going way after the first 5 minutes once you actually get the process started.

    It's about $12 hardcover. 180 or so small pages with big, big print and plenty of space in between. Fun to read and full of insights as to why you fail when you try too hard to succeed but wind up succeeding when you focus on just enjoying yourself (trying hard makes the brain think you're going to war, shuts of the frontal lobes and gets adrenaline flowing, which in turn sucks magnesium out of your thinking activities and into your body's central nervous system as it prepares for intense physical effort ... which is why you can find yourself "exhausted" after a "hard day's work" when practically nothing of any significance was accomplished.)

    ANYWHOOOO ... if you found the above interesting enough to read the book and the book inspiring enough to apply the simple advice and the advice effective enough to improve your coding sessions, I ASK YOU CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING AS EQUAL EXCHANGE:

    I am in New York City area. I want to do a startup like the rest of you. I am not a "haxor" ... but my background is in its own way completely relevant to what I want to do. Technically the idea is more of a "different use of mostly already existing technology/platforms" not a "radically new technology" thing, and from my research most of the stuff / functions can be found in open-source applications.

    Nonetheless I need some techies. Connections would be appreciated. Or insights into your minds: HOW DO YOU FOLKS LIKE TO BE APPROACHED? WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT TO YOU IN A STARTUP? Hours? Freedom? Dress code? Impact on the world at large and the resulting improvement in quality of life for humanity? Adrenaline rush of doing something clever and sneaky that will take people by surprise? A philosophical cause? Doing the right thing? Making the world a better place? A solid business model? Endless supply of Red Bull? Xbox 360s in the break room? Bean-bag chairs? Free beer for late night programming sessions?

    Seriously, I have read past posts where people without programming backgrounds post "looking for programmers" type of posts that seem to get at best ignored or at worst trashed; how can I bypass this seemingly built-in reluctance of programmers to work with people unlike yourselves technically, but like yourselves in other ways and with different skill sets that would complement your own for a more balanced whole? If you click my profile there's an email if you wish to contact me directly.

    Thanks in advance!

  32. Ask YC: Experiences with founder burnout? 2007-10-18 01:29:51 nostrademons
    A little hypothesis:

    Burnout is your subconscious's way of telling you that you're on the wrong track.

    I've found that every time I've felt burned out - whether in writing, coding, startup, life - it's because I was working on something that ultimately was going nowhere. I needed to revisit my assumptions, yet my conscious mind didn't know that. Burnout was a way for my subconscious to say "This isn't going to work, you're not working on the important stuff, take a step back and look at the big picture."

    When writer's blocked, I delete the last 3 paragraphs I've written and take the story in another direction. This has almost always cured my writer's block; when it doesn't I delete the last page and take the story in another direction.

    When coder's blocked, I revert to my last svn commit and start again, usually with a smaller task. I've thrown away up to a week's worth of work this way, which is another lesson: commit early and often. Commits should be an hourly or minutely process, not something you do after a whole bunch of work.

    When blocked in general, I think about the last design decision I made and revisit. Oftentimes, if I'm blocked entirely and can't even get started on implementing a feature, it's because the feature is ill-conceived and needs to be redone. Maybe it's done with incorrect assumptions about how users will use the problem, or maybe it just doesn't serve any purpose. Revisit whether you need the feature at all.

    If you find you can't work on your startup at all, maybe it's a sign that your startup is on the wrong track. Revisit your idea. I'm actually at that stage with mine: we scrambled to get a demo ready for YC, but now that I want to procrastinate and avoid work (our market is people who want to procrastinate and avoid work), I find that I don't want to use our product. But I've got some ideas about how to backup and try a different approach, and now I want to try them out and see if they can get me procrastinating with the startup itself.

  33. Open Social: a new universe of social applications all over the web (Marc Andreessen) 2007-11-01 06:20:45 nickb
    He's Super Marc!

    Anyway... read his post on procrastination... he offers some excellent advice.

  34. Open Social: a new universe of social applications all over the web (Marc Andreessen) 2007-11-01 16:01:34 far33d
    It's not just procrastination. It's marketing.

  35. IPCC Scientist's Nobel Moment: No developing catastrophe nor human activity cause 2007-11-03 03:16:09 jey
    Why or how is it going to get cheaper to deal with if we procrastinate?

  36. How did you find your cofounder? 2007-11-08 07:38:16 pg
    When we started Viaweb, I was done with grad school but Rtm and Trevor were still in it. That worked out ok. Grad student procrastination is actually quite a powerful force. It's ok if some founders are still in school, so long as (a) the ringleader isn't and (b) the ones still in school are willing to put a good deal of time into the startup.

  37. New Feature: get kicked off News.YC on demand 2007-11-08 09:32:04 bluishgreen
    Damn, now I have to create another account to procrastinate smoothly.

  38. New Feature: get kicked off News.YC on demand 2007-11-08 12:06:59 tlrobinson
    My psych major friend is working on a theory that procrastinators have naturally low levels of endorphins, so they subconsciously use the stress of procrastination to raise those levels.

    I thought that was a pretty fascinating theory.

  39. New Feature: get kicked off News.YC on demand 2007-11-08 16:00:03 cstejerean
    I don't know if anyone asked for it but I started a thread a little while ago about how news.YC was damaging my productivity and several other folks seemed to agree so I'm wondering if this is in any way related. I think it was done more to help the folks accepted into YC procrastinate less and work more.

  40. New Feature: get kicked off News.YC on demand 2007-11-09 02:25:28 brlewis
    This is will do great things for news.yc, temporarily.

    People here to procrastinate have a lower average quality contribution than people here out of genuine interest. The average submission/comment quality will go up as they temporarily leave.

    What will happen is that they will find some other way of procrastinating. The problem isn't that news.yc draws them too strongly; it's that what they should be doing doesn't draw them strongly enough.

  41. New Feature: get kicked off News.YC on demand 2007-11-09 20:20:56 voidstar
    I'd heard that procrastinators were perfectionists, and so all of their tasks loom like enormous projects because they envision all the thousands of tiny details they'd have to get just right, while normal people just have this rough idea of the task that doesn't look so hard. So then the procrastinators put it off because they just don't feel like taking on an enormous project. Which is funny, because in saying this I'm reminded of pg's essay that talked about starting with easy small projects rather than big earthshattering ones, because you'll never actually finish those.

  42. New Feature: get kicked off News.YC on demand 2007-11-10 01:55:37 kirse
    I generally procrastinate because I simply don't want to do the task, not sure if that's the case for anyone else...

  43. Please tell us what features you'd like in news.ycombinator 2007-11-11 14:35:26 hollerith
    I really appreciate the procrastination preventer, but would like one change.

    It is not enough that the reader does not spend too much time reading and commenting on Hacker News. Because willpower is a depletable resource, it is also necessary that the reader does not expend too much willpower resisting the impulse to spend too much time reading and commenting. When the "get back to work" page comes up, I find that I have to expend real willpower not to click on the override link (anchor) at the bottom of the page. To balance that change, you might simultaneously put a link to the reader's user page, so if he really needs to, he can go to his user page and turn the procrastination preventer off. (A logout link on the "get back to work page'd be nice too.)

  44. Poll: Startup Productivity Sinks 2007-11-14 00:30:08 nostrademons
    It'd be neat to hook this up to RescueTime and see if our perceived productivity sinks match up with actual productivity sinks. I found that I spend significantly less time on Internet procrastination than I thought I did, and significantly more time with the computer turned off entirely.

    Also would be neat to correlate this with company size and stage of development. In my current startup (which is just me doing all the coding), the top productivity sinks are Internet distractions and slow decision-making, because most of the rest don't apply. In my last employer, the top ones were office distractions, bugs & errors, and working on things we don't finish.

    And it's interesting how answers might change with hindsight. A couple months ago, I wrote a library that, if you asked me 2 weeks after I finished it, would've gone into the "Working on things that don't matter." Now I just happened to find another use for it, and it's now a critical part of our infrastructure.

  45. Ask PG: How many of us frequently override our noprocrast settings? 2007-11-15 10:59:37 paulgb
    I probably click it about 50% of the time, and the other half is split about 50/50 between actually getting back to what I should be doing and finding another way to procrastinate. So it is about 25% effective, which is better than nothing.

  46. Ask YC: Getting In the Zone? 2007-11-19 09:31:28 cperciva
    I don't try to avoid procrastinating.

    Ok, that sounds wrong. Let me try again: I find that when I'm procrastinating about writing a particular piece of code, it's because there's something nagging at my subconscious telling me "this isn't the right way to solve this particular problems -- go away and think some more".

    Once I know what the next step is and know that it's the right next step, I find that I don't procrastinate any more.

  47. Ask YC: Getting In the Zone? 2007-11-19 09:32:06 euccastro
    A variation of what you propose: advocates of test driven development suggest you always leave your coding session for the next day with a failing test.

    A common advice for variants of writer's block is to have some sort of ritual to get you started cranking away. The exact actions are not that important. It could be taking a shower, doing a tea, tidying up your desk, taking some deep breaths, whatever. When you do these things everyday in the same order, your 'muscle memory' eases you into a creative state. I haven't tried this, though.

    I'm bad at fighting procrastination. When it gets really bad, I just abuse until I feel the honest urge to get back to work (I mean honest urge as opposed to remorse).

    There are some things I found that help when I follow them, although I admit I don't follow them consistently enough:

    - Find the time of the day that works best for you. It doesn't need be the same clock time every day. In my case I have screwed sleep patterns (tending to a longer day), so I set it as a delta from my waking time. (I'm considering trying to settle into a 28 hour day, as in http://xkcd.com/320/ , but I'm digressing.)

    - Be proactive and aggressive about freeing such time from interruptions.

    - Allocate time to do other things you want to do too, including the things you procrastinate in. Doing this helps you not to feel more deprived from (other) fun than from work.

    When work time comes and I feel like doing something else, I make myself realise I'm practically missing the working day if I do so. Most times that will get me an honest urge to work. When it doesn't, I just go ahead and do something else all day. I can chain a few days like this, and not everyone can afford this. Eventually I come back refreshed and with no remorse. Other people (and myself, in my late teens/early 20s), would just get into a procrastination/regret spiral instead. YMMV.

  48. Ask YC: Getting In the Zone? 2007-11-19 09:59:17 euccastro
    Another thing that helps: when my last session was spent mostly coding, and I'm having trouble getting back into it, I will just take pencil and paper and sketch stuff away. Often, I'm blocked because I don't really understand well enough some part of what I'm doing, or of where I want to get to. Drawing or (otherwise) restating the problem gets me back to the state where you spend hours just knowing what to do next.

    And viceversa, if I've spent too much time 'designing' or otherwise thinking about the problem, I unblock by going off and making something I can run. I may eventually throw away that code, but it got me going forward.

    So I don't have much of a methodology. Thinking about doing and actually doing are things I do to procrastinate from each other, if you want.

    One technique that does help: I keep a stack.txt document, where I write my current tasks (a short phrase each), organized hierarchically (I use indentation because of a Python background; a Lisp native might use sexprs instead). When I stumble into a subtask that I need to do sometime, but which I can get away without for the time being, I 'fake it til I make it', and I enter a reminder of the proper solution in my 'mind stack' as a subtask of the current one. Whenever I think of an unrelated task that I want to do later, I will enter a reminder at the end of the stack. [Edit: OK, so it's a tree, where each path to a leave is a stack of context about what you're doing.]

    That avoids two problems that used to get me lost when hacking: getting lost in subtasks and losing context of what I was doing, and trouble deciding what to do next (it's easier to decide with confidence if you can see your options written together).

  49. Ask YC: Getting In the Zone? 2007-11-19 11:29:22 trekker7
    WWJBD - What Would James Bond Do. Treat hacking like what it is: a tough, rigorous activity that requires huge amounts of energy and persistence.

    So whenever you feel like procrastinating, tough it out, clench your teeth, and just start.

  50. Ask YC: Getting In the Zone? 2007-11-20 01:18:13 bluishgreen
    I have a sand clock on my desk.It brings a spatial dimension to the passage of time which the lower parts of my brain understand better.

    My clock gives me one hour, when I find that I am procrastinating, I turn the clock and promise myself not to do much else other than work till the clock is running. works every time. But their is some sort of ritualistic behaviour involved. you have to respect and even fear the sand clock for this to work.

  51. Flow Chart of Procrastination 2007-11-20 09:44:35 tristian
    Ahh, but was the diagram created while procrastinating, or is it actual work?

  52. Facebook App: Numbrosia Puzzle (looking for first 5 users and feedback) 2007-12-11 01:35:49 streblo
    Pretty cool puzzle. I've never seen this game before. Its a nice procrastination tool while studying for finals. The only comment I have is that if you change the value of a row/column, it changes the row/column's size, and in turn changes the size of the puzzle. You should make row and column size universal regardless of what number is in it.

  53. Ketchup Week: Put off all of your other work and finally make your web app 2007-12-27 03:30:54 optimal
    Er, catsup?

    Timely post, because that's what I'm doing today. Or I was doing it, until I started procrastinating here.

    I should really go now.

  54. Ask News.YC: What are your top news sources? 2007-12-31 04:09:31 mhartl
    The Economist (the absurd price for the print edition is, alas, worth it), Hacker News, Google News and Yahoo News.

    I sometimes check reddit when the Hacker News anti-procrastination feature locks me out. :-)

    N.B. There have been some recent claims here at news.YC that The Economist has been going downhill recently. This may be true, but I've been reading it for the better part of a decade and haven't noticed any decline in quality.

  55. The laptop wars - Will charity or profit end the digital divide? 2008-01-12 07:17:27 eru
    Profit.

    Edit: Why do I read this article on screen? I mean - I have it on paper.. Damn procrastination.

  56. Ask YC: how do you work for 8 hours straight? 2008-01-13 21:00:16 cperciva
    I am a bit daunted by the prospect of working 8 hours straight, every day [...] 2-3 hours of real work per day [might be] more realistic.

    I think part of the issue here is how you define "work". I probably spend about 3 hours a day actively writing code, but I would still say that I'm working 12+ hours a day -- the fact is that most of my time is spent coming up with ideas for how to solve problems and convincing myself that the solutions I've found are in fact the right solutions.

    Lawyers understand this -- they'll bill you for time they've spent thinking about your file while having a shower just the same as they bill you for time they spend at a computer writing up legal documents. Unless you're purely a code monkey who writes code according to directions and never thinks about what he's doing, there's nothing wrong with counting "think time" as time you spend working.

    Edit: See also my comments from November about procrastinating: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=81366

  57. Ask YC: how do you work for 8 hours straight? 2008-01-13 21:07:10 dhouston
    first, find a job you enjoy -- the tech job market is good enough now where you can afford to be selective (at least in the valley/other tech hubs) -- ideally, something that you would find exciting enough to do even if you weren't getting paid, as the cliche goes.

    second, i think it's common for developers to get the equivalent of writers' block when the upcoming task is large and/or poorly defined. some things that have helped with this:

    - tricking yourself to take on little pieces of the bigger project (google 'structured procrastination' and hamming's article on productivity); carving out explicit "next steps" (without dependencies) that you can start on now

    - writing down a plan or specs to at least get things on paper/into your editor to bring clarity to a jumble of random thoughts

    - reducing distractions; putting on headphones (esp. noise cancelling); stopping multitasking http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000022.html ; also, turning off AIM (or putting up an away message plus hide windows) and your mail client's new-email popup/toaster massively cuts down interruptions

    - using rescuetime (to assess the damage and/or feel guilty about screwing around :)), noprocrast on news.yc or just making a commitment to yourself to wean yourself off of news/blog sugar

    lots of people have written about productivity; http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the_pmarca_guid.html and http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html are good starting points.

    but ironically it's tempting to waste a lot of time "preparing" yourself to be really productive or trying to come up with the perfect system. i think there are natural ebbs and flows in levels of productivity; a lot of the battle is detecting when you're slumping and instead of beating yourself up, try to trick yourself into making that period as short as possible.

  58. How to balance a startup, family and a full time job 2008-01-23 14:05:45 llimllib
    I don't have kids, but I do have a fiancee.

    The trick has been that she goes to bed early. So I work 9-7, hang out with her 7-10, hack 10-2, rinse and repeat.

    It's definitely forced me to improve my work habits. I say as I'm procrastinating on it.

  59. Oh Crap Hackers 2008-01-31 04:37:32 BrandonM
    Was I the only one who thought this was going to be an essay about procrastinating programmers who do everything under the pressure of an imminent deadline?

    Still, it was pretty funny.

  60. Dear Programmers, Please Learn to Read Before You Speak: In Defense of Arc 2008-01-31 12:29:22 dfens
    If I really wanted to procrastinate, I would find all the blog posts complaining about lack of unicode, and count how many times a non-ASCII character was used.

  61. A different kind of Arc challenge: a quest for a true 100 year language 2008-02-05 19:43:56 murrayh
    I wish I were more eloquent so I could state my opinions clearly. 'Writing a language' might be a component of creating a product. Language theology (sorry... hopefully you get what I mean, is there a word for this?) appears to me to be the worst kind of procrastination - the one where you think you are working but you really aren't.

  62. Marriage turns genius off like a tap. 2008-02-07 21:27:57 andyjenn
    Strange as its increased my productivity. Kids do take up a load of time, but its been THE most focusing effect of my life :- 1. Any spare time I have, I work immensely hard - no creativity suites with bean bags for inspiration; no procrastination on which direction I take or how elegant/short my code can be. If it works, its in. 2. My product (or subsequent ones) HAS to succeed. I'm simply working to keep a roof over our heads and now have another mouth to feed. "Necessity is the mother of all invention" a smart chap from across the pond once said. In short - I do not suffer from motivational problems.

  63. Ask YC: How many hours do you sleep on average ? 2008-02-13 23:38:35 ivan
    If you procrastinate your tasks, it means you sleep not enough. That's all.

  64. Ask YC: How many hours do you sleep on average ? 2008-02-14 00:30:36 jdavid
    i don't think he meant long term procrastination, but rather daily procrastination. if you stay in bed, then you may need more sleep in your week.

    once i wake up, any additional sleep is usually meaningless, i find a nap after lunch to be of much better use to me.

  65. Ask YC: How many hours do you sleep on average ? 2008-02-14 14:14:13 ivan
    I meant short time procrastination as an indicator of sleep deficit. It's the best indicator you sleep not enough. You should pay some bill today but you can't find enough energy to do it (you can also feel strong aversion to do it) so you move this task and three other tasks to the next day. Ask yourself if this already happened.

    There are some techniques by ex. some very intensive buddhist meditations (you can't perform in normal daily life) which can help you slow down your metabolism and so also need for sleep and eat without impact on your health, or techniques how to wake up exactly at 7AM (it's the best time IMO) without alarm clock.

  66. New YC Company 8aweek To Help You Kick That Internet Time Wasting Addiction 2008-02-15 17:20:03 yters
    Have people had success with the no procrastinate feature here?

    Dunno about others, but I tend to go from one form of procrastination to another.

  67. New YC Company 8aweek To Help You Kick That Internet Time Wasting Addiction 2008-02-15 22:37:16 jmzachary
    I agree with you, on both counts. It seems very ironic to have a toolbar app that monitors and prevents your use of the web. This is a behavioral problem (procrastination, time wasting, boredom, poor management), not a technical problem. This seems like a simple feature that browser developers could easily build in.

  68. New YC Company 8aweek To Help You Kick That Internet Time Wasting Addiction 2008-02-16 01:05:00 nostrademons
    I had some limited success with a 10 hours noprocrast timeout. It broke the addiction, at least, so I only check in the morning and night now. You're right though, you really need to find something to replace old procrastination habits with, otherwise you'll just pick up new ones.

    http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=114401

    I've certainly started visiting Programming Reddit more since visiting news.YC less. OTOH, I don't think it makes up for the full difference, and my startup has gotten the balance of that time. That could be because the startup is more mature and hence more fun to work on now, though.

    I had the crazy idea (since my startup is all about casual games) that instead of blocking people from playing games all day, you should just turn their daily work into a game. Carrot, instead of stick. Don't really know how the specifics would work, but it's something I'd like to play with as our game-creation software gets more mature.

  69. 20 Things I Wish I Had Known When Starting Out in Life 2008-02-20 10:12:43 wallflower
    Another Litmanism "The name of the game in life is you either have to focus on the process or the reward at any given moment. If you focus on the reward... (procrastination) If you focus on the process, you'll get there"

    Litman quotes Bloomberg...

    From page 52 (paperback) in his book 'Bloomberg By Bloomberg':

    "We made mistakes, of course. Most of them were omissions we didn't think of when we initially wrote the software. We fixed them by doing it over and over, again and again. We do the same today. While our competitors are still sucking their thumbs trying to make the design perfect, we're already on prototype version No. 5.

    By the time our rivals are ready with wires and screws, we are on version No. 10. It gets back to planning versus acting. We act from day one; others plan how to plan - for months."

    The principle is fundamental. I don't think it was a specific book. I'm on his email list twice - he reiterates the theme a lot.

    To elaborate, Litman says it's all about small steps. You need to make a commitment to taking small steps. All of successful business is a compilation of small victories. It's the small steps that make a difference. Most people aren't willing to stay in the game long enough to succeed...

    Conversations with Millionaires is a great book because he interviews a really diverse group of successful entrepreneurs.

    Personally, I don't always like his rah-rah cheerleading you-can-do-it approach but he shares some valuable insights.

  70. NPR: Tech Junkies Crazy About "Getting Things Done" 2008-02-20 11:06:30 jacabado
    "everything will calm down and you will have time to think about deeper things and find deeper connections within your life" - my fear is what happens to those who already think about deep enough things and find scary deep connections within their life, so I'll stay as a master procrastinator!

  71. Ask YC: Why? The more time I spend here the more I get done. 2008-02-21 01:26:53 DaniFong
    A friend once remarked to me that one of his 'cures for procrastination' is to do something only mildly distracting, and mildly amusing, after sitting down to work and both taking on any big problems. He says it takes some time to get settled, but he needs to feel a sort of mental presence of a problem before he can really tackle it.

    Perhaps the right type of break is the same way: perhaps it lets you cool it and evaluate your issues before tackling them, instead of following the path of least resistance.

  72. Ask YC: Why? The more time I spend here the more I get done. 2008-02-21 12:55:41 nostrademons
    I think there may be a limit to the amount of productive work you can get done in a day, and whether you hit that limit after 3 hours or 14 hours, it's still there. So there may be some truth to your impression that news.YC isn't really hurting your real productivity.

    OTOH, I've found that going out and getting some exercise, or turning off the computer and reading a book, or watching a movie tends to clear my head a lot quicker than social bookmarking sites or blogs. I feel like I get "stuck" in a low level of activity when I read too much, like all that incoming information is still taking up cycles that would otherwise be used for my startup. So maybe it's not the best procrastination activity. ;-)

    I certainly have noticed that the biggest bottleneck for my productivity is the time it takes for my brain to adjust to and assimilate new architectural decisions. And letting my brain relax and switch off seems to make that go faster. (So does getting lots of sleep...again, sleep is not something to shortchange.) I'm just not certain that news.YC or other programming-related websites really let my brain switch off all that well.

  73. Ask News.YC: How to re-motivate yourself? 2008-02-22 22:36:07 vanekl
    I meant to ask this question myself but I just couldn't find the motivation.

    Seriously, procrastination is the way your subconscious tells you something is wrong and needs to be fixed, or all of your work is for naught. So either stop, talk to your buddies, and fix it so that you can get re-motivated, or check all the code back in unlocked and go find the next challenge. Your subconscious is trying to tell you something; listen to it and address it, because it's almost always right. The answer is not here, but you already knew that, didn't you?

  74. Ask News.YC: How to re-motivate yourself? 2008-02-23 05:14:53 crux_
    I'm perhaps different than a lot of the other folks here doing startups. My goal in my entrepreneurship is not to exit to $millions; it is to create a long-term sustainable lifestyle for myself where I am continually doing work that I find interesting and also have have the time to enjoy other pursuits...

    Viewed through that lens, then as soon as dissatisfaction or a lack of motivation become chronic rather than intermittent, it's clear that something needs to change.

    It sounds like you have been trying to whip yourself into shape -- trying to create external motivations to push you through tasks you no longer find enjoyable on their own. This isn't sustainable; sooner or later you'll run out.

    Personally, I:

    * Don't beat myself up about time spent procrastinating as long as it's reasonable. Brain breaks (I play a lot of go online) are just fine; it's taken me a lot of work to break the "slack off -> guilt -> demotivation -> more slacking off" cycle,. Hint: The solution is not to crank up the "guilt" lever.

    * I make sure I'm not working too much, even when I'm very excited. Things will still be there tomorrow, and in the sober light of day my 2 am code usually sucks.

    * I nurture other interests and hobbies, including non-programming ones. I always have a couple of 'learning' side projects going on, and I make sure to go rock climbing (my excercise drug of choice!) at least once a week.

    * It's always time to change! My business plan (drawn out in Inkscape) looks like a railyard, with lots of potential branches being added.

    * I always start with high expectations and a huge feature list; I've begun to accept that trimming this back is a natural and inevitable part of actually getting anything done. Maybe it would be a good idea for you to call a 'feature freeze' and get a release out? Like someone else said, a year is a long time to be working in a vacuum.

    ...

    Time for me to get back to work and stop being distracted, now. ;)

  75. Do it Fucking Now. 2008-02-23 08:55:11 tlrobinson
    No so much motivating, but more like a reminder to get back to work when I'm procrastinating reading (and responding to) stupid comments on the interwebs.

  76. Ask YC: How To Prioritize 2008-02-24 03:35:03 crystalarchives
    I try to maximize productivity and efficiency; if I have a lot of time, I do something I'm less familiar with since I'll probably have to look things up and experiment, without losing state. If I just have a little bit of time, I work on the parts I know I could do in my sleep, so if I get interrupted it's no big deal, I can easily pick up where I left off.

    But most importantly, I try never to procrastinate, although I don't always succeed... Good luck!

  77. Ask YC: How To Prioritize 2008-02-24 04:22:43 edw519
    Understood. I guess the point I was trying to make was that if you do your key differentiator well, then the web-design, marketing, and billing will be much easier to do. It's much easier to sell a game breaker than just another thing.

    OTOH, there's not much need for billing if you don't have something fantastic to sell.

    My experience is that when you really focus on the one big thing all the small things get even smaller once you get around to them. Hope that helps.

    EDIT: It just occured to me that pg describes this concept (What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you?) much more eloquently here:

    http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

  78. Ask YC: How To Prioritize 2008-02-24 04:46:27 Tichy
    Sounds like a case for structured procrastination: http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

    I suspect it is best to focus first on the task you most feel like doing.

  79. Ask YC: How To Prioritize 2008-02-24 05:16:43 xirium
    From the book Eat That Frog! - 21 Great Ways To Stop Procrastinating And Get More Done in Less Time: Doing something is better than doing nothing. Make a list of five tasks. Order the tasks by strict priority. Work your way through the list, skipping as you get stuck. If your list has more than five items then you're spending too long making lists.

  80. How To Become A Hacker 2008-02-25 03:33:36 cstejerean
    try installing something like LFS (Linux from scratch) and see how much you learn about Linux. Maybe I'm just old school but even on Windows I was always studying the OS internals, the specs of the various protocols and the details of the filesystem. The difference is in Linux I have access to the sourcecode so in addition to reading a book on the specs I can study the implementation ad well.

    Does this really make me a better programmer? I hope so. But it might be just an extreme form of procrastination.

  81. Ask YC: Is anyone here using GTD? 2008-02-26 04:33:40 stillmotion
    I find the best way to get things done is to write them on a notepad (Moleskine highly recommended) and do them. My weakness is procrastination (which I am doing now) and I the only advice I will give is don't even think about trying to get over procrastination, just do what ever you need to do.

  82. 11 Solid Ways to Improve Your Time Management Skills 2008-02-29 02:42:23 pchristensen
    make lists, make use of down time, reward yourself, concentrate on one thing, avoid procrastination, set personal deadlines, delegate responsibilities, set up a long term planner, employ a program like rescuetime, work in a team, be careful to avoid burnout

    Nice submarine!

  83. 11 Solid Ways to Improve Your Time Management Skills 2008-02-29 05:08:40 redorb
    <head exploding> Avoid Procrastination at All Costs </head exploding>

  84. On Naming Startups, and Ruby Hackery. (with scripts!) 2008-03-01 23:11:15 DaniFong
    I wrote a little script to help scan through DNS to find untaken domain names. The web services are great, but they don't seem to work fast enough, and I personally would rather have the name construction rules in code. Sticking a file on wordpress is kinda dumb though. We're still procrastinating on buying a server.

  85. Ask YC: The business process sweet spot 2008-03-06 21:29:18 suboptimal
    I'd go with 1) what works for you, 2) at that time, 3) with an eye toward future expansion. What #3 means is if you go with a simple solution per #1, make sure you can migrate your data.

    For example, I've seen many companies grow from using Excel to Access to SQL Server. This path seems quite natural, and despite the issues associated with Access databases designed by non-DBAs (ahem), the process generally works (with the assistance of those of us who get paid to help).

    Company B's problem is they don't realize they've outgrown their system, and need to evolve to the next step. However, I think their solution (spreadsheets) should work perfectly fine for your two-man shop.

    I duplicate this lifecycle in my own personal projects. I might start off tracking fitness in vim, and decide I want sums so I migrate to Calc, etc. I recommend using simple tools, well.

    Do you think if you try to adopt a larger package before you're ready you might end up spending most of your time playing with the system instead of working (like a writer who procrastinates writing)?

  86. Ask YC: What have you learned that rocked your world? 2008-03-11 09:48:39 FleursDuMal
    Social psychology was a big one for me too. Cialdini's book Influence gave me a lot to think about.

    The role that biases play in my own thinking. Charlie Munger's speech that was on this site a while ago articulates a lot of things I was beginning to realize (http://vinvesting.com/docs/munger/human_misjudgement.html)

    I struggled for a long time with procrastination and low productivity. When I realized that abandoning the parts of my life that were not deeply fulfilling (browsing the web aimlessly, refreshing RSS feeds, wasting time in forums, watching tv etc) would not actually be as painful as I thought it would, it changed how I live and work in a very fundamental way.

  87. Ask YC: What is your favourite paradox? 2008-03-11 22:02:48 eru
    Just to make you procrastinate even more:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

  88. How to Be Original 2008-03-14 00:31:16 kingkongrevenge
    > what [...] volume of reading is [diminishing returns] reached?

    I think the volume is pretty damn low if you limit your intake to dense, high quality sources. The key word here is actionable. How often do you come across something that actually changes your plans or the way you're doing things? It's really very rare, in any field. It certainly doesn't require a daily investment, and probably not even a weekly investment.

    A few time I've either been traveling or in crunch mode for a few weeks and been unable to waste time perusing the journals and feeds I usually do. When I finally had a chance to catch up, I found that I could rapidly skim the pile of stuff I would have wasted many hours reading and pick out all the salient information in under an hour.

    It's also important to remember we live in the google age and finding information is easy. There's a tendency to suck down information thinking it might be handy later, but a JIT approach to reading and research is probably a lot more efficient. When what to do isn't obvious you can find what's been written fast. Remember that you probably have access through your library to lexis-nexis and other databases that allow you to search pretty much everything that gets published.

    People like to procrastinate by reading blogs and "news items" and pretend they're actually doing useful research. In terms of real applicability they'd usually do just as well reading Seventeen Magazine. I'm as guilty as anyone, of course.

  89. I'm giving away my startup idea to a deserving Haxor 2008-03-15 02:28:27 swombat
    Just release it already!!! Stop procrastinating :-) It's probably crap anyway :-) The longer the build-up, the harsher the come-down!

  90. Chicago Startups Visualized 2008-03-15 03:43:53 pchristensen
    I wanted a list like this to exist, and I figured I could either do it myself or just procrastinate really hard and someone somewhere would do a better job than me. Looks like I picked the right strategy!

  91. Ask YC: What do I, a graduating CS student, need to know to go into the real world as a programmer? 2008-03-18 08:06:41 eznet
    Thanks Boyd, I have checked out the design patterns head first book and it was incredibly intuitive and even entertaining to read. I have obtained a couple more since, I just have yet to wade through them as of yet... I am going to stop procrastinating on it and start reading them - tomorrow ;) I have recently come to realize the importance of knowing a database (and management) system or two. I kinda always knew that would be something I would need to get a firm grasp on - something confirmed from your and other's words on this thread. I feel that to be at the top of my list. I have read theory, best practices and paradigms for four years now. I think I have come to a crossroad where the application of all this theory and mess is the next move; a move where databases will be important.

    Thanks for the words of encouragement, Boyd.

    -Matt

  92. Learn PHP from Scratch or outsource? 2008-03-26 15:38:45 uruzseven
    But he needs blow to the head. I'm pretty sure Edison didn't walk around asking people similar questions.

    People are surprising similar in all walks of life. People will read tons of articles about working out and never set foot in a gym. I know people with dozens of books on programming but don't know what a pointer is.

    It's procrastination plain and simple. If you don't have the get up and go, you'll be a loser asking others for assistance in getting your business going.

  93. Ask YC: do you have a girlfriend/boyfriend? 2008-03-29 20:25:59 edu
    Girlfriend, we have been dating for 3 years and 8 months

    We both are pretty hardworkers, and planning to start something toghether (she's been pulling me to apply to this YC's round). I think we are a good time, I understand computers and she understands people (BSc in Psychology).

    I don't think having a gf need so much time, I always feel that I spend more time procrastinating that staying with her, and with the later I feel better! :)

  94. Applying to YC this cycle? Please don't wait till the last minute. 2008-04-03 07:54:55 ardit33
    haha.... it is like my CS professor. We had to submit our programming assignments before midnight, and if it was more than a minute late, we would get a 0. Needless to say that 90% of people waited until last minute to submit, and his little server will crash often (and you would hear screams from students not being able to submit). Programmers are some of the bigest procrastinators, ever.

    So, he decided to give 4 points bonus if somebody submited at least 24hrs before. That actually worked, as more people started submiting earlier. So, pg, maybe you need to give some incentives, or at least look at earlier sumissions more favoribly.

  95. How do you grow willpower? 2008-04-04 16:21:45 euccastro
    [...] the left and right prefrontal cortexs (corti?) [...]

    Cortices.

    Very interesting comment! I find it slightly paradoxical that I associate Buddhist meditation with a passive attitude of just accepting the present and suppressing earthly desire, yet according to what you say, that activity actually improves one's ability to persist in the active pursuit of one's desires. Not a true contradiction, of course: both are instances of suppressing immediate desires in favor of more significant, delayed ones.

    Besides any long term neurological benefits, I read once or twice that meditation and relaxation have an immediate effect of helping relieve the stress that lies at the root of most cases of procrastination.

  96. How do you grow willpower? 2008-04-04 17:11:40 LPTS
    "Besides any long term neurological benefits, I read once or twice that meditation and relaxation have an immediate effect of helping relieve the stress that lies at the root of most cases of procrastination."

    You are right. This is because when you exhale, it calms the amygdala, which manages fear. The pattern of breathing in meditation over time causes a cumulative effect, and you end up with less stress, and less inhibition. At the same time, if doing a meditation where you direct focus, you are priming parts of your brain involved in focus and attention. Like I said before, motivation is an equilibrium involving inhibition (potentially caused by fear). Meditation is great for motivation.

    I wouldn't go as far as to say most cases of procrastination would be fixed by meditation, though. Procrastination can have multiple causes. I'd say a failure to have clearly thought something through or unconscious psychological resistance would be more likely factors in procrastination, and meditation would not remove that stress as readily as logic or psychotherapy would, respectively.

  97. Free is Killing Us. Blame The VCs 2008-04-05 08:12:16 reitzensteinm
    Actually, I think it's more a complaint about a digital equivilant to dumping - unsustainable business models put in place solely to build market share by hurting competition. The Ford analogy breaks down because Ford sold cars profitably by innovatively reducing costs (which I assume he would have no problem with).

    For the record, I don't agree with him either. Standing around saying "I wish I could do x but I can't because of y" is just another dangerous procrastination tactic, for any value of y.

  98. Ask YC: What methods do you use to manage your time? 2008-04-07 02:21:14 sanj
    HN's procrastination block.

  99. Ask YC: What methods do you use to manage your time? 2008-04-07 03:47:57 prakash
    Structured Procrastination, RescueTime, and some tips from Marc Andreessen:

    http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the_pmarca_guid.html

  100. Ask YC: What methods do you use to manage your time? 2008-04-07 03:53:11 zoltz
    Not sophisticated, and only a first step to get some kind of traction, but using it can make a real difference to me:

    a) Define your main project

    b) Choose an activity that you like and that comes naturally as procrastination

    c) Choose a reasonable time ratio between them, and respect it

    As an example, every hour of surfing the web has to be (sooner or later) compensated by three hours of work on the main project.

  101. Ask YC: What methods do you use to manage your time? 2008-04-07 07:58:22 jdvolz
    1) Work on 1 computer, receive email on another (KVM switch works well for me) 2) Always follow this order: write code, write blog, read blogs. 3) Stop eating out -- it's not actually faster (at least when you work from home making something right there is faster and cheaper) 4) Just do it. Don't procrastinate. Don't check things online (download stats, visitors logs, etc.). Don't distract yourself with work that doesn't get you anything. 5) Stop watching TV when you have something interesting or arduous to do. Finish it first. 6) Stop playing video games when you have something interesting or arduous to do. Finish it first. 7) Don't over think posts on news.ycombinator.

    -- Get back to work. :-)

  102. Is poverty self-perpetuating? 2008-04-07 08:59:47 yters
    Procrastination is a good example of this phenomena too.

  103. Ask YC: What methods do you use to manage your time? 2008-04-07 09:21:12 edw519
    For me, this pretty much sums it up:

    "What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you?"

    from

    http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

  104. Tell YC: The gap between idea and starting development - the longer the better. 2008-04-13 20:51:58 wallflower
    Procrastination and darwinism. Those ideas that you actually start on. And then out of those, the ones that you build momentum on, over time.

  105. Solo founders: how do you stay emotionally efficient? 2008-04-18 11:07:58 wheels
    As often as I can, I try to work on the thing that I'm most interested in doing at that very moment, even if it's not the most important. Experience has taught me that an hour on the wrong task is better than an hour wasted procrastinating the right one. Eventually my motivation will return to whatever it was that I should have been doing, and at least then there's not a pile of stuff that's accumulated.

    As for frustration ... dancing. Seriously. I tend to go out dancing once a week and just shut off my brain, chat with my friends and forget about everything productive for a few hours. It just helps me reset.

  106. Solo founders: how do you stay emotionally efficient? 2008-04-18 11:21:35 pg
    Writing is much like being a single founder. I find the single most important thing is to be aware of how motivated you are, and to adjust the work accordingly. If you try to work on hard stuff when you're low, you'll just procrastinate. But if you start working on easy stuff, getting something done will put you into a better mood, and you'll be able to move on to harder stuff.

    Hemingway used to leave something easy unfinished in the evenings, so he had something to start with in the mornings. That works for me too, with both writing and hacking.

  107. Solo founders: how do you stay emotionally efficient? 2008-04-18 11:45:30 seregine
    I rarely get pissed off at other people; for me that's usually a sign that I'm insecure about something and unwilling to admit it. But I do get tired and unmotivated now and then.

    When I catch myself procrastinating, I just say "OK, I'm going to procrastinate for the next 30-60 minutes". Then I set the timer and goof off without guilt. When the timer rings, I go back to work.

    Minimal exercise is really important: some stretches/calisthenics in the morning, occasionally pushups or pull-ups as 5-minute breaks.

    My social life is limited, but I see my girlfriend every day and that helps a lot.

  108. Solo founders: how do you stay emotionally efficient? 2008-04-18 11:51:13 alex_c
    Exercise helps.

    Music I like can also help me focus when I'm procrastinating too much.

    There are times when I'm at an energy/focus low, and can't get anything done, which just lowers my energy/focus more, which can lead to a downward spiral. If I can push through it and get something done, that might pick me up, but more often it's a signal that I need to take a break and get off the computer (things like reddit or stumbleupon don't count as a break, they just turn my brain into mush).

  109. Solo founders: how do you stay emotionally efficient? 2008-04-18 12:21:17 spencermiles
    As many people have said, exercise is key. Besides just clearing my mind, I find that going for a run or a bike ride actually helps me focus on what I need to be working on when I get home.

    My #2 problem after procrastination is prioritizing what I should be working on. Whenever I go for a bike ride for a few hours, I have a lot of time to think about the direction of my project, which really helps me focus and get right to work when I'm home.

    Also, a girlfriend helps, or at least set aside time for dating. Balance is key, or you'll burn out quick.

  110. Solo founders: how do you stay emotionally efficient? 2008-04-18 12:36:08 bkj123
    If i had to pick one thing, I'd say to keep promises to yourself. Being aware of the fact that you might, say, procrastinate is huge. So, make a promise to yourself that you will follow your clear defn, etc and code for 10 minutes or whatever you can to get yourself going. Then, once you get going you're 90% of the way there. But again, keep those promises and you'll build momentum and self esteem which will drive you forward.

  111. Twentysomething Entrepreneurs: tech industry's most promising player under 30 2008-04-19 09:56:38 raju
    Thanks! Now I really feel old ;-)

    In all seriousness though, great inspiration, and some good advice. I really liked this one...

    "Says Taylor: "Getting things done is often more important than getting things right. When you are creating an entirely new product, getting things right without direct feedback from users is virtually impossible. The company that wins is the company that receives and responds to feedback the fastest."

    This is my biggest problem. I start to delve into the details, then procrastination creeps in, and finally the project never gets done. Hopefully my latest project will not face this...

  112. How to get things done 2008-04-20 17:51:31 ArcticCelt
    I involuntary used that technique to stop playing WOW. Some time ago I decide to better organize my gaming schedule so I thought that first thing in the morning should be 2h of gaming. After two weeks I started procrastinating on my gaming duties until I was completely disgusted by and abandoned the game :)

    Interesting how when something becomes to much of an obligation it lose it's recreational value.

  113. How to get things done 2008-04-21 03:21:34 DaniFong
    In fact, I found this link by hearing Marc Andreessen at startup school, looking at his blog, reading the 'The Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity', looking at the section on structured procrastination, and discovering this article as the first known instance of an article focusing on the effect in print.

  114. Poll: Best speaker at Startup School 2008? 2008-04-21 03:56:29 vesterr
    DHH by far and that isn't to say the others weren't good, just that his was stellar by comparison. In other years PG might have won -- nothing wrong with it, it was pretty good, just that DHH was stellar.

    Some of the top points for me (my interpretations):

    1) Rails - first version was 1000 lines. You don't have to make something gargantuan that solves every problem as a first version!

    2) Rails was a means to an end, something used in the process of making something REAL. It wouldn't work as a day job, it would be horrible to just work on a framework all the time.

    3) If you only HAVE 2 hours a day, working on it is something to look forward to (my inference), whereas if you have all day every day you procrastinate. Don't expect yourself to work on it all the time, it's not realistic.

    4) Reverse terror alerts -- SO much coverage given to the one in a million success stories that we subjectively feel it's much more likely than it is. We are brainwashed with overexposure. The odds are much better of building a small business, and of course there's nothing preventing you from selling that anyway. I suppose it's like flipping a house -- make it someplace nice and live in it and you can enjoy it, and that doesn't stop you from selling it later if you want. If you are focused on flipping it then it becomes kind of an albatross because you're too attached to a low-probability outcome that depends on other people, which makes you a bit desperate and unable to enjoy the process, which just becomes an interminable wait.

    5) Calling the shots, running at your own pace -- not having to "yes, massa" and do what your investors tell you.

    6) Having a bunch of small customers vs. one huge one means you don't have to placate some fussy demanding customer or risk losing the account and all your income. If a small customer isn't worth it, you can refund and let them go.

  115. Where do you go for news when you've read all posts on the YC frontpage? 2008-04-23 15:20:46 jgrahamc
    Frankly, I never read all the stories on the YC front page. If I did I'd consider it a bad sign that I was procrastinating.

  116. Where do you go for news when you've read all posts on the YC frontpage? 2008-04-23 15:31:13 swombat
    You go do some friggin' work you procrastinator!

  117. How Do You Deal With Stress? 2008-04-24 15:54:23 icky
    Quiet.

    Isolation.

    Time.

    Tea.

    Find someplace isolated and quiet, and make a hot cup of green tea. Hold the cup in your hands for a while and just breathe in the smell of it. Drink it when you feel good and relaxed.

    Spend less time online and use that new free time for a little more exercise or rest.

    Do something that takes you out of the quotidian flow of time and deadlines. Read a book, play a video game, watch a movie, take a walk, but procrastinate in a way that forces you to stop, and deliberately dedicate a couple hours to not doing what you should be doing.

    What you don't want to do is spend all that time in 5-minute intervals of "just one more site"; "just one more refresh of reddit"; etc. That will keep you feeling like you have to do something now, and you will quickly, efficiently, and stressfully grind your way through a whole bunch of sites and articles without getting anything done or actually relaxing.

  118. Be smarter at work, slack off 2008-05-01 15:28:44 prakash
    Tom DeMarco's books are awesome. Slack really opened my mind, instead of optimizing every waking hour, I used a "structured procrastination" approach in getting things done.

  119. Be smarter at work, slack off 2008-05-01 22:20:37 wanorris
    Structured procrastination?

    Is that where you give yourself x minutes to surf the web or whatever, but when the timer goes off, you go back to work, or is it something else?

  120. Be smarter at work, slack off 2008-05-02 02:10:49 kirubakaran
    http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

    (using your tendency to procrastinate to work for you)

  121. Elite Korean Schools, Forging Ivy League Skills 2008-05-02 09:52:35 silencio
    YES!

    I absolutely do not understand why parents make their kids go through this torture. Thankfully I have very open minded Korean parents and grew up in the US, but right now I am in such a better position than half my parents' friends kids that it's not funny. I slacked off, did just the bare minimum until the subject interested me, I go to parties, I go to events, I have fun. I don't study until 5 in the morning unless it's a final I'm screwed for, or if I procrastinated way too much. In fact, if I ever stay up that late it's almost always because I've been spending too much time talking to the people on the opposite side of Earth on IRC while idly doing work or playing a game.

    And well, I'm going to a better university than most of them, studying what I want to, earning well more than pocket change doing some coding work, and still having fun (and yes, a relationship! with premarital sex!). What did they do in the same 10 years? Study their asses off until they get burnt out constantly, and then go to some university studying what their parents wanted (half the time) or something socially acceptable (the rest of the time) where they still study their asses off, and then do the SAME thing at whatever job they get post-graduation.

    I'm not being entirely fair here, but I'm not that far off. :\ It's quite depressing.

  122. Ask YC: Why don't you write a blog? 2008-05-05 18:28:56 swombat
    Few people can succeed with a blog that merely parrots back information that came from elsewhere. I would suggest spending those 4 hours a day actually doing something that you can write about.

    Browsing news for 4 hours a day isn't really research, more likely to be procrastination.

    Daniel

  123. The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher 2008-05-07 23:33:09 DmitriLebedev
    In childhood, in early years of school, I perceived teachers as evil and good. In the last years of school we used to label them as "normal" and "crazy" (or "idiots", if one preferred).

    My grades were exceptionally high with "good" teachers and low with "evil" throughout all the school. Only recently I liberted myself to start seeing that as a good sign.

    I guess, "good" or "normal" teachers in our perception were those who procrastinated from teaching these lessons.

  124. The Mundanity of Excellence 2008-05-10 14:45:30 derefr
    I think "for nothing" meant "for fun" or "just because I feel like it," not "to procrastinate." And no, a person who makes a claim simply has to defeat any challenges to it--in science, this is known as 'falsifiability'.

  125. Ask YC: How do you avoid wasting too much time online? 2008-05-12 08:38:47 webwright
    FWIW, with RescueTime you can create whitelists of the sites you DO want to track. Every other site will come through as "non-whitelisted site" (the site info never hits our servers). You can set goals like "spend less than 1h surfing news" and have RescueTime SMS you when you break them.

    But there's no solution out there that your lack of discipline won't conquer.

    One good hack is to set it up so that you either starve or are publicly shamed when you procrastinate. So, you could quit your job (thus putting starvation on the line!). Or you could embed a RescueTime graph on your blog and invite people to hassle you about how you spend your time. ;-)

  126. Ask YC: How do you avoid wasting too much time online? 2008-05-12 12:26:05 nickb
    I think you're approaching it from a wrong point of view. You don't have a browsing problem, you have an issue with getting things done or you have a procrastination problem. This is why I have little use for all the apps that tell me how much time I'm spending on diff sites / programs. That data is useful and interesting but it's not good for solving your procrastination issue since you already know you have a problem!

    I found this essay interesting: http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/ It shows you how procrastination has some hidden benefits. Give it a read.

    Now, how do I cope with info out there. Well, every morning I give myself a set of tasks that I want to accomplish that day (if you have a boss... he will do a part of that for you I guess). I almost always start with the hardest thing on the list or with something that's time sensitive (like call someone at 11am etc) and I break it up into smaller tasks as I go along. The rule is that I am not available for chat, email etc. until I'm done with the big task. I do not browse the web for anything that's not related to the task. Until that task is done, I do not touch email or the browser. Now, once I'm done with it or I'm stuck, I take a walk for few minutes or I jump into the second task on the list. Funny thing is, as you start doing something else, very quickly you start getting ideas about the old problem. If I get an idea about how to solve my previous task, I go back to it and then go back to the task I was doing before. If most of your tasks involve programming, get git and it will be a godsend to you since it lends itself perfectly to this model of working.

    Once I'm done with a big task, I take 30-40 min off and I check my RSS feeds, I check HN, check email etc. I check email only 3 times a day. I find it extremely distracting if I check email more often. Email eats up too much of my time. If you're an email junkie, look into Merlin Mann's Inbox Zero concept:

    http://www.43folders.com/izero http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=973149761529535925

    Also, take a look at this hack: http://www.43folders.com/2005/10/11/procrastination-hack-102... It's a method to get you in the mode of working on something so you acclimate yourself to work.

    In the end, it comes down to strong will. Just force yourself to do something!

  127. Ask YC: If you could create the ultimate tech news site what would it look like? 2008-05-12 16:18:48 DaniFong
    News can be too much like popcorn: unsatisfying one by one, bad for you en mass, and usually consumed while procrastinating.

    If the articles instead brought difficult epiphanies, and challenging tasks, one might find it in them to attend to one's work first, and tackle some of the 'new articles' (say, a new fascicle from Knuth) later.

  128. Ask YC: How do you avoid wasting too much time online? 2008-05-13 04:47:47 xenoterracide
    I'm procrastinating reading this stuff on procrastination. Good stuff. Yet another thing I should try. Now how do I deceive myself that getting this homework done is not near the most important things I should be doing...

  129. Letter to a Young Procrastinator: Some last-minute advice from a veteran slacker 2008-05-14 04:20:36 fallentimes
    Interesting read, but I didn't agree with this:

    "'Couldn't I be more like that kid if I put my mind to it?' No. You couldn't. That kid will grow up to be a powerful politician or business leader. You won't."

    Procrastination != success or lack of success.

  130. Letter to a Young Procrastinator: Some last-minute advice from a veteran slacker 2008-05-14 04:32:35 Goronmon
    Procrastination != success or lack of success.

    I don't think that was the point of making that comment. I took it to mean that if you really are a chronic procrastinator, you probably aren't going to end up in a position where you will need to be super-organized and disciplined. You may be the guy that develops that cool app that launches a start-up into success, but you probably won't end up as the CEO of the large company that is created as a result.

    That's just my take, and I'm not speaking from a strong position of experience or anything, haha.

  131. Letter to a Young Procrastinator: Some last-minute advice from a veteran slacker 2008-05-14 05:28:40 edw519
    I think that for the rest of my life, every time I see the word "procrastination", I'll think of my first pg essay (and the one that got me hooked):

    http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

  132. Letter to a Young Procrastinator: Some last-minute advice from a veteran slacker 2008-05-14 06:55:57 Sam_Odio
    I honestly think procrastination paid my way through school. When you don't start studying for tests until a few hours before, you suddenly find yourself with a lot of time on your hands.

    The key was creating incentives that forced me to spend that free time on my business. IE: artificial deadlines. Turns out clients are a great for this. They become very disappointed when you don't do what you said you would, when you said you would do it.

  133. Letter to a Young Procrastinator: Some last-minute advice from a veteran slacker 2008-05-14 12:14:52 tristian
    I'm wondering if there is anyone here who could refute the claim in this article: that once a chronic procrastinator, always a chronic procrastinator? Someone who has managed to overcome their innate procrastinationess and can be a source of hope for the rest of us.

  134. Letter to a Young Procrastinator: Some last-minute advice from a veteran slacker 2008-05-14 14:17:14 maheshcr
    Good article.

    Procrastination is usually a sign of not being engaged with whatever is in front. Laziness that vanishes with Guitar Hero, or any other interesting activity, is not laziness.

  135. Letter to a Young Procrastinator: Some last-minute advice from a veteran slacker 2008-05-14 14:43:04 daniel-cussen
    Sounds like the author has a classic case of ADHD. He can't get around to things unless it's an emergency, and when it is, he gets into a hyperfocus mode. Sadly, the hyperfocus only happens when a person with ADHD truly thinks he or she is in an emergency. That, and ritalin.

    Of course, a friend of mine would leave his assignments for last minute. If an essay was due at 7 a.m. before class, he'd set his alarm clock for 5 a.m. and start the essay then. He did well on them, too. What amazes me is that he knew what was best for him, despite teachers who sermonized about avoiding procrastination.

  136. Letter to a Young Procrastinator: Some last-minute advice from a veteran slacker 2008-05-14 18:09:49 quellhorst
    In "Buffett & Gates Go Back to School" Bill talks about overcoming procrastination after getting out of school. He says it took over a year.

    I found Getting Things Done and The Now Habit useful in fixing my procrastination.

  137. Letter to a Young Procrastinator: Some last-minute advice from a veteran slacker 2008-05-15 00:21:52 cstejerean
    I certainly haven't been able to overcome it. If I know I have more time than necessary to complete a task I will most likely put it off and find something else to do first. The workaround for me is to either work on things with unrealistically short deadlines that leave no room for procrastination, or to work on something extremely interesting (at the expense of the third category of important but not interesting or urgent).

  138. Letter to a Young Procrastinator: Some last-minute advice from a veteran slacker 2008-05-15 03:44:50 scott_s
    I don't procrastinate because I'm lazy. I procrastinate only when doing the task makes me feel uncomfortable. Reasons for discomfort are generally I don't know how to do it, or the outcome is unsure and I'd rather not know.

    I don't procrastinate to avoid work. I do it to avoid the feeling of discomfort that comes with facing something I'd rather not.

  139. Ask YC: Learning to hack... 2008-05-16 05:03:32 whiten
    I think I understand the underlying reasoning behind the question. If like me, you have read a lot of the posts on this site, and the essays of Mr Graham, and have a desire to somehow start a start-up, or become your own boss etc., you search for ways to achieve this/these goals.

    Most of the advice is fairly general, and I was often left with the feeling that many people just repeat the mantra: 'learn how to hack', 'do something you want, and users will like' etc etc. All good advice I may say, but nothing too concrete on how you actually start!

    As hackers, most people will say: "you need to code, and business people, although relevant aren't required straight away."

    I sort of agree and disagree. What does not work though is doing nothing, or procrastinating(in the wrong areas).

    For me, I decided to at least do SOMETHING. I came from a systems engineering background (read:good Microsoft/Cisco techie, and reasonable sales/presentation sort of guy) - not a hacker though.

    So, I decided to attempt to learn Java about a year or two ago. I have done OK with this, but unless you use a language in anger most days, you don't get very far. My latest attempt is Python. I like Core Python Programming 2nd edition by Wesley J. Chun.

    What I guess I am trying to say is, you need to work out where you want to be (successful business), and take small steps towards it. That maybe learning business stuff, and it maybe learning to hack. Whatever. Just do something that is a step towards where you want to be, and continually re-evaluate how it's going.

    Good luck.

  140. Ask YC: How do you achieve laser focus and concentration? 2008-05-16 20:24:24 bigtoga
    I would just echo the idea that you need to eliminate distractions - turn off phone, email, tv, and choose music with no lyrics. I have to have music going to get in the zone. I would add two other things that prevent me from getting in the zone: (1) small (less than 10 minute) tasks, and (2) tasks that I've procrastinated on. If there are lots of 10 minute tasks floating around, they are a distraction since, while working on a major code change, I'm often tempted to just do the quick fix here, quick fix there and then bam - I'm out of the zone (and now am checking email, etc). Do the little tasks and get them out of the way - even if it takes the whole day.

    The second thing for me is clearing out any procrastinated items. If I don't answer that email, return that call, finish writing that article or whatever, sure enough it's going to pop into my brain at the wrong time and then I'll start thinking what a loser I am b/c I didn't do x, y and z on time.

    So to sum up: not only is it important to minimize email and other interruptions but it's equally important to clear the chatter from your own head. To do so requires that you eliminate the small tasks and those things that make you think less of yourself.

  141. PG: Disconnecting Distraction 2008-05-18 00:00:45 maxklein
    An alternative is this: What I do (using my super secret self designed software) is that I monitor my usage of the internet, and for every hour firefox is open, I send $10 to my credit card account. So while I procrastinate, I lose cash money but repay my debts.

  142. PG: Disconnecting Distraction 2008-05-18 01:08:41 marvin
    I'm going to say something unpopular now, so be warned.

    Is wasting time on..TV, MMORPGs, the Internet, senseless magazines etc. really that much of a problem for us as individuals? Procrastinating obviously robs time from "useful" activities like working, but how much use are these activities, really? Work applied correctly certainly brings humanity as a whole to new and better pastures, but I'm wondering whether this is really the case for me as an individual.

    Personally, I find it very pleasant to waste time. If I don't have anything in particular to do (when I'm on vacation, for instance), I get bored with whatever time-sinks I have in about two weeks and quickly move on to something that brings me forward as a person. But if there are demanding activities occupying my mind - when I study, or learn a new skill, or have a job - wasting time seems to become a natural and healthy part of my life. Four hours a day seems like a good ballpark figure - according to this I spend 28 hours every week doing nothing, in addition to whatever useful things I do the rest of the time. I fail to see how this is a problem.

    To me it seems as if recreation naturally follows from any demanding activity. If you get 8 hours of real work done every day, what is the problem if another four are spent doing nothing? Or even if you only get four hours of real work done every day, or two, you will still produce more wealth than an average Joe would be able to produce 80 years ago. I guess what I'm questioning is the aspiration of being great if you don't find it natural.

    Doesn't this apply even, as PG writes in "How to do what you love", if your work is the most interesting and rewarding part of your life? Even great minds need rest.

  143. PG: Disconnecting Distraction 2008-05-18 03:32:27 pg
    This is a good point. I don't mean to imply one should do nothing but work. The problem with many types of procrastination is that they're not even all that fun. I think the right thing to do is when you work, really work, and when you're just having fun, really have fun.

  144. PG: Disconnecting Distraction 2008-05-18 03:35:03 pg
    They're morphing their idea into something less focused on procrastination.

  145. PG: Disconnecting Distraction 2008-05-18 03:44:55 nostrademons
    Something I realized after I wrote that comment: all the side-projects mentioned used the same toolset as the main project, but used it for a different purpose. So for example:

    1.) Scrutiny was a quick PHP-based course evaluation system, done entirely when I should've been working on a large PHP rewrite of a HP fanfiction site. It took 2 weeks, vs. 3 years for FictionAlley (all part time).

    2.) Bootstrapacitor was a quick web.py app, done when I was trying to do the layout for Diffle.com (also web.py) and feeling pretty overwhelmed by the HTML/CSS aspect (I'd never done my own layouts before). It took 3 weeks, vs. 5 months for Diffle - in particular, the Bootstrapacitor layout was very, very simple, because I wanted it to be done quickly. When I came back to do the CSS for Diffle, it was really easy, and I was done in a week or so.

    3.) ArcLite is a JavaScript interpreter, done when I was feeling burnt out from building JavaScript UI widgets for GameClay. It took 1 week vs. 8 months so far for GameClay. (GameClay has many parts besides the JavaScript UI though; I'd estimate I've only spent 2-3 months on JavaScript aspects, the rest being Python & Flash.)

    4.) Randomicity was a Django app built soon after converting GameClay to Django, but before I've built significant amounts of GameClay code in Django. Took about a week or two, vs. 2-3 weeks spent on the Django part of GameClay.

    Also, all of the projects I was procrastinating on were first major projects with that toolset, and all the side projects were under about 1-2k lines. (If I ever start a blog, I want to do an entry about the "no-man's land of software" - it seems like anything up to about 2k lines is quite easy and can be done in a week or so, then there's a giant no-man's land up to about 20k lines where it's really difficult to make progress, and then after that it gets easier again.)

    I'm not sure what to make of this, but one hypothesis is that procrastination is actually a subconscious lack of competence. If you address the underlying skill deficit and then give it a rest, the project becomes fun again. (Assuming that the project is useful - I didn't avoid all that homework in school because I didn't know how to do it, I avoided it because it was pointless.) By working on a side project, I had a chance to consolidate and assimilate all the knowledge I'd gained from beating my head against the original problem. It's much like the effect of sleep: you know how when you work really hard at a difficult mental problem, get nowhere, and then sleep on it, the answer often comes naturally in the morning? This is a case of working really hard for months at a time, then switching gears and doing something easy but related for a short period of time, then coming back and finding that what was previously hard is significantly easier.

    I have friends in physics grad programs that have noticed a similar effect. The physics curriculum in my undergrad college was setup like a spiral - you would do mechanics, then E&M, then thermodynamics, then quantum, then you'd return to mechanics at a higher mathematical level, then intermediate E&M, then intermediate quantum, then advanced E&M, etc. Now my friends are doing quantum field theory and find that the Lagrangians we slaved over as undergrads are trivial.

    The Suzuki method of teaching violin is similar, too. The books are setup so that you have a couple easy pieces, then one really hard piece, then a few more easy pieces so you can relax and assimilate everything you've learned, then another hard piece and so on.

  146. PG: Disconnecting Distraction 2008-05-18 04:37:21 davidw
    The procrastination thing puts you in good company: Andrew Tridgell apparently created Samba as a way of procrastinating while working on rsync for his doctoral thesis.

  147. PG: Disconnecting Distraction 2008-05-18 06:12:30 anr
    "[P]rocrastination is actually a subconscious lack of competence."

    I agree, I think a sense of "perceived incompetence", insecurity and confusion can lead to procrastination.

    Trying to define a problem well, or breaking it into smaller ones, can help a lot. The same logic can be applied to projects.

    Keeping up with Reddit and HN can also lead to frustration (yes I see the irony :), there's so much happening in web development. If only there were a way to ignore fads and keep up with the really important trends...

  148. PG: Disconnecting Distraction 2008-05-18 06:26:53 b3eck
    After reading your comment and others', I realized that iptables might be able to help out here. I wrote up an Ask HN ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=192953 ) which shows my current setup for throttling internet usage. Granted, storing pages in the browser cache is one great way to access documentation, but throttling might allow one to add pages to the cache while keeping procrastination at bay.

  149. Ask HN: Have you used iptables to prevent procrastination? 2008-05-18 07:46:24 b3eck
    Glad you didn't procrastinate this time around...and glad I wasn't the only one to think of it :-)

  150. PG: Disconnecting Distraction 2008-05-18 08:27:20 andyn
    I've found personally I don't need to block the whole internet - just the top few procrastination websites - facebook, reddit, slashdot, bbc news etc. that I'd otherwise be tempted to read.

    There's a Firefox extension called LeechBlock ( http://www.proginosko.com/leechblock.html ) that will do that for you, and allow fine control over how long or when the sites are blocked as well as the option to stop you simply disabling it during these time periods.

    But you can still use the web for research.

    (Hope it didn't sound too much like an advert, but it's helped me).

  151. PG: Disconnecting Distraction 2008-05-18 08:47:17 raju
    Ironic, but I came to HN (today) to find the discussion on Clay Shirky's "Where do people find the time?" [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=174410]. And then I saw PG's article.

    Must be a sign. I need to stop finding ways to procrastinate and get back to work.

  152. PG: Disconnecting Distraction 2008-05-18 10:59:11 DaniFong
    I used a poor person's variant on the 'internet computer' solution. I didn't have internet at home at all. If I wanted to get on the internet, I had to wander on down to a cafe and use their wireless. This took a while. In particular, it shut down at 12. One could continue to work by plugging in outside and kneeling in the darkness. If you did this, you were certain to have better things to do than procrastinate. I did get an awful lot done.

    Sadly, it was only temporary. It was cold out there, I caught the flu, and decided I might like internet at home after all.

  153. PG: Disconnecting Distraction 2008-05-18 13:11:30 pcmcg
    First off, how ironic is it to stumble on this post when in the act of procrastinating?

    It's also true that most of our economy revolves around "time wasting" actives, especially with the Internet (e.g. google, facebook, youtube, amazon, ebay). But then look at most major inventions in the last 2000+ years, and almost all can be qualified as being used as distractions. (e.g. alcohol, religion, music, books, painting, cars, airplanes, telephone, movies, TV, VCR's, Tivos, phonograph, vinyl, CD's, sports). I wouldn't want to be in a world without such a variety of distractions.

    The happiest people will be those that overlap their preferred distractions with their vocation.

  154. PG: Disconnecting Distraction 2008-05-18 13:49:49 xenoterracide
    http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/index.php

    I like this guys idea's on procrastination. I've been using it today I think. I should be doing homework. Instead, I've been working on my supposedly less important (definitely less urgent) startup. I've also been avoiding that business plan I want to write.

  155. PG: Disconnecting Distraction 2008-05-18 16:04:59 mace
    I think procrastination and distractions are very much related. When I procrastinate I usually find ways to distract myself with unproductive activities. Unfortunately, unplugging myself from the web is not practical for me.

    One of the best techniques I've found to reduce procrastination and thus distractions is making lists. Lists work for me because I feel a sense of accomplishment every time I finish something on the list(even if it's the smallest thing.) I've found lists really helpful for decomposing complex tasks too.

    Another technique I've been using more of lately is to prioritize a very small task to do the next time I sit down to work. Smaller tasks are less daunting and I tend to do them quickly to get them out of the way. This prevents me from starting my day with any distracting activity (ex. checking email, reading news etc.)

  156. PG: Disconnecting Distraction 2008-05-18 17:54:25 maxklein
    I'm just making myself aware that in spending time on these sites, I'm taking away from my on-hand cash and moving it to a location that it will be difficult to extract from. So I'm doubling the loss involved in procrastinating.

    The loss is just a short term loss with a longer term profit, but being the animals we are, the short term profit overweighs the long term profit, so I tend to keep this in balance.

    Also, if I procrastinate a bit, but them work very effectively, I will earn money to cover for what I lost earlier. So it balances out.

  157. PG: Disconnecting Distraction 2008-05-19 00:19:35 cbentzel
    Rather than focus on specific tricks, I've found the best thing to keep me focused is to set up lots of aggressive short term goals _and_ have a fixed time when I will stop working for the day. Just having daily goals isn't enough - it's too easy to procrastinate and then work long hours to make up for it.

    I also try to schedule a two hour chunk each day (preferably near the beginning) with minimal interruptions and just leave emacs and shells open. Regardless of how many meetings or other distractions come up the rest of the day, I can guarantee some amount of forward progress on the technical front. It's actually pretty amazing how much can get done in two hours if you're very focused.

  158. PG: Disconnecting Distraction 2008-05-19 10:47:13 Xichekolas
    > The problem with many types of procrastination is that they're not even all that fun.

    There was a period in my life, at my first job, where I was so fed up and bored with what I was supposed to be working on that I just avoided it by surfing the net all day, for months. You would think that goofing off all day on the internet and getting paid for it would be fun, but honestly it made things even worse.

    Procrastination seems to be like a drug... it can be refreshing (or at least not painful) in small doses, but after a while you just get strung out and depressed. I had this huge weight over my head about what I "should be doing," but absolutely no motivation to actually do it. It took a conscious act of avoiding my web browser to stop that pattern of self-destructive behavior and get some work done again.

    So yeah, anyway, just wanted to add my data point. Procrastinating can often make your mental well being worse off, by throwing in guilt on top of whatever was bothering you in the first place.

  159. PG: Disconnecting Distraction 2008-05-19 15:08:30 progress0r
    It seems that the bottom-line regarding procrastination goes something like this. You can use any of many available tools to try and keep you from being distracted. But if you 'do not want' to do what you need to do, then its very difficult. I read a statement a while back which has stuck with me to this day....i cannot remember the source.

    "Some people are unfortunately motivated by stress, rather than being motivated by discipline"

  160. Facebook Traffic Declines 10% in April 2008-05-21 05:04:47 pierrefar
    The year-on-year figure is up 56%, and myspace is also up y-o-y and down from March. Could it be that as spring kicks in, people leave their computers more? Or as end-of-year exams approach, students procrastinate less?

    I wouldn't cry wolf just yet.

  161. Sleep-deprived brains alternate between normal activity and ‘power failure’ 2008-05-22 22:25:20 rtra
    Damn, I know this sensation so well... Anyone have any advice for someone who keeps procrastinating about going to bed, even when exhausted?

  162. PG: Disconnecting Distraction 2008-05-28 01:09:32 LaMiradaBob
    Paul, I you have convinced this 82 year-old to stop procrastinating. I will now begin taking care of the pile of paper on my desk. Thanks, Bob

  163. PG: Disconnecting Distraction 2008-06-03 00:15:07 zelda
    Hi Paul,

    Thanks for sharing your experience. Do you (or anyone here) could imagine putting this to work on a creative company. Lets say, put separate computers in the same room just to browse or email checking, and leave the main computers for work.

    I think that in creative environments where the deadlines are very short - ie. ad agencies, design, production.. etc - having a computer connected full time is better for efficiency and since the deadlines are so short people tend to complete their task by means of inherent preassure of the work.

    The problem arises and gets more complicated in the cases of programmers, book writers, scriptwriters, composers....professionals who have time to "spare" in procrastinations such as the ones we find on the internet.

    I will try to implement Paul´s technique and see if I can star my script.

    thanks to you all

  164. Ask YC: What kind of hours do all of you hackers work? 2008-06-04 21:14:40 orlick
    I've been keeping pretty close tabs on my hours for the past few months and find that I generally average about 6 hours of really focused and productive work per day. It's really hard for me to get into the productive zone so I might actually be sitting at the computer for 10 hours procrastinating.

  165. The Uncomfortable story to the Background of Facebook 2008-06-14 08:58:55 jacobolus
    The assertion that he intentionally sabotaged them seems just a touch far-fetched. They made an (it sounds like) informal contract with a procrastinating college sophomore, in the middle of a busy school term. Occam’s razor would suggest the delays were caused by disinterest, procrastination, and the busy-ness of his schedule, not malice or greed.

    These guys were supposedly working on their site (of a relatively simple and obvious idea) for a year, with nothing to show for it, and their conclusion is: “'That's supposed to be us.' We're not there, because one greedy kid cut us out."” As if the 10 hours of work Zuckerberg didn’t do on their site was the only thing separating failure from unbelievable riches.

  166. Ask HN: Do you swear in your code? 2008-06-17 02:38:27 tptacek
    Oh. I replied because it was fun to do so, and because I'm in an epic bout of procrastination.

  167. Richard Hamming: You and Your Research 2008-06-27 06:08:19 edw519
    Ahh, this is the basis for part of my favorite pg essay, "Good and Bad Procrastination".

    http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

    pg condensed Hammings 3 questions into one:

    What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you?

    I haven't used a "to do list" since. I keep working on my most important thing and when I'm done, I just pop the stack. What a difference.

  168. PG: Disconnecting Distraction 2008-06-28 22:34:40 abdulqabiz
    We all get distracted and specially when we are not really interested or enthusiastic about what we should be doing.

    I read in Flow (the book), procrastination happens when either the task is too challenging (for one's skill) or too mundane.

    I have noticed, when I am really interested into work, I never get distracted and have total control over things (IMs, Twitter, etc).

    I have recently started doing some side projects (small ones), so whenever I am kindda loosing focus on main task, I switch to other tasks.. So eventually, I am getting distracted but the outcome is positive, learning and being in flow state.

    As someone said, addiction can replaced by something else, for smoking can be replaced by chewing gums or chocolates, but if you stop it doing all of sudden, it's not gonna work out..

    my 2 cents

    -abdul

  169. Ruby java python or lisp 2008-07-02 19:07:41 saurabh
    Try every one of them. I saw your submissions and comments. The time you spend asking these type of questions here at HN would be better spent learning. My guess is you are procrastinating.

  170. Why I'm not using Lisp 2008-07-04 07:30:47 astrec
    Older article by the looks. Could be powerPC thing.

    I'm using SBCL and Slime (aquamacs) on my Macbook right now - or more accurately I would be if I wasn't procrastinating on HN ;)

  171. Ask YC: Would you sign this if you were me? 2008-07-08 00:09:16 ScottWhigham
    My advice: if you're the least bit squeamish, don't sign. Better yet, procrastinate on it for a few days and see if your thoughts change. Who knows - they may get antsy and start writing back with more info.

    I do that - it's, "The Art of Decision Making by Procrastination" lol. I figure that if, after a week's time, I still want to do it, I should do it.

  172. Ask YC: Would you sign this if you were me? 2008-07-08 00:12:24 PStamatiou
    yeah i've procrastinated for about a week, and decided to get your opinions here. I could go either way but I feel like they would get more out of me than I would get out of them and I don't like being a means to an end.

  173. Questions from a young developer that "just" started working aka: how do you manage it? 2008-07-09 22:58:58 petercooper
    I've been in the same situation, but a lot of people here have given good advice on the general aspects of it already. I have only one specific thing to add..

    Build things that you NEED.

    There is a natural drive (survival?) that kicks in when you start creating things you need or that will make your life a lot easier in the short term. These things do not need to be for resolving basal needs like food, shelter, or even money, but for resolving problems you have regarding technology, the Internet, or programming, say.

    A few years ago I started to use del.icio.us, and decided I wanted my del.icio.us postings to appear at the header of my blog. I developed an RSS to JavaScript service to do this. To cut a very long story short, it turned into a very big deal quite quickly, got funding, tens of thousands of users, made a profit, and I sold it a year ago for a reasonable sum.

    Ditto for a "tagged source code repository" (like a del.icio.us for code) I developed a couple of years ago. I needed to store bits of code I used regularly in a tagged fashion, so I built it (in a day or two). Natural forces took over, it became popular, and I sold it.

    I'm not a procrastinator, but I'm an incredibly lazy person. I don't "feel" like doing lots of things, but if I know I have a "need" (or there's no way I can get out of doing something) I jump into it out of necessity. Perhaps you are the same.

  174. Ask HN: How do you read RSS feeds? 2008-07-18 08:06:23 ragaskar
    It would be nice if the HN feed included the short description -- I find that titles are often too brief to evaluate whether or not it's worth clicking through. Additionally, a comment count would be welcomed.

    Including a rating, or including a dynamic feed for a particular rating would be icing on the cake.

    fwiw, i'm a happy google reader user -- 158 subscriptions. The only downside is that it's my go-to procrastination website. I read just about all RSS content, and click through about 10-20% of the time depending on the feed. If I find that I clear the unread on a feed more than once or twice, I'll usually unsubscribe (because obviously I don't have the time to keep up with it). Sometimes I use feeds as a glorified bookmark.

  175. Robots are getting cleverer and more dexterous. Their time has almost come 2008-07-18 22:38:00 pchristensen
    That was one I idea I had, wanted to work on, procrastinated it, and now I'm waiting for someone else to build the conference reminder.

  176. Robots are getting cleverer and more dexterous. Their time has almost come 2008-07-18 22:55:01 Tichy
    I wonder if there is a conference on procrastination? ;-)

  177. PG: Disconnecting Distraction 2008-07-20 09:28:34 cable_channel
    I am supposed to be working on my thesis now but any thing seems to be more interesting than it after having worked on it for almost the entire day. I think an approach to beat procrastination is to "accept" it. If I know I spend generally an hour surfing the web for every two hours of work, then I will start working on a project sooner if I can. I guess this can be called a "know thyself" approach.

  178. See How Much Time You Are Wasting With RescueTime 2008-07-20 23:46:14 swombat
    I haven't deleted my account, but I uninstalled the widget, for similar reasons to arthurk, and something a little more critical.

    No matter how accurate RescueTime might be, it can only tell me what I've done after the fact (usually a week later when I check the report). As I wrote in my blog post here: http://inter-sections.net/2008/01/02/feedback when providing feedback, timeliness is very important. For an application trying to stop me from procrastinating, I think the time to do so is while I'm procrastinating - not a week later. A week later, the only effect is to make me feel bad about it. It's a bit like getting a Vodafone phone bill for £200 for the month that ended 60 days ago. At that point you can't do anything other than feel bad, it's far too late to correct the course.

    Here's a constructive idea for the RescueTime team (which they may choose to implement or not): add a feature that turns the RescueTime widget into a little minder (trained on the data that you've fed it for so many months) that can tell when I've wasted a lot of time on sites like YCNews or other random sites today, and pop up a little message pointing that out to make me feel a little ashamed of it, so that it steers me back towards productivity before it is too late.

    Now that would be something. And since RescueTime is integrated with a web service, chances are you could get people to pay a nominal sum for that service. If I tried it and it really was quite good at salvaging those odd days, here or there, that I waste procrastinating, I would grudgingly but willingly pay up to about $5/m for it.

  179. Ask YC: prove commitment within two months? 2008-07-21 14:19:24 neilk
    I don't think there's anything in your history which ensures that you are not going to be a success. Lots of successful people have lots of failures in their past and many are procrastinators. Lots of them question their own motivation and aren't totally confident about themselves.

    I think the only thing that bothers me is that you don't seem to know why you want to do a startup. Prove something to other people? Yourself? Make money?

  180. Hey language snobs: don't pinch pennies 2008-07-27 07:36:58 13ren
    "Snobs" sparked off this chain of reasoning for me:

    - Snobs have overly critical attitudes (by definition).

    - Overly critical attitudes cause perfectionism.

    - Perfectionism causes procrastination, because if you haven't actually done anything, you can't be criticized (especially not by yourself).

    So it seems inevitable that language snobs would not produce much work (note: there any plenty people using the languages listed who do created finished work - one could claim that these people, in general, are noted for not having overly critical attitudes, and hence are not language snobs).

  181. Hey language snobs: don't pinch pennies 2008-07-27 18:42:40 Hexstream
    "Perfectionism causes procrastination, because if you haven't actually done anything, you can't be criticized (especially not by yourself)."

    What about criticizing yourself for not doing anything?

  182. How to be productive instead of inane 2008-07-29 15:45:30 michaelneale
    I have been called many things in my time, but more-or-less productive is not one of them. I challenge anyone to out procrastinate me.

  183. How to be productive instead of inane 2008-07-29 19:18:54 eru
    I'd meet your challenge - but I guess I'd just start wasting my time instead of procrastinating for the challenge.

  184. The 'Anti-Java' Professor and the Jobless Programmers 2008-07-30 06:41:54 eugenejen
    I don't think he is active teaching now. He holds emeritus now so he has no duty to teach unless he wants. He probably spends most his time working on AdaCore and its spinoff. I suspect his attitudes is due to his father's influence, who was a very famous organic chemistry researcher Michael J. S. Dewar.

    In fact you can learn the similar experience just by doing a project yourself. I learned most stuffs in my life from projects. A course just gives a pressure to finish something before deadline. PG and YC are using the demo day to push applicants to finish something and with a potential payoff for finishing it. (Why? because of human nature tends to procrastinate!)

    So maybe you just pick a non-trivial but not too difficult problem (Unless you aim for Turing Award and wants to be the first one to prove/disprove P = NP), find some friends/comrades who wants a challenge. Set up a deadline and payoff and go for it. You learn by doing it and the more you do it, the easier it will be.

  185. Ask HN: How do you keep motivated? 2008-07-31 22:44:39 stcredzero
    I use procrastination and guilt. It's actually why I read Hacker News.

  186. Coffee shop programmer 2008-08-02 05:43:49 staunch
    Haven't ever really tried working at a coffee shop. Because of this post I'm going to go try it right now, but I'm damned skeptical!

    Update: this place has free wifi, I'm procrastination enabled again. I can only hope it's painfully slow!

  187. Do it or document it? 2008-08-19 02:03:19 mechanical_fish
    Napkins. The solution you're looking for is napkins. But, it's true, they're hard to write on, so we'll compromise.

    Take a pad of paper and a good pen (hint: Pilot G2) and go to a place that is entirely free of computers. Coffee is optional.

    Start sketching. Your goal is a set of notes, an outline, a diagram or two, and/or some paper-based UI wireframes that describe your project. Imagine that you're trying to invite a recent comp sci grad to work on your project with you: What might you sketch? Draw that.

    You can use emacs if you want, but on no account should you allow yourself to choose a font for your spec. If you find yourself reaching for the Fonts menu, or wondering whether your spec should have a standardized header and footer, you have stopped planning and started procrastinating.

    You need to do some planning, because you don't want to waste time implementing stuff that doesn't even work on paper. But you don't necessarily need a capital-D Document, or even a real presentation. Once the napkin sketch of your finished product is complete, to your own satisfaction, it's time to build the prototype and observe all your mistakes. ;)

  188. Do you know any programmers who exhibit these personality traits? 2008-08-26 15:14:26 ardit33
    I have to say the oposite. I am much faster, but just getting started, is the hardest part. There is always something else to do, procrastination is more fun that work.

  189. Mousers vs. Keyboardists 2008-08-28 00:09:03 Hexstream
    "I tend to go to the mouse as soon as I have to work with more than one window"

    The particular window manager you're using might have something to do with that. I'm looking forward to upgrading to a tiling window manager, myself. When I'm done procrastinating.

  190. Bulk Vote for Reddit, Digg, and Hacker News 2008-09-05 09:24:01 cmars232
    A productivity tool for extreme procrastination. Nice.

  191. 43 Folders' guide to solve procrastination 2008-09-08 06:02:02 swombat
    So the solution to procrastination is to present me with 100 more things to read?

    I guess that's true, for a given definition of "solution"....

  192. Letter to a Young Procrastinator 2008-09-08 11:10:14 jacobscott
    Just for fun, in my wardrobe you'll find: http://www.threadless.com/product/487/Procrastinators_leader...

  193. Letter to a Young Procrastinator 2008-09-08 13:21:59 froo
    I started reading the article and got to Dear chronically procrastinating young person,

    I clicked my read it later button and closed the window - "I'll read it later" I said to myself, before I realised the irony.

  194. Letter to a Young Procrastinator 2008-09-08 15:03:36 chengmi
    This reminds me of a thesis I once read titled "The Mythos of Engineering Culture", that claims engineers "procrastinate to introduce challenge, uncertainty, and risk into engineering work."

    http://www-plan.cs.colorado.edu/pltools/pubs/Leonardi.pdf

  195. Letter to a Young Procrastinator 2008-09-08 20:47:50 d0mine
    3 times total http://searchyc.com/submissions/Young+Procrastinator

  196. Letter to a Young Procrastinator 2008-09-08 21:41:45 omouse
    Just like artists? Artists seem to procrastinate a lot and say they're just waiting for inspiration...

  197. Letter to a Young Procrastinator 2008-09-09 00:24:41 electromagnetic
    I've always had a problem with procrastination and I've always known it's nothing more than fundamental laziness. Perhaps combined with my heightened sense of self-preservation it's why my ancestors managed to survive, after all a few of them fought in world wars and had kids afterwards. My lineage wasn't conceived by a lack of birth control and horny teenagers, my genes actually come from survivors of WW1 and WW2... and as I'm English likely the survivors of many, many more wars, as we really liked them.

    Anyway, I'm losing my point. At the moment I'm trying to type up some of my work, which I'm completely ignoring. However, I found a great radio station that's not available in the southern Toronto region (thewolf.ca). Sadly the bastards put a tic-tac-toe game on the audio player, I never knew how distracting a simple game could be when trying to get something done.

  198. The Secret to Raising Smart Kids 2008-09-09 03:09:46 qaexl
    I was always told I was smart too ... and compared to my sister -- look at how hard she works! (I found out as an adult that she was always compared to me -- look at your brother, he is really smart! Now isn't that screwed up?). I was also exposed to enough kung-fu movies as a kid. You never see the "this guy has kung-fu because he is talented/lucky/athletic", and you always see "this guy has kung-fu because he perservered in his training". "Kung-fu" doesn't mean "generic martial arts", the way it is used in America. It means "skill accumulated over time". Even though there are American cultural overlays on top of the movies, Kung-fu Panda and Forbidden Kingdom, this "kung-fu" cultural value shines through. In each, the main characters has no kung, has no fu, and ends up with some.

    My habit of procastination comes directly from "being smart". I've been able to do well on tests because during the test, I get this intense focus to do well within a time limit. Doing things at the last minute gave me the same kind of rush. If I did well, it validated that part of the ego. I was even aware of it, felt a bit silly, and went ahead and did it anyways.

    I did find some ways to retrain this. I still procastinate, but I've been managing to get coding done -- I'm applying to YC Winter '09 with a prototype I've got up live two weeks ago. Here are some of the things I've tried:

    (1) The most difficult part was taking action after making a decision. This is probably the biggest block ... you can think that you need to retrain your mind, or to get a "growth mindset", and your mind has been trained to think that as long as you think it, everything is OK. It isn't. As lame as it sounds, some of Anthony Robbin's "Personal Power" tapes work well. You start by doing some little things that you've been putting off, anything from taking out the garbage to even downloading the tools you need to get started on writing a prototype. The key is taking the action as soon as you instantiate the decision. The more you do that, the more your mind gets used to it.

    (2) "Invest in loss". This is something that a martial arts teacher (Cheng-man Ching) said often. As it applies to fixed mind-set vs. growth mind-set, it means assuming that you already suck going into something. Over the past four or five years, my friends and I invite people out to our training group. We see a lot of newbies. No matter how physically talented you are, without training, you suck. There is no beginner's luck. Having some experience, I can feel when people get agitated by their suckage. They don't want to play anymore because it violates their image of themselves.

    It takes some work, but it is doable -- you can learn to be comfortable with the uncomfortable feeling that you are not very skilled. It doesn't require you to go to some sort of martial arts bootcamp, it does require you to get your body moving ... which comes back to the first thing about taking action after making a decision.

    (3) There are times when I get stuck during coding. Sometimes I need to refactor something, but I really don't want to do it. Sometimes I come across a choice between two architectural decisions. My habit is to stare at the screen trying to figure out the best way to proceed forward. I've noticed that it easily leads to distractions.

    One of the key thing that appears in all forms of martial arts and fighting systems is the idea of slipping off the line of attack. Mentally, when I come up against a challenge, it feels like an obstacle in front of me. I want to go forward, but this annoying issue keeps coming up. I stop being able to see the vision -- that sense of awesomeness of the overall idea -- and trying to beat my way through it is painful. Even with the idea of "try harder", it is painful. What you want to do is slip off to the side, like dodging in side-scroller while continuing to go forward.

    One way particular to my own martial arts training is to walk around in a circle while thinking of the problem domain, and then changing direction and going the opposite way. It is weird, but it always makes me feel confident enough to keep working, albeit from a different direction.

    (4) Meditation. A simple practice of breathing and awareness. There's not much to it, but it clears the mind of baggage so you can move forward.

    (5) Josh Waitzkin's book, Art of Learning has a lot more tips.

  199. Letter to a Young Procrastinator 2008-09-09 03:33:18 time_management
    People procrastinate for the same reason we stay up later than we should, and stay in bed even when there's no point in sleeping more. It's aversion to change. Everyone has this trait to some extent. What the few non-procrastinators seem to get right is that they start the day off working, making it hard to stop.

  200. Merlin Mann eschews "productivity pr0n" and shifts the focus of 43 Folders 2008-09-09 06:45:14 silentbicycle
    That's what he's reacting to. He's found that after a certain point tinkering with your productivity system is in itself a form of disguised procrastination (as is reading the Internet, PS).

    Also, once his "productivity" blog became so popular, others who smelled easy money started their own blogs that seem to capitalize on keeping people caught up in maya* to draw traffic rather than actually helping them solve their own problems, productivity or otherwise.

    * See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_%28illusion%29#Concepts_an...

  201. Ask HN: Tips to work on your startup ideas while still having a day job 2008-09-09 18:25:04 dazzawazza
    I've done this before (and it wasn't successful btw but ymmv)

    * dedicate x hours a day for a specific time period (say 8pm-12pm) every day.

    * Let friends and family know that they can help by leaving you alone during this time

    * make sure you still get enough sleep.

    * use your lunch period at work to plan your next work period

    * reward yourself, friends and family at the weekend by being extra sociable. Host BBQ's, movie nights anything so you stay in contact with humanity and don't lose those your care for.

    * realise that you can only keep this up for 6 months before you will start to become too tired.

    * be ruthless with features and only aim to implement the absolute minimum to get you where you want to go.

    * pick a set of friends who are 'go to' friends when you need to bounce idea's. They should be used when you think you are procrastinating. They don't even need to understand what you are doing, the act of explaining will add clarity to your situation.

    For me it failed because wasn't ruthless enough and I over spec'd and under estimated time.

    good luck.

  202. 1608 hours of work logged since November using RescueTime 2008-09-10 08:48:02 elai
    RescueTime is nice, but if a majority of your time is used browsing a random number of domains (read documentation, blogs for problem x, procrastinate on slashdot etc) it's gets hard to separate "productive browsing" and "unproductive browsing" without going through a large tedious list of websites every day. And even then, the same domain may be productive one day, and unproductive the next. Eventually you just find the benefit isn't really there and stop checking the website. And then eventually you stop the watcher application because it interferes with your computer usage or sometimes pings to %100 processor usage.

    If you guys could solve the 200 random domains a day kind of problem (put all domains under 3 minutes in a 'random browsing' category, or you could add a 'i'm procrastinating' button), it might make RescueTime a useful application for me.

  203. I'm out, baby 2008-09-11 16:43:49 johnyzee
    I did two and a half months of that two years ago. Rented a private office and had all day every day to work on my idea.

    Today I don't even know how those months just disappeared, except that I got nothing substantial done at all. I do remember a few 'small distractions' from an earlier client that needed 'a little' work done. Then there was the sleeping in and the internet procrastination. Oh, it was also really lonely and weird.

    My advice is to be acutely aware of your opportunity and cease every second like your life depended on it. Plan which things you need to get done, with priorities and estimates. Also, try to have someone else involved in the effort, if only a couple of hired gun programmers. That's how I am going to play it when the next time rolls around (real soon now).

  204. Programming's Dirtiest Little Secret 2008-09-11 22:54:41 eru
    So touch typing let's you procrastinate more efficently? ;)

  205. Ask HN: What keeps you from beginning your Start Up? 2008-09-13 00:58:39 gasull
    Procrastination.

  206. Stack Overflow Launches 2008-09-16 08:46:03 michaelneale
    That's a good point. I feel the same way, I just assumed everyone else enjoyed sitting around and doing nothing and there was something wrong for me. Glad I am not unusual. I have a lot of non-programming tasks lately, yet I find myself finding a small problem to hack around as "procrastination".

  207. Chuck: An Audio programming language - it's like a dream come true. 2008-09-28 05:08:51 urlwolf
    Damn, when I thought that I spend more time tweaking knobs than playing music, something like Chuck appears... no! go away! I don't want to play with you and get hooked!

    I'm terribly unproductive with music, and this is just one more way of procrastination :). Very cool, though. I can see why writing programs for a standard language makes sense.

    Imagine that you want to write some music that can be reproduced anywhere with any hardware. Kind of like sheet music for orchestral works. This may be the only way. Right now, we have problems to reproduce analog synthesizers from the 50's-70's. For example, Bernard Hermann 'It's alive II" soundtrack has a great synth lead (together with an orchestral arrangement). If some orchestra wanted to play that work live in say 100 years, good luck finding a working synth to reproduce that sound exactly. Of course, software replicates anything, but it may never be the same thing. On the other hand, a violin is the same as a violin 100 years ago (I hope).

    Things like Chuck fix this problem. You can write electronic music that is 100% reproductible 100 years from now.

  208. The Procrastinator's Clock 2008-10-08 03:41:06 jsmcgd
    First of all creating this clock was in all likelihood a major act of procrastination. Publicizing the clock: more procrastination. Me reading the article: more procrastination. You reading my post: more procrastination.

    Where does it end?

  209. The Procrastinator's Clock 2008-10-08 03:53:33 eru
    Perhaps using the clock ends procrastination. If you are lucky, that is.

  210. The Procrastinator's Clock 2008-10-08 06:46:40 randomwalker
    This is a serious problem for me; while I have overcome the larger problem of procrastination in terms of putting off important tasks, I'm always 5-10 minutes late.

    I actually thought of the exact solution as in the article when I was a kid, but I didn't know how to hack a physical clock to do it. And doing it on the computer is not very useful when there is a big-ass wall clock giving you the correct time with a (constant, known) error.

    I think the killer app for this is to put it on a Chumby. Anyone up for it? When I get my own chumby, this is probably the first app I'll write. (Assuming it isn't already written.)

  211. The Procrastinator's Clock 2008-10-08 08:58:56 jwilliams
    I wonder what the correlation between procrastination and punctuality is? This works if you're a procrastinator and punctual....

  212. The Procrastinator's Clock 2008-10-08 17:09:59 eru
    Ah friend of mine said, he needed the Procrastinator's clock as a calendar with 15 days instead of minutes ahead.

    By the way, I never wore a watch. It's always funny when you ask people for the time, and they tell you "It's quarter past", but do not tell you the hour and that's what you are interested in. They just assume you know.

  213. Is effort a myth? 2008-10-10 04:46:08 tdavis
    I am the worst procrastinator ever so I know where you're coming from. However, procrastinating / being lazy occasionally doesn't change the fact that I know what I should be doing. All the article motivated me to do was rant about the article ;)

  214. Reflections of a YC Dropout 2008-10-13 07:03:29 sebastian
    I second this opinion. The last position a tech startup needs to worry about filling is a CEO, CMO, etc.

    A CEO twittering all day long, hanging out / socializing / spending money at conferences and meetups is NOT going to bring ANY value to the startup at all.

    You first need a product!

    Once you have a product out of the door, a proven idea and a cash flow you can start worrying about filling up those hi-procrastination roles. Until then worry about finding people who can code, can design, can hack, can do anything that has a measurable outcome.

  215. Dropping out of the wired world 2008-10-19 01:04:36 kajecounterhack
    Alas, most of us fail to disconnect even though we consciously try, so hard.

    For example, YC News's procrastination feature. The override makes it useless for people like me. (Cue deep sigh.) I get used to override, and here I am. Speaking of which...

  216. Procrastibation 2008-10-22 00:42:07 comatose_kid
    I believe pg wrote an essay touching on the idea of structured procrastination: http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

  217. Procrastibation 2008-10-22 01:13:50 markessien
    This is a pointless article. What he's saying is 'learn some self control'. I believe that if procrastinators found it easy to learn self control, they would not be procrastinating.

    It's like telling an alcoholic - only drink on weekends.

  218. Procrastibation 2008-10-22 02:28:52 rjett
    I think the point of the article is obvious but I don't think the article is pointless. Too many procrastinators fool themselves into thinking they're being productive when in fact they are not reaching their full potential (PG's "type B" procrastinator). Recommending structured procrastination in the way that John Perry does is like telling a nicotine addict to switch from cigarettes to cigars. Also, the article doesn't say that it's easy to learn self control. In fact, it says just the opposite.

  219. How To Get Things Done by Robert Benchley 2008-10-22 03:09:29 kqr2
    This reminds me of structured procrastination:

    http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

  220. Procrastibation 2008-10-22 03:16:11 pavelludiq
    I've found the best way to stop my self from procrastinating is to just fullscreen my Konsole window and hide the menus, that way i just have a big black screen, and a tab bar at the bottom(which i can also hide). That only works when my work can be done in a terminal, but most of it can.

  221. National Novel Writing Month 2008-10-22 15:50:02 dcminter
    randrews' comment ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=339190 ) about the "Kill Your Blog" article is a sentiment I agree with. Amongst other reasons I write a blog to hone my writing skills, but there are other ways to do this:

    NaNoWriMo is overtly about getting words onto the page, breaking through the quality fetish and the procrastination that stalls many wannabe authors. As such I think it an interesting social hack (as well as being a neat website in itself) and thus of interest to this community.

  222. Arc: Where are we going? 2008-10-26 04:41:00 yters
    This whole attitude of now, now, now, seems very against the hacker ethos. What happened to procrastination and laziness?

  223. Arc: Where are we going? 2008-10-26 14:45:13 qwph
    What happened to procrastination and laziness?

    To say nothing of impatience and hubris.

  224. Ask HN: Review my new startup: clickthatbutton.com 2008-10-29 07:11:36 bigthboy
    <grunt> bigthboy not amused... buttons make bigthboy angry! <roar>...

    but in all honesty, what is the true point behind this? I am aware of people's addiction to press buttons, but if you can convince someone to pay you in order to press a button then you've got something. Without that, I really just don't think this is anything more than a time-sink for those who are procrastinating, and most certainly not a start-up. =P

  225. The One Thing in Life You Can Control: Effort 2008-10-31 23:52:30 pm
    The discussion of whether we have control over effort is fascinating, but is ultimately pointless within the context of entrepreneurship. The only ones paying attention to it will be the procrastinators, who will use it to further rationalise their behaviour.

    The control may be an illusion, but the responsibility is still very real.

  226. Hacking Education 2008-11-03 16:19:22 MaysonL
    I learned almost zero in school that was valuable, and picked up (or had reinforced) much that is detrimental, including laziness, procrastination, and desire/need for external validation. I was lucky enough not to have my ability/desire for learning not crushed, perhaps due to supportive home environment (more books and less tv than most).

  227. Do you read? 2008-11-04 20:38:12 albertcardona
    I read lots, mostly randomly what falls in my hands, catches my attention, or I can pull out of the internet.

    Privately, I call it procrastination. It has plenty of good side effects. Without reading, I would never come up with the list of silly ideas I have per day; some of which pay off for the rest in excess.

    If I was to buy every book I read, I'd be broke. "Public libraries"--in its most extended meaning--are the best idea ever.

  228. Tell HN: If there is one shocker on election night, it's Georgia. 2008-11-05 00:57:53 breck
    I don't see how this is surprising at all. If you were given 20 days to vote and people voted randomly then you would expect about 95% of voters to have voted before today. Given that voting is an important thing that you probably don't want to procrastinate, I expect more than 95% of people would have already voted. On the contrary it is probably habitual to wait til the big day, but I wouldn't read too much into that number.

  229. Why Good Programmers Are Lazy and Dumb 2008-11-09 18:24:20 thwarted
    Yeah, I've maintained there are two kinds of lazy: laziness that leads to procrastination and laziness that leads the least amount of work being done overall. The former is the classic "sin", the latter is what every tech person should strive for. At the end of your life, you should divide the sum of your output by the sum of your total work; the one with the greatest ratio wins the title of "most lazy".

  230. Prolonged Partial Sleep Deprivation for a Job (The worst year of my life [so far]) 2008-11-11 04:35:08 lionhearted
    Above really nailed some important points - the biggest is feeling like you're in control of your life. Whenever you blame something external for something you had any chance of affecting, you way disempower yourself. Not mental voodoo here - if you feel like your relationship had no chance independent of what you did, then why bother trying? Things like that.

    Next point is really harsh - there's no way you turned in all-star caliber work at your last post. And if you want exceptions, you've got to be really, really good. Because managers really fear giving exceptions, because then everyone wants them. A lot of managers take the easy road and don't accommodate staff at all - they're not mean, it's just that once you stop having a consistent set of across-the-board policies it becomes really hard to balance everything and keep everyone on track. It just takes a high level of skill and personal touch that most managers don't have. Now, if you're amazing, like the most important person that's ever worked there, they might find a way to accommodate you. If you're another cog in the wheel, then rightfully or not, they probably don't gun hard to keep you specifically as that cog if you need accommodation. (That's not to say whether that's right or not - it's just how it is)

    If you want to get different hours from other people, highlight how much it'd benefit your employer and tell them right from the start. "Hi XYZ Company, I'm sleepy. I have this sleep thing but I do exceptional work. If you're flexible, I typically enjoy working 50-60 hours per week, but I've got to do some at night. I'd love to find a way to make this work - and it'd be cool to have someone alive and alert when the company's normally sleeping right? I can be that guy, and I pride myself on getting more done than everyone else."

    The average person only does 2 hours of productive work each day - you can double the average person's production by not procrastinating and focusing for 5 hours a day. If you're the best guy on the team, you get more slack.

    Finally, if you want to contract - easiest way to start is by taking Freelance work somewhere like Elance or Odesk. Log onto to one of their sites, create an account, then bid the minimum possible for your first job and knock it out of the park. If you do 4-5 jobs below market rates and get excellent feedback, you'll be able to get work at market rates pretty fast.

  231. Tell Hacker News: Throwaway accounts 2008-11-11 15:35:10 kajecounterhack
    Impressive to see this level of commitment? Perhaps.

    But this "level of commitment" can be extraordinarily unhealthy. I enabled the procrastination feature and I find myself hitting "override" every day.

    sigh

  232. Tell Hacker News: Throwaway accounts 2008-11-11 15:41:17 unalone
    Wait! Procrastination feature? What's this?

    I try to take things in shifts. Some days I don't check Hacker News at all: I work on writing and design. But I usually don't write unless I'm absolutely in the mood, and so this is a perfect outlet: it's a great place for me to refine my thoughts, and to talk to people that disagree with me about things. It helps me keep an open mind. And once in a while, I read something here that provokes me to write something new. (I wrote one of my current favorite poems after clicking a link on Reddit, for instance.)

  233. Please tell us what features you'd like in news.ycombinator 2008-11-12 09:30:14 bloch
    Remove override option from anti-procrastination feature.

  234. I (the person working on dashboard) respond to HN et al 2008-11-13 06:10:53 thomasmallen
    Looks like he took the links down. I'm in the opposite position...I've been procrastinating on a much-needed update for my portfolio and my past six months' work (which is by and large better than my first three years) needs to get up there.

    What's stopping me is that I'm simultaneously rebuilding my company (freelance) site, and I keep going...Drupal! No, now it's Cake! No, Chay says I should do it from scratch! No, Drupal really works! And on and on...

    I need to take a weekend and just finish the damn thing.

  235. Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day? 2008-11-22 10:44:43 cperciva
    If people want to procrastinate, they're going to procrastinate anyway. They'll just do it on other websites -- and if anyone else is like me, they'll probably get sufficiently irritated by coming to a frequently-broken website that they'd end up coming here far less frequently.

    As for the notion of improving the feeling of community by having everybody turn up at once... do we REALLY want to get dozens of posts all at once? It seems to me that having a fixed "opening time" would interfere with the site more than aid it.

  236. Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day? 2008-11-22 10:51:14 Zev
    I like the idea (and voted as such), but doesn't that duplicate what noprocrast does?

    Though, it would be an interesting experiment to do for awhile; I'd like to see if your thought about improving the community by taking it away for a bit each day would have any noticeable effect.

    Also, among the sites to procrastinate on, I imagine that HN is one of the better ones - There's mostly intelligent conversations and submissions on here (as opposed to "Guide to Smoking Pot Around the World" on Digg, "Has to be the most disgusting crime ever... WTF!" on Reddit, or something similar on $insertOtherSocial"News"Site)

  237. Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day? 2008-11-22 11:00:45 bootload
    "... I worry about News.YC being a time sink, so here's a crazy idea: what if it were turned off a few hours a day? ..."

    Good idea.

    This will also have a kick-on effect to searchyc and a few others. It seems the time-sink idea is something that should be looked into more. Different people procrastinate at different levels. I smell the beginnings of an algorythm.

    "... because users would tend to all show up together at opening time. ..."

    This bit's hard. I log in at GMT+11 and it seems I log in out of sync with a lot of stories. Having a break will also do funny things to submissions as news never has a break. Expect the server to be hit at opening time.

  238. Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day? 2008-11-22 11:04:28 silentbicycle
    Due to time zones, I doubt there's really a clear time that would fit well.

    Besides, people are going to procrastinate one way or another. More importantly, if you are spending too much time on the site, then just stop loading it. Nobody else is making you reload the page X times a day.

  239. Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day? 2008-11-22 11:26:31 strlen
    Problem is mid-day, for many, is the time for meetings and other interruptions. Rather than try to force yourself to focus during the "mid-day" hours (i.e. 10am-4:30pm) I find it easier to dedicate that time to (in addition to meetings, dealing with vendors/customers, doing paperwork) typical procrastination activities.

    That leaves the morning (7:30-10am) and evening (4:30pm and later) to getting things done. I'd rather see news.y.c allow people to apply whatever means of time management they use (my "idea", RescueTime) to managing their y.c time.

    One in the middle idea is to disable posting during those hours, allow only reading.

  240. Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day? 2008-11-22 12:33:11 sdurkin
    This is a tad paternalistic. You can't turn off nyt.com or my tv. So your chances of stopping me if I want to procrastinate are slim.

  241. Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day? 2008-11-22 13:01:36 dmoney
    Seems like it would make more sense as a per-user option. If you make it mandatory, you could still make the hours configurable. Personally, I'd find some other way to procrastinate at a given moment.

  242. Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day? 2008-11-22 13:33:26 quantumhobbit
    Since timezones are a problem, try 10 minutes chosen randomly each hour. 5/6 of the time we could procrastinate at will, but a new.yc binge of ~30 min or more would be interrupted.

    This could be an interesting experiment.

  243. Stop pretending 2008-11-22 14:46:37 staunch
    I think this is just good old fashion procrastination. Instead of just doing it the simple way you invent enough new work that you can put it off until later.

  244. Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day? 2008-11-22 15:48:30 fauigerzigerk
    Sure, and let's also mandate the exclusive use of Java to save us from ourselves. No, really, I mean this is going one step too far in terms of taking away responsibility from individuals.

    And don't forget that for those of us who haven't yet started a startup, procrastination can be inspiration.

  245. Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day? 2008-11-22 16:53:47 bloch
    The problem with the override option is that it is a weak barrier. It takes a split second to click it and after two or three times it becomes a habit to override.

    A good solution would force the user to become acutely aware of what he is about to do and give him time to regain enough discipline to stop.

    Perhaps it would help if the user were forced to watch a video about procrastination or answer a series of relevant or time consuming questions before proceeding to override noprocrast.

  246. Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day? 2008-11-22 20:44:44 jsmcgd
    Please please please do this. If nothing more than for the experiment itself. Personally I had just decided that I need to switch the no procrastination feature on so I was delighted to the title of this post. HN is too interesting, it's dominating my life.

    How about shutting the site down for one day a week? Give us the day off!

  247. Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day? 2008-11-22 22:47:59 truebosko
    Although I think the thought behind this is nice, the idea isn't.

    I come to YC not to procrastinate, but to learn. You guys are smart bastards you know that? Maybe 1/10th post on here is something to fool around with, but in the end it all feeds the mind.

    I go to Reddit to procrastinate. (Not hating on it, I love the site, just has different material)

  248. Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day? 2008-11-23 02:16:45 gstar
    I vote turn it off in the morning - that way you don't start your day with procrastination, and folk in the UK get a nice mid afternoon break.

  249. Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day? 2008-11-23 02:49:01 pg
    Don't you think if people came to the site at certain hours and there was a page saying "get back to work, we'll reopen in 1 hour and 14 minutes" it might interrupt their procrastination in a useful way, and make them think, "Ok, I'll work for a couple hours, then read the news?"

    I find when I've been procrastinating and there's some kind of reward coming in an hour or two (e.g. dinner) that often makes me buckle down and start working.

  250. Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day? 2008-11-23 05:11:39 aaronsw
    What if instead of an override link it made you answer a Mechanical Turk question? Then at least you'd be accomplishing something useful with your procrastination.

  251. Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day? 2008-11-23 05:15:45 bloch
    Good idea! Noprocrast with override option is (for me) about as effective as hiding the ice cream beneath a bag of frozen peas would be for a kid.

    You could limit the max length of minaway to prevent people from accidentally blocking the site forever. I think max is about 190 years at moment (although if a singularity occured that could become a relevant timespan for procrastinators).

  252. Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day? 2008-11-23 07:40:50 dood
    I'm pretty sure this would just subconsciously train me to procrastinate elsewhere. At least when procrastinating on HN there's a chance I'll learn something about programming or business.

    I find this idea and noprocrast a tad bizarre. HN has a simple goal (sharing info of interest to hackers), which thanks to focused design it does pretty well. Fixing my brain is feature creep, and should be well outside it's scope.

  253. Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day? 2008-11-23 10:49:49 ryan-allen
    I think this idea is ridiculous. Why deny the site to people because some others may be using it as a time-sink? What about time zones? What about other people's schedules? PG you don't have to fix other people's poor habits for them.

    You already have unique views on procrastination but please don't force this on others, even though you can do whatever you please with your product.

    I would personally become irritated by the site not being available and I'd end up visiting here less often.

  254. Ask HN: Is there a HN for music? 2008-11-25 05:33:27 inimino
    http://rateyourmusic.com/ has a nice rating and recommendation system and is a good way to find new music (and procrastinate).

    They also have discussion forums, which I haven't tried.

  255. Gay marriage: the database engineering perspective 2008-11-26 16:17:52 IsaacSchlueter
    In all situations except extreme crisis, having cousins is good

    Ah, but genes are selected in times of extreme crisis! We have all sorts of genes that only make sense in times of extreme crisis, but which we nevertheless carry with us through times of prosperity when they are often a liability.

    That's why instinct generally tells us to help cousins, not compete with them. So having a gay uncle is bad for you, sorry :-)

    It also tells us to help nephews and nieces. So, no, having a gay uncle is actually GREAT for me. The question is whether being gay is great for the proliferation of gay genes.

    I started writing a model to play with some probabilities, then realized that I'm just procrastinating and have real work to do. :) Maybe I'll come back to it some day, or maybe it'll just rot on the back burner with so many other bits of nerdery...

    Anyway, even if you could show that being gay is definitely bad for any hypothetical gay-causing genes, it wouldn't rule out evolutionary causes. It could be an emergent property of a collection of individually beneficial genes. Or it could be the result of hormonal features of the mother that are otherwise beneficial.

    (I mean "beneficial" here in the evolutionary sense, as in "likely to cause a certain gene to be passed on", not in any kind of normative sense.)

    Of course I'd agree to allow gay marriage if we abolish taxes at the same time

    Would you agree to allow gay marriage if the taxes are left as they are?

    Why should a gay couple be any different, from a society's point of view, from a heterosexual couple that adopts or doesn't have children at all? Hell, many gay couples DO raise their own biological offspring (or at least, the biological offspring of one of the partners.)

    Seriously, what's the justification argument against gay marriage that doesn't come down to: "Yeah, but like, who's tha wife, then? Ew." I mean, here you are arguing for analysis over ideology, and it's pretty obvious that gay coupling is ethically and legally fair, it's a natural thing primates do, and it's economically beneficial for society.

    ???

  256. Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit. 2008-11-27 02:11:52 tsally
    I know! Read a long article about how not to procrastinate.

  257. Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit. 2008-11-27 02:19:43 shaunxcode
    The only time I find myself procrastinating is when I am not working on something meaningful or "new" (to me). Thus I use the technique of having my procrastination actually be more productive than trudging through the mundane. i.e. if I am working on something rote or repetitious yet it HAS to be done that way (deadlines, client spec etc.) I spend my procrastination time implementing a class, a library, a syntax, dsl.. language.. .some more clever way of tackling the problem in the future. I will seriously do the boring stuff and then beneath in a comment block write my musing version of a syntax that I wish I could have used instead which later on I may try and implement etc.

  258. Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit. 2008-11-27 02:25:40 pavelludiq
    My personal problem is focus. I have no problem with procrastination, other that the side effect of not being able to focus for a long time. The last few days I've been thinking a lot about my habits and the way i work, trying to find an answer to my problem. Since then I've redefined that problem from "how to cure procrastination" to "how to be more productive in general". This redefinition helped a little bit, because now i have a general strategy. I simply have to train my self to focus. Its like learning to touch type, or edit in vim, its hard in the beginning, but then, after repetition of the proces your subconscious kicks in and you learn to focus. The specific tactics are the standard anti-procrastination tricks, unplugging my internet, eliminating as many distractions as possible, make work a little bit more interesting, reward your self for good work, at least try to focus for some amount of time, etc. I've managed to get to 3 hours of focused work(by work i mean either code, read a book or write a long blog post, and edit it a few times), and i hope to improve. Its been only a few days since i started doing this. I would like other ideas and suggestions. I've also found out that i need procrastinotion, some of my best ideas came when i spend the whole day not working, good thing i write them down, but I've realized very few, which is what I'm trying to fix.

  259. Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit. 2008-11-27 03:17:55 jd
    Antidote for procrastination:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P785j15Tzk

    ( See also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9NgXIkyiwk&feature=relat... - works every time. Ps: 1972 )

  260. Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit. 2008-11-27 03:27:27 kirse
    Just look back on tasks you've completed with ease and figure out what worked for you in that instance. For you it might be different, for me it's usually:

    - Eliminate external distractions - put in headphones and listen to music. Sometimes I stop for air guitaring though.

    - Focus - use Timeboxing to separate times when you'll work and when you'll goof off

    - Deal with the Adversion to "Hard" Tasks - I personally procrastinate least when I take a huge task, split it all up into a list, and then do the absolute easiest part first. It's all about inertia, if you view something as a single giant task, it's going to be much harder to get started.

    Too often people procrastinate because they picture a task as the total effort involved in a task (and doing it all at once) -- well anyone in their right mind would never want to make all that effort at once! In reality though it's a combination of tiny bits of effort that gets a whole task completed.

  261. Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit. 2008-11-27 03:30:41 icky
    I'll do it later...

    Edit: I was reading this article while procrastinating taking my sister-in-law to the DMV. Meanwhile, she discovered that she had forgotten to bring her passport (for ID), and couldn't actually go today.

    Hooray for procrastination! :D

  262. Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit. 2008-11-27 03:42:33 sh1mmer
    The most useful article I saw on HN about this subject was Structured Procrastination (http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/).

    I've found that structured procrastination is extremely helpful in "just getting started" and once you are rolling you aren't procrastinating any more.

    The basic theory to sum up, is to have some that feels giant and important and impending to avoid which allows you to work on other stuff to avoid it. The trick is to feel pressured to avoid something that really doesn't matter so much, even though it appears to on the surface. It's total cognitive hacking.

  263. Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit. 2008-11-27 04:02:06 jcl
    To the article's credit, I didn't know that I might be able to cure my procrastination by using DNA antisense to partially shut down my rhinal cortex's dopamine receptors.

  264. Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit. 2008-11-27 07:28:40 tdavis
    No due dates. That's something that helps me. If I give something a due date, I will procrastinate until the due date has arrived (or in the case of non-critical stuff, I might just not do it at all). It doesn't even matter what the task is, either. "Finish ticket #30 by Friday" and "drink a beer by 9pm" are essentially equivalent; I will avoid doing both until the last minute. And I love beer!

    For instance, I make it a point to never tell myself "tomorrow when you wake up, go to the gym." I just wake up, think "hey, you should go to the gym, jackass" and I go. There's no time for excuses or rationalizations against the task. No, "There's no way it will take me 2 days to do this; I will wait until tomorrow!"

    Having known I run on impulse for a long time, I've developed a few tricks. When it comes to work, I try to make vague plans for what I want to accomplish the next day, but I try not to think too much about them. This way when the time comes I can just start working and wait to get sucked in. The best tasks are things like "research X" or "learn more about Y" because they're easy to start and usually easy to get lost in and/or branch into other tasks. The key is not making any concrete plans. If I decide "tomorrow I will have X done by Y time" it's like there's another part of me who, just to be an asshole, decides to prove I won't accomplish that.

    As for life, well, I just take 90% of the stuff I want to do/say and throw it out the window. The other 10% gets me in enough trouble as it is.

    P.S. If you're really desperate, having to survive in the Army taught me another trick: Learn to turn off your brain. It helps.

  265. Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit. 2008-11-27 09:32:30 bloch
    The paradox of anti-procrastination: You cannot outsmart yourself.

  266. Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit. 2008-11-27 18:12:24 tlrobinson
    Maybe some sort of monetary incentive would help. Here's an idea:

    RescueTime could hold some of your money hostage each month (say $20, or whatever is significant enough you'd like it back) and if you don't meet your goals that money gets donated to charity at the end of the month.

    Though it's probably best to eliminate the root cause of the procrastination.

  267. Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit. 2008-11-28 10:45:26 TechStuff
    This article is a mulligan stew of observations and opinions about several different problems that have earned the label "procrastination."

    I fit the profile of what Ferrari calls an "avoidance procrastinator." Pychyl and Steel have got my number.

    Schraw, on the other hand, seems to be guilty of post hoc, ergo propter hoc (thank you Aaron Sorkin). I do not procrastinate to have a better mental life; I do it because the alternative seems worse. To quote Pychyl, I feel lousy about a task so I walk away to feel better. I don't feel good, understand. Just not as bad.

    Here's what I know - I hope it helps any other avoidance procrastinators who are reading:

    Most of my task avoidance is based on uneasiness about the task; uneasiness caused (or multiplied) by not fully understanding the parameters and/or goals of the task.

    That's it. For me, that's the key.

    It is difficult - nearly impossible - to do my taxes each year. However, it is easy to do the various steps involved in doing my taxes, when I have a prepared list of the steps involved, and the order in which they should be carried out.

    Clean out the garage is another good example of a task that I will never be able to do. But I have no problem doing the various small tasks that are hidden inside the phrase "clean out the garage" as long as someone can tell me what they are.

    And this is the problem. I seem to lack the Project Planning gene that allows other people to break large, vague projects into smaller tasks. When I get help with this, and can approach a big project as a bunch of smaller tasks arranged in logical order, I have no problem. (Well, I still have the problems of laziness, perfectionism, distraction, etc., but no more than regular people.)

    The trouble comes when the assignment lacks clarity.

    This, I believe, is why procrastinator students in Schraw's study chose a detailed syllabus versus "a rough sketch of the assignments" -- not because "such specificity allowed for 'planned' procrastination" but because this approach removes the task ambiguity that triggers "my" type of procrastination.

    Finally, saying, "Just do it" to a procrastinator is like saying, "Cheer up" to someone who's clinically depressed.

  268. Prioritiz'd 2008-11-28 12:28:55 scott_s
    What do you add over these? http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=todo+list

    Personally, I only write notes to myself when I stop working so I can get back into the problem faster when I resume. I think writing and managing todo lists is a form of procrastination.

  269. Prioritiz'd 2008-11-28 12:39:02 flashgordon
    actually it is interesting you say that... writing up a todo list is a good way of procrastinating, but I find that if i have a todo list (assume it was "magically" generated), it helps me get through work a lot faster... atleast so that it helps me not loose the context when switching between tasks...

    to this end ive found the MyLyn plugins for eclipse very useful.. creating the todo list is not too hard or tricky.. (though i found the creator page a bit clunky), and it even saves the state of the editor (ie open files, current line in the said open files etc) and loads the state as is each time you switch between items on the todo list (or tasks as mylyn calls it)..

    I am sure there are much better tools out there like those widgets on google desktop and all but that is just another app you have to install..

  270. 20 questions game that works astonishingly well 2008-11-29 07:22:26 pavelludiq
    It guessed Randal Munroe! A warning to chronic procrastinators such as me, this is addictive!

  271. Five-figure bonuses stun employees 2008-11-29 20:34:45 prakash
    The flip side to that is spend what you get now, since you are getting more later, anyway.

    This is a similar to Colin's comments on procrastination: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=372606

  272. Ask HN: rules of thumb for titling more difficult HN submissions? 2008-11-30 05:53:46 pg
    There is no real way to get people interested in an article you think they should be.

    That's not true. A good title will get an article several times more attention. I've found that the most effective titles (a) say what the article is about, and (b) appeal directly to the reader.

    For example, the original title of "Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas" was "Copper and Tin." It was a bogus move to name the thing after a metaphor I was proud of, and I got what I deserved. Who's going to click on a link titled "Copper and Tin?" You can't tell what it's going to be about, whatever it does turn out to be about probably won't affect you.

    The titles that seem to work the best are ones that to answer some question the reader cares about. E.g. "Why you procrastinate." The most effective of all seem to be the ones that promise (usually falsely) to cover all of some question, and embody this promise in a number: "The 7 reasons you procrastinate."

    You don't necessarily want to sink to using such linkbaitish titles-- especially here, please-- but they certainly work.

  273. Why Git is Better Than X 2008-12-03 02:40:16 silentbicycle
    There are seriously diminishing returns to this, though. Spending lots of time reading about a VCS that might be 2% better (or a language, for that matter) can be counterproductive, or a form of procrastination. They're just a means to an end, after all.

  274. Solo founders: how do you stay emotionally efficient? 2008-12-06 01:13:12 sixbit
    This is the single best advice in the thread. "Launch and you'll be forced to stay on your toes". This is what I did, and i'm finding it more and more difficult to procrastinate :-).

  275. Java is Dead; Long Live Python 2008-12-10 22:52:54 SingAlong
    I thought people knew it. People have been killing since the day it was popular.

    This is just like procrastination. You say that it's dead and don't want to use it, "but then what the heck just one last project"

  276. On Procrastination 2008-12-12 11:09:49 thomasmallen
    This company is obsessed with the topic of procrastination. They devoted a week to it on Slate.

  277. Join reddit, xkcd, dtoid, ars technica & more - donate your hacker skills to non-profits 2008-12-18 08:44:16 netcan
    Agree & Disagree.

    I would even add that on top of the fact that lawyer in question is almost certainly more expensive then they would have hired otherwise they'd probably get more value from the cheaper because they'd be more picky about where & when. A similar example is aid tourism. People visit a country for 3 weeks & help to build a school at a cost of a couple of $k in countries where unskilled labour goes from $3 a day. The organizers generally end up with a small margin for helping with the project (building materials, salaries for the actual workers, etc.) & some tourist money gets spread around.

    It's terribly inefficient. A tourist spends 3 weeks and (say) $3k. The organisation gets $500 cash, $200 worth of labour & the area has about $500 dropped on food, souvenirs & billets.

    They'd be at least 2X -3X better off with just the cash. but...

    But they wouldn't get the cash. The time & money would be spent on ordinary holidays, local charities, social activities or the likes. The lawyer might get a scheduled day off, 20% time or procrastinate. (I admit, it works worse when it's institutionalised)

    The other issue is side effects. The aid tourists tell people about it, continue to contribute, influence politicians a certain way, educates his children, etc.

    I'm not a programmer (though I might fall in the bacon cooker category), so I feel funny about taking a position here. But I think that the combination of free software, access to the web & the free web have a powerful equalising affect in this world. Connecting the right people with the right organizations, could have a profound effect. When I was in primary school, a substantial donation would be old (10, 20 years) encyclopaedias for developing countries. If you don't have access to much, an encyclopedia is an important learning/teaching resource. Practically no longer necessary if you have access to the web. Information is available free. Access to it still costs though.

    Once we get to a point where online teaching materials are allow a person to achieve an education on par with Universities, we (as pg just discussed) get past credentials or find new ones & enough of the labour market is internationalised (it is happening pretty fast), the key out of poverty becomes web access, computer literacy, English literacy & above average intelligence (maybe). These are manageable hurdles. Far more manageable the current keys: competent government & lack of major conflict for prolonged periods.

    The potential return is huge. Really huge. Any way you look at it. Economic growth. Utility. Health. Worrying about efficiencies at this end is like fretting about the price of servers when building a Google. Have a look at what East Timor's National University lists as it's needs:http://www.untl.labor.net.au/need/it.html

    To give you an idea of potential ROI: an additional 10k graduates contributing 10k per annum to GDP would represent a 20% increase.

  278. Ask HN: Working Tactics? 2008-12-19 02:46:53 tristmegistus
    I found several effective techniques to get myself working in 'The Now Habit" by Neal Fiore. It focuses more on the psychology and why we procrastinate and provides some useful tools to deal with it.

    An example is to schedule time for fun, instead of work. Schedule times to see a movie, see a friend, exercise, or other activities you want to do. The benefit is that when I'm sure I will get the fun things I want, it's easier for me to focus on other tasks in the meantime.

    He also describes a 'time boxing' technique that I've found very useful myself. A 30 minute commitment for me does the trick. Usually I'll end up working longer in a stretch and find it easier to recover from interruptions during that 30 minute commitment.

  279. Ask HN: How do you pull all-nighter+dayers 2008-12-21 01:21:07 pasbesoin
    Actually, tiredness can attenuate some AD(H)D symptoms. I sometimes used to procrastinate until the last minute, then put in an incredibly productive night/morning to wrap up a project. And I cranked out some pretty good stuff.

    But, I was young, then, and those projects were relatively limited in scope. I didn't know at the time that ADD existed; this was just the way I'd found to get such things done. (And I hated all the fear and dread it put me through.)

    So, it may not be an optimal approach, but in some circumstances, the all-nighter can perhaps be enabling.

  280. A Home Office FAQ 2008-12-21 04:55:55 alabut
    I just realized I actually do this right now - a mac mini for work and an ipod touch for music, email, etc. That's how I get away with using such a cheap system for design work - I offload everything except Fireworks on to the ipod, plus then I get a little bit of help with procrastination because the mini is for only real work during the weekdays.

  281. How to reduce procrastination 2008-12-23 23:30:16 danhak
    I'll save everybody the trouble of reading this article with a summary:

    The key to stopping procrastination is not to procrastinate.

  282. How to reduce procrastination 2008-12-24 02:02:46 bd
    Yet it may be exactly the right advice. Sometimes you don't need to know more, you just need some good spanking :).

    If you noticed, the author is a professor specializing in studying procrastination:

    http://www.carleton.ca/psychology/faculty/pychyl.html

    What he basically says: there are no cheap tricks. Most of the time you think you have some wonderful method, it's just another way to procrastinate.

  283. How to reduce procrastination 2008-12-24 02:09:42 dpapathanasiou
    Yikes, not another procrastination article: http://www.google.com/search?q=procrastination+site:news.yco...

  284. How to reduce procrastination 2008-12-24 02:32:00 danw
    Must be because news.yc is where we come to procrastinate instead of actually doing things

  285. How to reduce procrastination 2008-12-24 05:27:10 raamdev
    I find the best solution to avoiding procrastination is to simply figure out exactly what the next step is that you need to take to be one step closer to being done. Once you've figured that out, picture yourself doing it and then think about how you'll feel when the completed action is just a thing of the past. Rinse and repeat.

    We set ourselves up for procrastination by not thinking about the next step and instead only thinking about the end result.

  286. The Dumbest Interview Question 2008-12-24 19:45:06 dcminter
    Paraphrased from my fuzzy recollection of some random interview with a recruitment guru:

    "The best question to ask is 'What would your mother say was your greatest weakness?' - it's like truth serum. People start babbling about how she thinks that they're always late, or procrastinating, or unreliable and so on."

    "What would you say if someone asked you this?"

    "'You never call.'"

    Apologies that I don't have a better source for this - anyone recognize it?

  287. Ask HN: New Years Resolution(s)? 2008-12-29 21:23:31 Mystalic
    I don't do new years resolutions, and it has been my policy since I was a kid.

    My rationale: if you want to change your life or do something, don't procrastinate - start right then. Putting an arbitrary date on things you want to do never made sense to me. You just have to write it down and then follow through.

  288. Are we doomed? What do I do? 2008-12-30 10:48:33 nostrademons
    You probably should stick it out while looking. It gives you negotiating leverage if your previous employer isn't dead before you get a new job.

    But look seriously. It takes a while to apply for jobs; both times I took a new job, I started looking about 2 months before I actually started (okay, there was also a startup where they contacted me, we met for lunch, and I started the next day, but that's the exception). And it takes quite a bit of attention. Since it seems like you can't stand your cofounder or the thought of working on the product, use all that procrastination time to inquire seriously about jobs. Then you can fold the startup when you have an offer.

    And if things miraculously turn around with the startup, you could do that instead of taking the job.

  289. Ask HN: Notice a jump in Page Rank today? 2009-01-01 02:49:11 Eliezer
    http://www.overcomingbias.com 7... we get a lot of random incoming Google traffic.

    Though it's worth noting that our traffic stats fell off a cliff over winter break, for some odd reason. Anyone else seen this? Or is it just that OB is commonly read as a procrastinating substitute for school/work?

    Holiday cliff: http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s28overcomingbias...

  290. Is it crazy to quit a 6+ figure salaried job to do a startup right now? 2009-01-02 07:31:24 adamt
    In that case you are well placed to give it a shot. There are few certainties in life, but you are not in a bad position.

    A few months ago I was in the same position as you, was procrastinating about quitting, and ended up getting made redundant as a complete suprise. Personally I haven't looked back. Nothing is guaranteed, you need to personally decide more which you will regret most: quitting now, taking the risk and going for it, or waiting till till later when the economy might be better, but then you're personal circumstances might have changed. At the end of the day - it has to be your decision, but if you do genuinely have 3-4 years of cash, then go for it!

  291. Do you set goals? 2009-01-05 16:11:04 Jacoblk
    I'll occasionally get on a to-do list kick, but the only thing that has consistently worked for me is to find things that are moderately productive while still being a little fun. Then whenever I feel like procrastinating, I do one of those things. It allows me to take breaks from the boring stuff without ever fully stopping.

    As an example, this past semester I used this technique to switch between take-home tests (boring) and fun yet productive tasks such as programming assignments that weren’t due for months or (non-school related) reading that I’d been meaning to catch up on.

  292. Hacker News doesn't validate 2009-01-07 11:16:15 andrewtj
    In my experience preemptive fixes are akin to procrastination when there's no empirical evidence to necessitate the change.

  293. Some Protect the Ego by Working on Their Excuses Early 2009-01-07 14:43:04 yargseiks
    It's funny, I was just thinking about this a few days ago, and it's been on my mind for a while. I went through my entire school life not exerting significant effort but mostly "succeeding" anyway; I could cram for a test the same day and still ace it. I was never at the top of my class, but I was always in the top ten.

    Even then, I realized that there was something wrong; I found it easy to get good grades, but because of that there was little to motivate me to really excel or do something extraordinary, so I never seriously tried. My first dream (the one I've had since grade school) was to be a writer, and I told myself that I would finish my first novel at the age of 14. Ten years later, I haven't completed it. People make excuses to others, but mostly we make them to ourselves; I adjusted and re-adjusted that deadline in my mind until it became meaningless. Similarly, I've entered contests and things, but usually procrastinated and didn't really put a whole lot of effort into whatever I did. I realize now that, yes, those were mostly just excuses.

    I sort of regret it now, and I'm seeing the repercussions of my not having any self-discipline and real drive. It's too easy to get into the "good enough" rut, as I think I'm currently doing even now that I'm working. I do fine as a programmer, and my current developments are easy enough that I can still deliver good work even though I do things at the last minute, but really, it's shades of high school and college all over again and I really need to stop.

    I would like to get out, though, and I suppose actually trying something out on my own and owning up to the risk of failure is a good idea. And yet, I still have no idea where (or what) to start.

    I wish epiphanies came as freely and as conveniently as excuses, but then that would miss the point, no?

    /rant

  294. Ask HN: An acceptable cross-platform GUI toolkit? 2009-01-08 07:59:22 moder
    "Do you care to start doing it?"

    Unfortunately, I don't think I have the chops, nor the time right now. (But, fortunately, it may not even be necessary... see below.)

    "Other than doing your own, I think the most sensible choice is wxWidgets, which, from my point of view, only has one big problem: the API"

    That's a biggie. :) In fact, I'd go so far to say that if the API in unpalatable, then you should keep looking. Otherwise you'll end up just procrastinating every time you've got to deal with GUI code.

    Thanks to posts in this thread (thanks Baltar!) I'm taking a much closer look at the most recent release of Tk (8.5). Given recent developments, it doesn't seem to be as "vestigial" as I'd thought. And the fact that it's implemented in Tcl instead of C may actually be a hidden benefit. And really, app developers never even need to be aware of the Tcl'ing going on under the covers. :)

  295. Post a possibly good app idea that you have no intention of doing yourself. 2009-01-09 20:29:57 stcredzero
    How about a proxy server I can use to block or partially block sites for myself? (Procrastination preventer) Since I'm not administering a corporate WAN, this should be lightweight and simple to use. It should let me set everything with a GUI. It should present the top 10 sites I visit as a list and let me block each with a click. The parital block feature can limit my use to 15 minute blocks or something like that.

  296. Free programming tips are worth every penny 2009-01-12 14:13:17 kirubakaran
    Unacknowledged type-B procrastination? :-)

    http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

  297. How to stop procrastinating 2009-01-13 07:38:07 11ren
    > merely thinking about the task in more concrete, specific terms makes it feel like it should be completed sooner and thus reducing procrastination

    It doesn't say how they drew that conclusion from the evidence, but it seems a bit of a leap to me.

    I think it's because a specific concrete task has less unknown in it, and therefore is easier to do; easier to estimate how long it will take; easier to judge your performance; and easier to know when you have completed the task - for these reasons, it is less scary.

  298. Why we procrastinate and how to stop 2009-01-13 16:22:25 tsally
    I've responded to similar articles on HN with this, and I will do so again here. The way to stop procrastinating, of course, is to read a long article about how not to procrastinate.

  299. None 2009-01-23 06:26:43 eru
    + 50% procrastination. Yes, I get more than 100% out of Hacker news!

  300. Ask HN: When do you code? 2009-01-23 14:53:48 lallysingh
    Ditto. But, I have to point out that what also works is a good morning run for me.

    Run before work. It's like 3 hours of regular brain bootup/procrastination are all taken away by that run.

  301. Ask HN: Is Hacker News a Waste of Time? 2009-01-24 09:23:45 froo
    Hey PG, what about enforcing procrastination filters? EG just removing the override link?

  302. Ask HN: Proposal for Managing the Addictiveness of This Site 2009-01-25 04:48:16 SwellJoe
    It'll pass. It did for me, anyway. For about two or three months, I was here all the time. I was clicking "override" on the procrastination page five or ten times a day. But, it came from being unfocused about my work--I didn't have a clear, and exciting, vision of where I was going or how to get there, so I was putting off doing anything.

    I did two things:

    1. Started working on music again (which always excites me, but I had to give myself permission to take time off for something fun--I was wasting that time dicking around on the Internet, anyway, so I might as well have something to show for that time).

    2. Sat down one day and figured out the overarching vision for my company and my development for the next week, month, and three months (don't think too far ahead--it causes paralysis because the job looks too big). This triggered several great ideas for big visible improvements in the product that don't cost me much time or effort or money (outsourcing brain-dead tasks to cheap labor, for example--for our website builder, for example, I just got 50 new Open Source templates added for $149...this would have taken two or three full days of my time, on a task that would make me nauseous with its tediousness, but for the guy who did it, it was easily a couple of weeks normal wages). Some of these ideas expanded my productivity dramatically, because it takes the work off of my plate almost entirely, but it still gets done.

    What I'm saying is that if spending your time here is satisfying your accomplishment receptors better than your own work, then you're probably doing your own work wrong. You're treating the symptom rather than the disease.

    Oh, and leave yourself something unfinished at the end of each day (this is old hat for GTD people, but I never really paid attention to any of that stuff). It actually works if you have something to do each day instead of going to HN first, you'll probably find you just keep doing things rather than reading random crap on the Internet.

  303. Ask HN: Proposal for Managing the Addictiveness of This Site 2009-01-25 04:51:18 pavelludiq
    Like i care what people on the internet think. I am a pretty shameless person, so this is a bad idea IN MY CASE. Maybe it will help other people, i don't know.

    The problem is more fundamental than that, procrastination seems to be a big problem with a lot of people here on HN, including me. I've been searching for answers and ways of countering it, i have thought a lot about the causes and effects.

    My conclusion is that it is not HN that is the problem, procrastination is deeper that that, HN doesn't have anything unique that makes it addictive, there are many activities that are addictive in the same way, and a lot of them are offline, so its not an internet problem. Its a human problem. I have found that i am more productive without internet though, but not that much, it just takes me longer to find distractions.

  304. Ask HN: Proposal for Managing the Addictiveness of This Site 2009-01-25 04:56:35 nostrademons
    I've found my engagement with the site has waxed and waned a lot over the nearly 2 years I've been here. I was on here constantly while I still had my day job, because I had a good amount of free time while blocked on other people yet couldn't work on my starttup at work. Then I dropped off to posting maybe 2-3 times a week once my startup started ramping up and I had a clear picture what I wanted to do with it. Then I started visiting more frequently again when my startup folded. Now I'm here a lot on weekends, but I check only once a day, while eating breakfast, on weekdays. There's enough going on at the Googleplex that I really have no urge to visit Hacker News or Reddit while I'm at work.

    Procrastination levels really do have more to do with what you're avoiding than what you're procrastinating with. Figure out how to make your work more exciting rather than how to make your procrastination less exciting.

  305. Ask HN: Proposal for Managing the Addictiveness of This Site 2009-01-25 04:57:11 tonystubblebine
    I just edited my /etc/hosts to point this and most other procrastination sites at localhost. The work day is for working. Now I have only two options at my desk, either stare blankly or figure out the next task and do it. I unblock it once a week or so to keep current.

  306. Ask HN: Proposal for Managing the Addictiveness of This Site 2009-01-25 07:30:44 gruseom
    It's my fault for not being clearer, but you guys missed the point of the post. I'm not asking for advice about procrastination issues (I have some, but they're not that bad) and the general subject has been done to death already.

    The point is that given that a lot of people have this problem (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=446924), here's a suggestion of something new to try.

    Of the comments that do address the specific proposal (of shame-based noprocrast), there have been two objections. (1) Some people say they're not influenced by anybody else's opinion, or shouldn't be. I call that self-deception. (2) Others say it would be better to just stop procrastinating. Of course it would. That's like prescribing "sleep" for insomnia.

    I still think it's a cool idea that would make for a fun experiment.

    Edit: by the way, while I've facetiously emphasized the shame aspect, I don't think that's all there is to it. Lots of people have noticed that if you make a public commitment to do something, you're more likely to follow through. There's a lot of experimental data on that too.

  307. Ask YC: Do what you love and the money will follow? 2009-01-26 07:58:55 mseebach
    Excelling in your field gets noticed. It did when I was a d*mn good dishwasher. Had I chosen to, that could easily had been my ticket into a some kind of catering career. I prioritized college, though, so now I'm just a mediocre procrastinator :)

  308. Nintendo brain-trainer 'no better than pencil and paper' 2009-01-27 01:02:13 chaostheory
    yeah agreed. People forget about the 'too many choices' problem. You can do anything with a blank sheet of paper and a pencil and for most not many people math exercises is not the 1st thing that comes to mind. Not to mention there was that wsj article that links procrastination with abstract tasks...

    With Brain Age everything is already done for you and it adds lots of pictures and audio feedback which makes it more fun and interesting as well as being an impartial referee for multiplayer matches

  309. Eat less, remember more 2009-01-28 00:22:21 peregrine
    I'm going to give this a shot. Not radically like the CR people I will just randomly skip meals and not eat after 6pm(good practice anyways).

    Maybe it will break my procrastination cause my body begins to work harder to find food. Just gotta make sure my stomach doesn't grumble during the wrong times though.

  310. Symptoms of rotting design 2009-01-29 02:38:12 marcus
    Not necessarily, the question is do you procrastinate on parts of it significantly more than the rest, if you do that part probably does stink.

  311. Ma.gnolia.com crashes hard -- no backups? 2009-01-31 06:18:21 rarrrrrr
    The trouble with convincing humans to back up is that it's important, but not urgent. For any given day of procrastination, the likelihood of consequences is small.

    Our motto is "If it's not backed up, it's down." (Applies doubly so for us as a backup company.) For sufficiently seasoned administrators, non-redundant storage should cause sleeping difficulties.

  312. The Popular Practice of Putting Stuff Off 2009-02-01 18:37:17 jacquesm
    it's funny, that 'practice' is exactly what got me on to hacker news in the first place, a discussion of how to avoid procrastination. to go through HN, I want to be able to zoom in on the comments others judged to be of the highest quality.

    Of course reading this site only worsened the problem!

    detects an infinite regress here somewhere...

  313. Can't override procrastination settings anymore 2009-02-02 23:59:40 dlytle
    Same here, actually; I use it primarily as a reminder. Some days I get a lot of value out of the anti-procrastination feature, as it will warn me when I've been here. I actually start my browsing on work days with HN, because if I get the warning, I know I should just stop.

    Also, fairly frequently I open a few articles, and by the time I get back to click to the next page I've been locked out. Override is really handy then.

  314. Still Doing the Math, But for 100K A Year 2009-02-03 11:25:22 frig
    If you peruse my posting history here you'll find I'm constructive and respectful where it's warranted.

    Here's the exact quote I was responding to:

    "That doesn't seem to apply here at all. If education can really make a difference, teachers would be able to raise money from VCs in order to educate inner city kids for no upfront fee and a large cut of their future pay. If they didn't behave that way, you might have to suspect that since spending billions of dollars on improving those schools and improving those students hasn't had any significant effect on their ability to learn, the problem is not with how hard we're trying, but with what we think we can accomplish."

    There's so many things wrong with this it was hard to know where to begin; to actually address this one just on the facts is like trying to refute the assertion "colorless dreams sleep furiously", but I'll do what I can.

    Part 1: the "teachers raising money from VCs" scenario.

    First, let's understand what I think he's saying. I think he's saying this:

    - step 1: "assume good education can raise someone's lifetime earning potential"

    Hidden Assumptions in Step 1: none relevant.

    - step 2: "assuming good education raises someone's lifetime earning potential, a good teacher or teachers could get raise funds from investors and then educate people free-of-charge NOW in exchange for a sizable cut of the students' future lifetime earnings."

    Hidden Assumptions in Step 2: when he says "would be able to raise money from VCs" I assume he means "it'd be a net-profitable endeavor to educate people NOW in exchange for a large cut of their future earnings, and thus investors would be willing to fund it." I edited "VCs" to "investors" to be generous, and I'm assuming the investors want to see a profit (investors could do this out of charity -- let's call that a "scholarship" -- but for sake of argument let's stick to profit-seeking investors).

    - step 3: "if they didn't behave that way, then...". By this, I'm going to assume he is saying "clearly, people aren't investing in people's education in exchange for a percentage of their future earnings".

    I assume he is saying these kinds of investments aren't happening for the following reason: the rest of his "argument" depends on it not being the case that people are currently investing in schemes like the one we're sketching here.

    Where does this get us? About how I summarized the "rhetorical point" last time:

    "If education substantially improved people's future earning potential, it'd be a profitable investment to fund people's education NOW in exchange for a percentage of their future income, but you don't see that happening, which I choose to take as evidence in favor of my world view (which appears to be that there are many people who can't be educated)."

    There's more ways than I have time for to make a mockery of that, but let's pick three of the easier one.

    Firstly: there's an enormous industry dedicated to loaning people money to get an education. You can characterize this behavior as: "paying for someone's education NOW in exchange for a portion of their future income". It's not 100% isomorphic to his proposal, but it's quite close, don't you think? Most of the larger loans -- like for medical school or law school -- only make economic sense under the assumption the education received in law school or medical school leads to substantially increased earning ability once the education is finished.

    Sure, student loans are debt and not equity, but they're quite cheap as a % of lifetime earnings (you'll find census figures for average lifetime earnings of college grads in the $2.1 million range versus average net indebtedness at graduation from a 4-year program in the $20k range if you search around; even assuming punitive interest leading to paying back a total of $40k you're talking < 2% of your lifetime earnings to pay for an undergraduate education; you'll find, if you crunch #s for law school or medical school, that the %s are quite clear).

    The reason student loans are regarded as painful is because they're expected to be paid back immediately after graduating, which is exactly when you're typically at your very lowest earning potential; as a % of lifetime earnings they're quite reasonable.

    It might be possible to salvage the argument, but the existence of the student loan industry makes it a lot harder to claim flat-out that people aren't investing in students' education-boosted future income; investors are investing, just not quite in the way this guy sketched out.

    Secondly: using exactly the same logic as he's using you can make more ridiculous claims. Here's how you do it:

    - If medical school / ivy league / law school / pro football really increased your earnings potential, you'd see investors willing to fund people's medical school / ivy league / law school / football training for no upfront cost in exchange for a large cut of the student's future earnings. But, you don't see that, so I take this as evidence in support of my worldview.

    Take your pick of "sure-thing" -- the arrangement he's sketching is extremely rare, and arguing that its absence in a particular field implies anything about that field is more than a little dubious.

    Thirdly: you could handwave about the various pragmatic reasons why such an arrangement is unlikely -- imperfect information, various transaction and friction costs -- or point to the arrangement's relative rarity across most fields and assume there's something intrinsically unrealistic about it that has limited its adoption. Not a whiz-bang refutation, sure, but about as robust as that argument was, and thus equally convincing.

    OK

    I've gone through part one, the "teachers raising VC" scenario, and explained why the whole thing is worthy of derision:

    - contrary to his claims, it's happening all the time, just as debt and not equity investment

    - using the same logic you can show that eg medical school can't possibly raise someone's lifetime earnings

    - you can also point to the "equity" version of the arrangement appearing to be rarely used in practice, hinting at its unworkability with at least as much rigor as his "argument" had

    Part 2: the argumentative fallacy

    I'm going to reproduce the quote, but split into parts with short commentary.

    Section A: "If education can really make a difference, teachers would be able to raise money from VCs in order to educate inner city kids for no upfront fee and a large cut of their future pay."

    NB: we're talking about a hypothetical scenario (if X then Y). Leaving aside the issues already arranged, remember this: he's talking about something that might happen, not something that is happening, or did happen but failed. Pure conjecture.

    Section B: "If they didn't behave that way, you might have to suspect that..." -- still in the hypothetical mode (if X then Y), not the definite mode "because X happened a conclusion of Y is implied"

    Section C: "since spending billions of dollars on improving those schools and improving those students hasn't had any significant effect on their ability to learn, the problem is not with how hard we're trying, but with what we think we can accomplish"

    NB: here's where stuff gets dirty. You see how he slid from speaking in a hypothetical mode in Section A and Section B to speaking about stuff that actually happened (money we spent, results we didn't get)?

    You also see how the qualifiers and signs of uncertainty start to disappear: "if education can really make a difference, teachers would be able to raise money from VCs...If they didn't behave that way you might have to suspect...

    Go look for qualifiers or signs of uncertainty in Section C; you won't find any.

    It's possible it's entirely accidental, but it has the look of dishonest writing commonly employed in eg direct mail campaigns soliciting donations for politicians or advocacy groups: you start with careful hypotheticals and finish with a conclusion.

    It's no different than "If asteroid mining was profitable, astronauts would be able to raise funds from VCS to go mind asteroids. If they didn't behave that way, you might have to suspect that, since spending billions of dollars on improving our space program hasn't brought us much space-metal, the problem is not with how hard we're trying, it's with what we think we can accomplish." If that sounds a little off to you, it should, but it's the same "logical" "argument" at work, just with sections A and B chosen to draw out the incongruity of section C.

    Part Three: the "improving" fallacy

    Thankfully this one is short. Let's go back to section C:

    Section C: "since spending billions of dollars on improving those schools and improving those students hasn't had any significant effect on their ability to learn, the problem is not with how hard we're trying, but with what we think we can accomplish"

    This is sneaky writing, too.

    Facts:

    Fact A: billions have been spent on the schools

    Fact B: those billions haven't had any significant effect on their ability to learn

    I'd argue fact B slightly: compared to, say, the kids of coal miners or sharecroppers or appalachian mountain folks, I'd be shocked if the schools -- as bad as they often are -- aren't having a significant effect on the kids' ability to learn. Whether the cost of the schools is too high for the benefit is separate; claiming outright "no significant effect on their ability to learn" seems unwarranted. You'd also have to explain the Flynn effect.

    Where do those get you? Not as far as they're taken in Section C.

    You could say "we've spent billions in schemes we hoped might improve outcomes, but they didn't work the way we hoped they would." That'd be honest, but it'd also weaken the argument that's being attempted here, which is essentially "proof by exhaustion" (there's only one possible plan that might "improve" the schools' outcomes, we tried it, it didn't work).

    Hence the omission of the qualifiers (instead of "the stuff we tried didn't work" it's like "we improved it and it was still crap"), as it makes the intended conclusion flow more naturally.

    I gotta jet, it's been a long day and it's nice to have something to do to procrastinate; I hate intellectual dishonesty and so coming back to see that post after burying one of my dogs pretty much put me into conniption.

    This kind of stuff seems out of place here so after this I quit; I submit as a parting shot in my defense that the post I replied to was every bit as flawed as I claimed it was.

  315. Poll: Allow override of noprocrast? 2009-02-03 13:15:21 aaronblohowiak
    The best way to acquire or extinguish a habit is with consistent, salient feedback. noprocrast is a tool that helps to remind and reinforce the user of their desire to not procrastinate. i think adding a captcha to the noprocrast page would make it more useful as it would require more thought than a simple click-through, which is easily habituated as well.

  316. Ask HN: Could no procrastination feature only operate in specified hours? 2009-02-03 19:15:01 jacquesm
    For no fee at all I will make you stop procrastinating during the hours you desire, what's your ip ;) ?

  317. Why We Need a War on Aging 2009-02-05 08:02:12 stuaxo
    Hm, I often say "I would do X if I had infinite time and motivation"... if De Grey and Sens comes to pass I may have to just stop procrastinating and do these things.

  318. Dieting? Put Your Money Where Your Fat Is 2009-02-07 08:51:02 mkn
    There's actually a wonderful insight into human evolutionary psychology here. We've evolved to discount the future. We are finite beings and all of our eggs are in one basket. For a large part of our biological history, performing beneficial tasks such as eating or mating was best performed in the present, because you might not be around next month to do them. There might be a famine, or you might get injured, thus causing your prospective mate to choose a healthier candidate. Courses of action that result in benefits now (or the prevention of an immediate loss) are much more compelling than courses of action that have a benefit in the distant future.

    There's a great website about procrastination, http://www.procrastinus.com/, that uses this understanding of future discounting to help one get things done. The idea is that a long project should be broken up into smaller tasks so that, even though meeting the smaller goals results in less absolute reward, they are more compelling because the completion horizon is so close.

    Basically, humans are wired so that a jelly donut (or a few hundred bucks) now is perceived as more beneficial than 5 to 10 years of existence tacked on at the end of life. For a very long time, that has been a very sensible proposition.

  319. Technology is Heroin 2009-02-08 03:34:37 jacquesm
    Man that's some excellent writing. I'm seriously jealous at your ability to write like that, I'll need to practice more :)

    I did spot this little HN reference in there:

    "Programmers are creating "no procrastinate" options for their web sites in order to help users not spend so much time there."

    thanks for all that work!

    I agree with your premise that technology is addictive, I think it somehow fits in with our fascination with tools in general. After all humans are 'toolmakers' par excellence, tools mean survival, food and progress, no wonder we should become addicted to them.

    Your analog with heroin and the time required to figure out what was happening reminds me of the old story of the frog and the boiling pot: If you put a frog in a pot with hot water it will jump out immediately, but if you slowly raise the temperature the frog won't notice the problem until it is too late to jump out and it perishes.

    Not sure if that's a true story but that's how I remember it.

    I'm passing your article on to my 15 year old son to read.

  320. Ask HN: Is it essential to have personal websites? 2009-02-08 06:29:06 alabut
    I left out portfolios in my meta-answer below, it feels like the first thing designers concentrate on and typically procrastinate on forever because they build it up in their heads to something that needs to be perfect before it can be unveiled. I know because I've done this and so has every designer I've ever talked to.

    Having said that, yeah, having a folio up is definitely worthwhile. I went freelance in Nov and have been booked solid with work every day since just because of the case study area of my site I put up during the summer:

    http://alabut.com/work.html

  321. Does removing "override" on noprocrast increase HN's market share? 2009-02-09 13:25:46 Jebdm
    In short: "I used to open up another browser to bypass my Firefox anti-procrastination software, Leechblock, so that I could override noprocrast and read HN. This usually led to me reading other, less interesting sites like Reddit. Now that I can't override noprocrast, I decided to use it exclusively and removed HN from my Leechblock blocked list. Now I don't end up reading Reddit afterwards. Thanks!"

    Moderately interesting, but the linkbait title was unnecessary.

  322. Does removing "override" on noprocrast increase HN's market share? 2009-02-09 14:17:35 paulgb
    It's a subconscious thing. For me, anyway. When I'm stuck on a hard problem, my default behaviour used to be to alt-tab to my browser and see what's new on HN. Now when I do that I'm blocked by noprocrast. Usually, this is enough to get me back to the problem.

    It's actually broken my procrastination habit enough that I can leave noprocrast off most of the time and not have to worry about procrastinating. Sort of like training-wheels for self-discipline.

  323. So maybe the slackers had it right after all 2009-02-10 00:07:54 nostrademons
    Yeah, it seemed to me like an ironic jab at all those people that followed the "get ahead" mantra, did what they were "supposed" to do, and then found they lost everything when they got laid off, their 401k crashed, and their mortgage was foreclosed upon.

    Interestingly, I've heard these sort of cataclysmic shifts in the environment are why procrastination and lazyness evolved. In the ancestral human environment, a "black swan" event wasn't just losing your job, it was having your whole tribe killed by marauding invaders, or losing your food supply to a bunch of hungry monkeys, or having a brushfire sweep through your camp and destroy everything. And they happened much more frequently than they do today. So it makes sense to eat the food now rather than stockpile it, fuck lots of women instead of raise the offspring, and not bother with building shelter because it'll just be destroyed. People who did otherwise often found their hard work negated by events outside of their control, and so they evolved impulses to not bother.

  324. How to become an iPhone developer in eight easy steps 2009-02-11 00:35:48 wallflower
    "4. Start writing something!

    Forget theory; forget mastering Objective C with your first attempt. Just set yourself a project and start working."

    A couple days ago I stopped slogging through Kochan's Objective C book (made it to Chapter 7) and started coding. I think I was kidding myself that I could learn by reading - I think it was an indirect form of procrastination. For example, how will you ever learn that you need to use NSMutableString instead of NSString if you want to modify Strings?

  325. Ask HN: How do you read RSS feeds? 2009-02-11 05:33:10 r11t
    I use Google Reader to keep track of approximately 300 feeds. These days I mostly only read everything during the weekends. This way I avoid procrastinating during weekdays.

  326. If You Spend Your Time Wisely, A Week From Now You Will Realise That You Are an Idiot 2009-02-15 11:40:19 CalmQuiet
    And it's also the problem with obscure urls (...Doc?id=dcfqz3h7_226gbbhd7dx) and Tiny URL schemes.

    Should I know the author of that introspective look at procrastination, hacking, and "continuing (browser-based) education"?

  327. If You Spend Your Time Wisely, A Week From Now You Will Realise That You Are an Idiot 2009-02-15 21:32:23 sc
    Yes, you may come across a cool idiom to use in your code by procrastinating and reading blogs. You may also come across a cool idiom by coding, looking at your code and thinking: how could I do this better; share your code with someone you could learn from, or read a book or two on your language of choice.

    Don't make excuses for your procrastination. Accept that procrastination is sometimes just a fun alternative to what you need to get done. Luckily, the end of the article shies away from the bombastic title.

  328. Daily Routines: How interesting people organize their day. 2009-02-16 17:14:39 Tichy
    While these are interesting anecdotes, and I am certainly not in a good position to criticize (being especially good at procrastination), I wouldn't not put too much weight on these stories. Maybe some of them are more myth than reality, and trying to follow the ideal might do more harm than good?

    Certainly it sounds like a good idea to have a strict daily routine, but maybe it doesn't work for everyone. Maybe it didn't even work for most of those interesting people, but some PR person or biographer or whatever deemed it necessary to portray these people's lives as such.

  329. Ask HN:What is your daily web routine? 2009-02-23 03:56:25 johngunderman
    Gmail, HN, QC, XKCD, sometimes Digg.

    My web routine == far too much lost time :)

    Sometimes I just have to turn off the internet while I work. Unfortunately, I often need the internet to complete my work. Enter procrastination...

  330. Leonardo da Vinci was a hopeless procrastinator. 2009-02-25 02:30:06 bentoner
    My solution to procrastination:

    1. Identify the activities you procrastinate (for me, writing scientific papers);

    2. Rearrange your life so you don't have to do them any more. (I just left academia to do a startup.)

  331. Leonardo da Vinci was a hopeless procrastinator. 2009-02-25 02:56:02 anr
    Catchy title. Diagnosing "procrastination" seems to be all the rage nowadays, people will almost always identify with it.

  332. Leonardo da Vinci was a hopeless procrastinator. 2009-02-25 03:17:55 electromagnetic
    I completely disagree that Leonardo was a procrastinator simply because he didn't do everything he dreamed of. I'm sorry, I've looked through some of the books of his designs and he has things like strip-miners and hang-gliders and such. I'm sorry, they were physically incapable of making them in his day.

    He understood concepts and designed things that fit them, likely knowing he'd never be able to build them in his lifetime. The first design for a Space Elevator came in like 1895, and in 2009 we still don't have the technology to make one, so why is Leonardo a 'procrastinator' simply because it was impossible to build some of the things he wanted to.

  333. Leonardo da Vinci was a hopeless procrastinator. 2009-02-25 03:21:18 jhancock
    "The unambiguously negative idea of procrastination seems unique to the Western world"

    As an American living in Shanghai for 9 years, I have had to confront this meme in its various forms on many occasions. My wife (Chinese) will simply tell me things like "Chinese people are not afforded the luxury of your behavior". It appears procrastination is something that must be "afforded".

    Its not that procrastination is unique to us (modern-Western-middle-class++), but that it may have cultivated itself into an attribute that has reluctant value; otherwise da Vinci would have no merit in this context.

  334. Leonardo da Vinci was a hopeless procrastinator. 2009-02-25 03:21:28 anthonyrubin
    Because labeling Leonardo a procrastinator makes all of us procrastinators feel better about ourselves.

  335. Leonardo da Vinci was a hopeless procrastinator. 2009-02-25 03:56:09 alecco

      Procrastination is like masturbation, it's all good until you realize you just f***ed yourself.

  336. Leonardo da Vinci was a hopeless procrastinator. 2009-02-25 04:05:59 steelhive
    Just because he once worked on Duke Nukem Forever, da Vinci has been unfairly tagged as a procrastinator.

  337. Leonardo da Vinci was a hopeless procrastinator. 2009-02-25 04:14:23 tlb
    Is he a procrastinator for not actually attempting to build his helicopter with late-15th century technology? He would have failed, as the rough-hewn wooden gearboxes of the day were incapable of the power levels needed for rotary-wing flight. And other reasons. It was probably better to move on and sketch some new ideas than try to build things centuries ahead of what was technologically possible.

  338. Leonardo da Vinci was a hopeless procrastinator. 2009-02-25 04:52:06 gruseom
    Good enough, because masses will be able to afford it and benefit from it.

    This reads like something out of Turgenev. A pair of boots is worth more than the complete works of Shakespeare! Before art, bread!

    By contrast, one might ask: Leonardo's procrastinations have more value than the output of how many thousands of sensible, disciplined people?

  339. Leonardo da Vinci was a hopeless procrastinator. 2009-02-25 05:01:01 mblakele
    This may not apply to Leonardo da Vinci, but I'm reminded of M.A. Foster's notion that overcrowding generates bureaucracy. The idea may not be original to him, but he suggested that people erect social or procedural barriers when physical ones are no longer available.

    Perhaps procrastination is a similar phenomenon. The workplace is ubiquitous now, if we allow it to be. Do we procrastinate so that our minds have time to recover from these new demands?

  340. Leonardo da Vinci was a hopeless procrastinator. 2009-02-25 06:17:46 electromagnetic
    And not saying it makes me feel like I'm not a procrastinator! I rue the minute you commented and ruined my few moments of not feeling like a procrastinator.

  341. Leonardo da Vinci was a hopeless procrastinator. 2009-02-25 07:53:45 jacquesm
    that's the single best solution to the procrastination problem I've seen.

    Another possibility is to rearrange things in such a way that the only think you can still do are the things you are trying to get away from.

  342. Leonardo da Vinci was a hopeless procrastinator. 2009-02-25 07:56:09 jacquesm
    That's a good one. I think the author is mistaking 'visionary' for 'procrastinator'.

    THe simple fact that Leonardo Da Vinci did not have access to the technology to realize his visions (and could not even begin to guess how far away that technology was) does not make him a procrastinator.

    Have a look at the stuff that he came up with that had the technology readily available. It's a good thing they didn't have patents back then or Leonardos descendants would have owned the world.

  343. Leonardo da Vinci was a hopeless procrastinator. 2009-02-25 12:19:22 ahoyhere
    If he felt he didn't get done the things he wanted to do because he was constantly flitting around on a hundred projects, wouldn't you call that a procrastinator?

    I would. I'm the same way. Most people wouldn't call me a procrastinator looking at my output, but I know how I feel.

    It's hubris to claim to know how Leonardo felt, of course, unless he wrote it down himself, but I don't think the article's nearly as big a stretch as you think it is.

  344. Leonardo da Vinci was a hopeless procrastinator. 2009-02-25 12:19:26 ahoyhere
    If he felt he didn't get done the things he wanted to do because he was constantly flitting around on a hundred projects, wouldn't you call that a procrastinator?

    I would. I'm the same way. Most people wouldn't call me a procrastinator looking at my output, but I know how I feel.

    It's hubris to claim to know how Leonardo felt, of course, unless he wrote it down himself, but I don't think the article's nearly as big a stretch as you think it is.

  345. Leonardo da Vinci was a hopeless procrastinator. 2009-02-25 16:23:46 pkaler
    Paraphrasing David Allen: Procrastination isn't about not getting things done. Procrastination is about not getting things done AND feeling bad about it.

    I spent a month in India this year. It's a much slower lifestyle there. When something doesn't get done, they just don't feel bad about it.

    (Obviously, huge generalizations in that last paragraph.)

  346. Leonardo da Vinci was a hopeless procrastinator. 2009-02-25 23:31:38 briancooley
    You might not consider him a procrastinator, but the folks who had paid him for paintings and sculptures that he never produced probably did.

    Just because you're doing something productive doesn't mean that you aren't procrastinating. The trick, I think is getting the things that you are supposed to be doing matched up with the things you want to do. I think that's what most people mean by "find your passion."

  347. Counting hours doesn't make sense 2009-02-26 08:25:52 dangrover
    I despise most of my employers for their focus on hours, and in fact I left a job last week that had me working long hours despite the actual quantity of work assigned to me.

    But, ironically, I use hours as an objective way to measure my own work. I use a time-tracking program similar to what freelances would use so I can get an exact breakdown on time spent per day, as well as by project. My actual coding time is there, as well as time spent answering support emails, and time doing things that support the continuing growth of the business.

    Sure,sometimes a whole day flies by and I check the tracker and I've spent 10 hours actually working. But on days when I'm less motivated, it's sort of a game to rack up an hour here, 15 minutes there, and still manage to get a lot done.

    It's a really good way to spur yourself into tackling a bug/feature/challenge that you'd otherwise procrastinate. "OK, I have no idea where the hell to begin, but I can at least spend 30 minutes diligently investigating the matter. If I'm nowhere closer, I'll stop then and work on something else." Then you might find that a few hours fly by and the problem is solved.

    As long as you're brutally honest with yourself in tracking your time, and don't allow it just to become a procrastination mechanism (tracking time on things that really aren't constructive but seem sort of "productive"), it's a great way to measure yourself.

  348. What I've Learned from Hacker News 2009-02-27 11:15:47 gms
    "Despite all the time I have wasted here....it was worth it"

    This sentiment is very common here, but I strongly question it. I also wonder why people don't label their time here a little more honestly: as procrastination. We all justify it as "oh, but I might learn something useful for my future". And some of us might have indeed tangibly improved their lives (though I'm sceptical). But surely whatever benefits you gain can be reaped by visiting say once every 3-4 days, vs 12 times in one day? More generally, out of the people who do claim to have benefited their lives, are they able to point to a specific instance or two where HN tangibly improved their lot?

    I'll be honest: I resent visiting here often. I'm a worse person for it. Every minute I (or you, for that matter) spend here, someone else is spending that minute doing great work (for some definition of 'great'). In fact I am suspicious of anyone who has a ginormous amount of comments posted frequently; I do not see it as something to be proud of, but quite the opposite.

    I'm sure there are people who buck the trend (pg seems to frequently post here, yet still manages to do great work. I am convinced that he has cloned himself without telling anyone).

    I realise that what I'm saying might be heresy (see 'What You Can't Say' etc) given the constant optimism among this site's visitors, but I do not mean to denigrate anyone when I say that most of us (me included of course) are timewasters.

  349. Do you resent spending too much time on school/university? 2009-03-03 14:27:50 MaysonL
    Grade school and high school were almost completely negative for me: the only things I learned there were laziness and procrastination (still besetting vices).

  350. Ask HN: How are url shorteners making money? 2009-03-09 19:38:57 eddycole
    Think: pulling that data into a techmeme.com style aggregator/ranking site for the most popular urls people are linking to. Imagine how dynamic it would be - things that got linked to the most would percolate up to the top. you could watch in near real time as news breaks and gains traction.

    I've had a service like this in mind for a while and haven't pulled the trigger because I'm a chronic procrastinator.

  351. Ask HN: Authorize.net Vs Zuora Vs Aria for Subscription Billing 2009-03-10 08:00:53 CalmQuiet
    Arrrggghh ! I, too, hope someone else chimes in with some experience. I keep procrastinating about reading through all the reams of material from Authorize.net then debugging their user unfriendly processes to get to a functioning billing process.

    Their reputation for security and friendliness to the end customer seems good, so I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet, but if someone has used another system all the way through to a finished eCommerce product, I'd love to hear about customer satisfaction, etc. (or anything about relative reliability, security, etc.)

  352. Releasing early and often... how it failed for us 2009-03-12 23:11:33 cuerty
    Another example of another form of procrastination.

    Release often is about getting exited with your product, I about bugfixing as exiting.

  353. Keep Me Out, interesting anti-procrastination device 2009-03-14 00:48:39 mighty
    The usefulness of site-blockers as anti-procrastination tools depends on how much of a hassle they are to override. Having to use a special bookmark to visit websites doesn't do anything to make the override process more of a hassle. If I can train myself never to visit a frequented website by typing in a URL, using a regular bookmark, or Googling, then I arguably wouldn't need a site-blocker in the first place.

  354. Keep Me Out, interesting anti-procrastination device 2009-03-14 00:51:18 mannicken
    I don't think that's a solution for procrastination problem. There are three causes for procrastination:

    1. Innate rationality in procrastination from lack of meaning in doing any work in general or doing anything at all. Solution: Felicity's Feather Philosophy from More Secrets of Consulting: "Since nothing matters in the end, it doesn't matter if I pretend it does matter".

    2. Fear. Solution: diassociatives, rest, sabbatical, running, etc.

    3. "What the hell do I do first?" factor. Solution: I'm actually working on that right now.

  355. Keep Me Out, interesting anti-procrastination device 2009-03-14 01:31:00 debt
    I've tried almost everything to curb my procrastination. Nothing works. I know this won't work for me, but I'm sure someone less jaded will get some use out of it.

  356. The three I's of startup blogging 2009-03-14 05:32:45 sgrove
    Sorry if it felt a bit vapid. I actually thought of writing it when I heard the interview on political diaries, and felt it matched very well with what I found was interesting for startup and business blogs as well.

    I had been procrastinating writing about our "launch experience" on hn from Sunday because of coding to account for all the feedback we received. I tend to write in a very sanitary, evasive, and long-winded manner. The interview just jumped out at me with the "four i's". Out of those, I thought three were really relevant to startups/business blogs.

    Thanks for your feedback.

  357. Would You Bet $100,000,000 on Your Pet Programming Language? (2007) 2009-03-16 05:22:46 silentbicycle
    Not entirely. While I haven't done much with the JVM-based languages, I've spent a lot of time dabbling in obscure programming languages (it's a fun and often very educational way to procrastinate), and many language problems are fundamentally social: spotty-to-nonexistent documentation, tutorials or references that are three versions out of date, important libraries on websites that look like ghost towns ("last updated jan 17, 2004"), etc. can kill a language, or at the very least encourage the idea that it's abandoned. A language without a community of people to answer questions, etc. is going to be very hard to use.

  358. Trying to Earn More Money? Stop Wasting Your Time 2009-03-20 06:07:31 josh_nyc
    Wow... really cuts to the heart. I am guilty of some of these "productive procrastinations" as well (including the beloved HN) and find that when I close all not-super-necessary tabs (even gmail), I can focus way more on the famous 20% stuff.

    Yes, this 80/20 advice is nothing new, but the "case study" with his actual protege is a great way to really see it in action.

  359. Trying to Earn More Money? Stop Wasting Your Time 2009-03-20 07:38:17 brc
    I also went down the business cards and letterhead as procrastination route. I probably wasted a month all told, dithering about selecting a logo, printing cards, agonising the details. I now have about a thousand of the things. I've changed logo, what I do, telephone number - everything. Not one of those business cards ever lead to anything meaningful. I think I'll use the cards to light fires in the winter.

    Next time I print a business card it will just have my name in a plain black font in the middle of the card, with my email address and phone number. The design will take ten minutes.

    The authors point is plain and clear : just concentrate on things that bring in money, or are 1 step removed from bringing in money. This is sound advice. I wouldn't agree about stopping blog posting though. Just make sure your blog posts are directly relevant to your business, and try and pick up some related blogs to cross-post with. Blogging carries a very high ROI if you're good at writing.

  360. Trying to Earn More Money? Stop Wasting Your Time 2009-03-20 09:30:11 JacobAldridge
    To link this thought to ryanwaggoners - it's not about whether to have a business card / whatever - it's just when it becomes important.

    At the front end of a start-up, I agree it's procrastination, and in the very early stages of your business (especially if it's driven by your energy) anything more than the ten minute design is probably wasted.

    BUT, eventually some of these things will pay dividends (as Ryan found with his blogging). My company had basic business cards for six years; then we decided it was a priority and invested. My business card now has a baby on it, and doesn't tell you what I do (business coaching).

    Those people that get your 'plain black font' and put it in their pocket; they stop, examine my card, and start asking questions. It prompts a conversation. They remember who I am, and - now that I'm past start-up and don't need clients frantically - that's worth it.

  361. Ask HN: How can I get up early in the morning? 2009-03-21 01:00:18 adityakothadiya
    1. Plan in the evening what exact tasks you are going to do in the morning. Come up with detailed tasks - code this function, debug this issue, write follow-up emails, etc. If the tasks are not defined, then it's hard to push yourself to wake up early in the morning.

    Basically you need a reason to wake up in the morning. If we don't have reason, then even if alarm rings, we snooze it and procrastinate waking up at the decided time.

    Do all brainstorming, planning, HN/news/blogs reading in the night. And decide a clear action plan for the morning.

    2. Sleep early. One of my advisers sleeps at 10-10:30 in the night, and wakes up at 4am. I tried following same pattern, and it worked flawlessly. I used to get solid work done in 4am-8am before I go to my day job.

  362. Ask HN: How can I get up early in the morning? 2009-03-21 01:16:06 SwellJoe
    Deadlines work the opposite for me. Procrastinators can do anything other than what they're supposed to be doing...including sleep. At least, I can. The less I want to do something, the more exhausted I feel; and deadlines damage my desire to do something more than just about anything.

    On the other hand, if I'm excited about something, and feeling really interested in what will happen that day it definitely helps. So, if I open a bug on a project that I need for my work...and I think about it some the night before, I'll wake up excitedly thinking, "I wonder if my bug has been answered?" Likewise if I email someone about some work I need done; requesting quotes, whatever, for projects that I'm enthusiastic about. Today I woke up thinking about the RFQs I sent out to three designers yesterday (nothing! this is why crowdsourced design is winning...), and a bug I opened about the Drupal Project module.

  363. Ask HN: How can I get up early in the morning? 2009-03-21 01:48:08 jacoblyles
    I am totally different. I am a horrible procrastinator, but give me a deadline every day and I will move the world.

    Need that pressure. Love that pressure. I'll probably have a heart attack when I'm 40.

  364. The Global Warming Heretic - NYTimes On Freeman Dyson 2009-03-26 09:32:34 samas
    Unless I am mistaken, acidification of the oceans has been demonstrated. So has the loss of large volumes of fresh water stored in glaciers, as well as the loss of coastal land as sea level rises. Natural systems are fragile, and we continue to poke and push them, with damages (for example, loss of biodiversity) that are not clearly obvious and that are in many cases simply irreparable. I won't belabor this point, although obviously much more could be said.

    Burning carbon based materials to generate energy is, in the long term, unsustainable--there is a finite supply, and getting at the remaining sources will continue to become more expensive and more environmentally invasive (see: mountaintop removal). But enough about the environment, there are more important considerations (After all, we will eventually leave this planet, right?).

    Our eventual shift to renewable sources of energy is inevitable. Worries about the consequences of climate change are finally gaining momentum in the public conscious. That means that now is the time to go full speed on development and roll-out of renewable energy. Mr. Dyson mentions that "By restricting CO2 you make life more expensive and hurt the poor."

    Interesting comment from the man described as looking "like a person taking the longer view," because (given time) cheap abundant energy would do an incredible amount for the poor and starving. Deserts could be irrigated and farmed with desalinized water, pumps could preserve our coastal cities, really, the applications of cheap and abundant renewable energy are limited by our imaginations. Why leave that for our childrens' or grandchildrens' generation? What are we waiting for?

    There is always a place for some healthy skepticism, but I fear that with respect to this particular issue skepticism has given the world plenty of motivation to procrastinate.

  365. Overcoming a fear of writing 2009-03-27 03:51:02 yummyfajitas
    In theory, that is the optimal procedure. But writing code is so much more interesting right now.

    It's my most productive form of procrastination.

  366. Most time management is rubbish 2009-03-27 23:33:57 chime
    The moods/quirks aren't hooked into the tasks yet. The only one that's sort of active is the "stress" one that alerts you, depending on your stress-handling-ability, when you have too many "not fun" tasks with respect to "fun" tasks. My goal is to make the rest of the quirks gel with your personality and tasks and make simple but unobtrusive suggestions/recommendations. Like if you are a major procrastinator, the more you push down a task, the darker it's color gets.

  367. The Quiet Coup: IMF advice on the US economy 2009-03-28 07:56:59 anamax
    Yes, that should be "not like" and the procrastination timer ran longer than the edit window.

  368. Grok This: Forget The Business Books, Go Sci-Fi To Stoke Your Imagination 2009-04-06 07:37:06 utku_karatas
    Finally an acceptable excuse for some extensive procrastination! Thank you ;)

  369. Examples of Coming Soon Page Designs - Part II 2009-04-07 13:26:05 mahmud
    For web apps, reframe the "coming soon" procrastination crap and stick a little text entry where people can leave their email "to be the first to try" or get an invite. Less under-construction orange cone blocking the road, and more like an exclusive concierge to RSVP for a velvet-rope event.

    Plus you collect leads :-)

  370. Domain Pigeon adds 20K+ available Twitter names--more on the way 2009-04-08 17:53:00 matt1
    Thanks. You'd be amazed at how quickly the names are going. When I went back right before this launch, I checked a few of the names to see if they were still available and was blown away by how many were registered in such a short period of time. If you're thinking about registering a name on Twitter, you'd be wise not to procrastinate :)

  371. How Yellow Tail crushed the Australian wine industry. 2009-04-09 07:02:06 karl11
    Voted up because I'm literally writing a term paper on the wine industry right now (procrastinating on HN) and will use this article in it somewhere. Thanks.

  372. A Grad Student's Day 2009-04-09 09:52:13 quantumhobbit
    The eternal procrastinating grad student. Only now there are even more ways of wasting time on the internet.

  373. IE6 Upgrade Warning 2009-04-09 10:49:58 lucumo
    Ah, so these Upgrade-IE-warnings are actually anti-procrastination tools in disguise! :-)

  374. Classic Mistakes in Software Development 2009-04-11 14:51:48 tophat02
    Incoming instant messages almost always fall into the "urgent, but not important" category. This is a tripple whammy: a single IM can simultaneously destroy a developer's mental context, give him/her a "reason" to procrastinate, and accomplish nothing in the process.

    The proper way to use IM at work is to set it up so that you notice you have queued messages, but this doesn't distract you enough to leave the zone.

    This needs to be coupled with a policy that truly urgent AND important requests or questions come via phone or in person, and that there should be no expectation of an immediate response to an IM even if the person's status is "available".

    But, as usual, the good programmers have already figured this out for themselves. The rest of your programmers (the ones you need to worry about), aren't going to figure this out for themselves and probably won't follow the policy when no one is looking.

    I'm not saying "down with IM", but it can be a REAL time-waster.

  375. Ebay Unacquires StumbleUpon 2009-04-14 05:55:02 smanek
    I think it's a sample size issue - I don't know anyone over 30 who uses it. Although, admittedly, I've been using it much less lately (less time to procrastinate than I did as a pure student, and I use MeFi, YC, and Reddit more)

  376. How To: Stop procrastination (Dan Ariely) 2009-04-14 18:00:36 jlees
    How to stop procrastination, step 1:

    Watch a video on how to stop procrastination.

    Oh, wait...

  377. Hacker Newspaper: reformatted Hacker News 2009-04-14 19:22:36 mechanical_fish
    Random observations:

    This needs to be cloned by someone who is willing to at least link to the HN comment threads. I know that Giles regards such things as deadly dangerous OMG-someone-is-wrong-on-the-Internet time-wasting poison -- and he's got a point -- but some of us have an odd love of the medium and primarily read HN for the comments.

    Some headlines just work better in giant Newspaper Type than others. In his example, Giles has picked right up on "Bill Gates Applies for Patent on Electromagnetic Engine", which reads like a steampunk April fool's joke when you print it on a newspaper page. It's great.

    This project is doomed [1] because the average article on the web is miserably structured for being teased on a newspaper page. My favorite example is up there right now:

    HOWTO: Stop procrastination (Dan Ariely)

    We're sorry, but something went wrong. We've been notified about this issue and we'll take a look at it shortly.

    That's so perfect it's like poetry. On the other hand, "Ruby Style Guide" reads like the Associated Press conception of a modern online newspaper:

    This repository is private. All pages are served over SSL and all pushing and pulling is done over SSH. No one may fork, clone, or view it unless they are added as a member . Every repository with this icon () is private.

    That's art, but it isn't exactly in the spirit of the actual Ruby Style Guide.

    But, seriously, there's a reason why newspaper writing has traditionally been in inverted-pyramid form, with the most important sentence at the top and very little preliminary throat-clearing: Newspaper articles have to make sense when you chop off the first one or two lines and blow them up huge, or isolate them on the front page. Web links do not. And they don't.

    You can't replicate the awesomeness of a well-designed newspaper with AI-mediated typography alone. The prose and the priority of the stories must also be carefully designed by humans.

    The reason why HN is a big flat pile of headlines is that such a display accurately reflects the output of its ranking algorithm: Most likely the top N stories include a certain number of interesting stories, but the algorithm doesn't know which specific ones they are. You don't want to blow up some stories bigger than others unless they really are bigger stories, and who is making that call? Some Python or Ruby script? Please.

    ---

    [1] But maybe not for long. Add a human editor tweaking the headlines and the teasers and I believe you might have something.

  378. How To: Stop procrastination (Dan Ariely) 2009-04-14 20:31:24 lysium
    Actually, does not tell how to stop procrastination, just how they might help people stop their procrastination in the lecture (offer early deadlines). How am I supposed to translate this to my real life (where's no professor who'll punish me if I don't keep my early deadline?).

    Besides, made me procrastinate my work further by watching the video...

  379. How To: Stop procrastination (Dan Ariely) 2009-04-14 20:32:26 ZeroGravitas
    It's a bit of a misleading title, it's not all about procrastination and it's not much of a howto either.

    It's about how you can do many things better than standard economics would indicated if you take into account the irrationality of human beings.

    For example, everyone leaves reports to the last minute. Commiting to earlier deadlines makes no sense to a 'rational' human being, but can help actual human beings.

    Here's a link to his research paper on this topic: http://www.predictablyirrational.com/pdfs/deadlines.pdf

    And his book site: http://www.predictablyirrational.com/

  380. How To: Stop procrastination (Dan Ariely) 2009-04-14 23:04:15 philwelch
    There's a strategy called "structured procrastination" where you overload yourself with work to the point where you can only put one thing off to do something different.

    One way to enforce early deadlines (well, short deadlines) is to take on another project, get that done, and then for your other project, the deadline is now a couple weeks shorter :)

  381. How To: Stop procrastination (Dan Ariely) 2009-04-14 23:15:39 mtinkerhess
    Here's John Perry's essay on structured procrastination:

    http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

  382. Why airplane doors can't be opened mid-flight 2009-04-16 14:35:04 philwelch
    I notice this is the second submission by mattyb from everything2.com tonight.

    As cool as everything2.com is, if anyone reading this has remotely any work to do within the next two days, don't start traversing the tree of links from interesting everything2 nodes. I say this because I learned, from experience, that if you have tabbed browsing and open on average >1 new tab per page while traversing a site like everything2, your backload of reading material will grow exponentially and your procrastination problem, if you have one, will similarly grow to epic proportions.

    I fear mattyb has been sucked into this trap.

    Apologies if this comment is not productive enough.

  383. Ask HN: How do you learn to be creative? 2009-04-17 12:33:04 nreece
    I feel that one of the ways to realize and induce (your) creativity is by getting bored - proscrastinate - do nothing, and let your thoughts guide you.

    Often, I see/find people trying to stay busy doing something or the other all the time, but I think somewhere down the line it blocks their creative side.

    Try taking a walk through the park, and relax on the grass for sometime. You'll feel more connected to your creative side.

  384. Ask HN: How do you learn to be creative? 2009-04-17 23:15:02 blue1
    Also, "Creating" by robert fritz is not bad. But beware, reading books about creatity may become a form of procrastination.

  385. Freezing Lazarus: The Cryonics of Eternal Life 2009-04-18 03:42:00 DanielBMarkham
    I plan on signing up for this -- I've just been procrastinating. I have no reason to doubt that within 2 or 3 thousand years they'll be able to bring these "corpse-sicles" back to life, and I want to see what the world looks like then!

  386. 60 Minutes - Cold Fusion Is Hot Again 2009-04-20 11:23:12 gry
    And news.yc is the ultimate authority in [topic for topic in science]. ;)

    I caught the segment earlier tonight. Found it fascinating and enough to send me on procrastination adventure; not enough to speak about. I don't understand it.

    Sure, 60 Minutes isn't the be all end all, but hey, it's a lead on crazy good stuff.

  387. Storing students' papers for plagiarism detection is 'Fair Use' 2009-04-22 09:08:50 silencio
    Admittedly it was our fault for not realizing where the writing came from, but she was the straggler in the group that never participated in our email conversations and sent us her portion of the project the hour before it was due. I know there's always a slacker in a group project, but none of us imagined she would have done what she did...we just thought she was just procrastinating and so someone else quickly proofread for egregious grammar mistakes and then sent it off. Then in the individual work related to the group project (i.e. our thoughts, the work we did, etc.) she claimed just like we did that it was all her original writing.

    So it ended up being a mess and the rest of us four being accused of academic dishonesty too because she wouldn't stop insisting that we were lying about her, until we came up with our separate and complete email conversations consisting of a couple hundred emails with research and drafts and my versioned work (thank goodness for svn?) which included what the others did with no trace of her writing and nothing but excuses and delays in her emails. I think I've learned from my mistakes (but too bad something like turnitin isn't available to students, heh).

  388. Why getting personal projects done is hard 2009-04-24 21:38:08 dcheong
    Agreed to a certain extent. Yes, blindly increasing the pain will limit your possibilities, but appropriate application of it is a good move.

    If you're in the planning phase or design phase, you don't want to needlessly time box it and/or punish yourself for failing to meet a deadline, because it will limit what you come up with.

    However if you're in the building phase, say all the broad stroke type of decisions have been made and the main task is plain old coding / grunt work, you can use the pain to motivate you from distractions and procrastination.

    dave

  389. The Next Killer App is to Twitter as 1-2-3 was to Visicalc 2009-04-25 16:10:18 nostrademons
    Something curious I've noticed: Twitter is basically a Rorschach test for people. I have a bunch of groups of friends/acquaintances, and each of it sees Twitter's "killer feature" as being different.

    My mom is a retired teacher. She recently went back to work, to hear her colleagues excited about how they could use Twitter to reach students and parents.

    My Googler friends are excited about the real-time search aspects of Twitter.

    My politically-active lawyer friends were all atwitter about the election coverage.

    My LiveJournal friends all ship their tweets to LJ through LoudTwitter now. It's essentially a form of vanity posting - everybody writes them, but I don't know anyone who reads them.

    My consultant friends use it for networking and keeping track of folks that they may need information from.

    My college-student, grad-student, and college-dropout friends use it to procrastinate and waste time.

    I'm not sure if this is good or bad for Twitter. They've certainly built something useful, perhaps massively useful. But it'll be really hard to capitalize on all these markets at once, and these are definitely separate markets. Perhaps the future of Twitter is in infrastructure, a tool that people can then use and extend as they see fit.

  390. Cached Procrastination 2009-04-26 12:12:21 mindhacker
    I suffer from "Compiling Procrastination". I go to HN and reddit when the code starts compiling.

  391. Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator? 2009-04-26 23:04:54 luckystrike
    I hope you would find the following links useful at least in some ways.

    PG's Brilliant Essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

    How to Procrastinate Like Leonardo da Vinci: http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=zs61txc4kwr4kd1q1rj...

    Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=procrastinating-again

    Letter to a Young Procrastinator: http://www.slate.com/id/2190918/pagenum/all/

    Also, a quick search of HN using Google, should provide a lot of food for thought and anecdotes. There have been a number of discussions on this topic here.

    http://www.google.com/search?q=site:news.ycombinator.com+pro...

  392. Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator? 2009-04-26 23:17:40 hwijaya
    I have the same problems. There are two tricks that i find quite helpful:

    1. Find a team partner - and you will be cornered to start "get things done". Otherwise, you can't keep show up everyday without any progress

    2. Have a weekly team target - we have it as weekly iterations. Always release something out every week.

    Well, the good news are, you realize your problems and looking for solutions.

    Bill Gates seems to have the same problem with procrastination, early on in his career: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ic1Ro4LkKw

  393. Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator? 2009-04-26 23:22:58 krschultz
    Suck it up. Stop reading blogs, stop reading HN, stop making excuses. Start working. There are no tips that will break you out of it - just self discipline.

    I was you once. GTD by David Allen helped. Going to the gym daily with my brother (who is a gym rat) helped, but I finally realized that I had everything in the world that people are dieing to get and I was squandering that gift by wasting my time.

    Procrastinating is not an illness, it is a decision. You have chosen to be lazy, only you can change that.

    Everything else is just smoke and mirrors.

  394. Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator? 2009-04-26 23:43:29 Zarathu
    Oh. Eh, well, I wrote a small blog post a while back about little things that help me stay on-track:

    http://whitepaperclip.com/blog/post/2-Avoiding-Procrastinati...

    Everyone is different, though.

  395. Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator? 2009-04-26 23:47:59 billswift
    That's also been my experience. There is a really good book that can help you get a handle on why precisely you procrastinate: "Procrastination: Why You Do It, What to Do About It" by Jane Burka and Lenora Yuen. It was published in 1983, but I still haven't seen a better one on the psychology of why people procrastinate.

    EDIT: The problem is big and complex enough to need a book to cover it. Blog posts and magazine articles usually only cover a specific, narrow aspect of the problem. This book as well as covering the field is readable enough that it doesn't take too long to read through.

  396. Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator? 2009-04-26 23:51:34 tvon
    I just wanted to say that when I voted you up, I clicked really hard.

    I often struggle with time management procrastination and a high level of distractibility. It really comes down to just being honest with yourself and understanding the choices you're making. The gym is a huge help too, it's good for you, it gives you energy and it helps you focus.

  397. Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator? 2009-04-27 00:00:57 wim
    Well, you said you already had some ideas, but maybe these help as well. Things that work for me:

    - Tasks you really don't like doing are harder to start with. But, are the tasks you have to do really important? What happens if you don't do them? Eliminate as much as possible.

    - Start working on a task as late as possible. The pressure, it helps. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law)

    - Break it up in small steps. Working on a task "Build the next google" is not going to get you started. Split it up in smaller steps, and associate little milestones or 'victories' to completing a small step.

    - Another reason for procrastination is feeling overwhelmed (decision paralysis, action paralysis). If you have so much to do that no matter what you finish, it still feels like you have a lot left, it's impossible to start. Again, try to eliminate or make a feasible schedule for yourself, such that you are able to finish your list for the day.

    - Stop feeling bad about procrastination. Actually, plan in some procrastination time. Forcing yourself to work all the time and feel bad about not doing it will cause you to procrastinate more. Plan in some time for 'slacking', or even better: exercise, do some sports and get back to work afterwards.

    - If you would give yourself 1 hour/day for procrastination; what would you rather do? Read digg about lolcats or sit outside in the sun, and talk with some friends? If you go at it like this, you'll notice how valuable your limited time actually is, and you'll stop reading those websites.

    - Again, more sports! Clear mind == more productive.

    - If you allow yourself the time to 'procrastinate' (i.e. reading websites, RSS, email, etc.), it will also make it easier to read news/mail in batches. Limit it to max. 3 times per day or so.

    - If you want help to get into some new (productivity) habits, start a "Seinfeld calendar" (Google it if you haven't heard of it before)

    - Do NOT, _EVER_, start your day with reading news/mail/etc (or keep it to offline news -- yes, news papers ;).

    - Unplug. Information overload == bad.

    - Start the day with an easy task. It's not hard to start with and it will get you in the "getting-s*-done mood". Once you start ticking of tasks - no matter how little it was - it feels like getting done more!

    Hope this helps!

  398. Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator? 2009-04-27 00:03:34 edw519
    Funny, that's exactly the opposite of what I would suggest: Work on only the most important thing and nothing else. It's helped me maintain focus no matter how crazy things get.

    pg says it much better here:

    http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

    "What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you?"

    Just goes to show you: Ask 2 hackers a question and get 3 answers. You'll just have to figure out what works best for you.

  399. Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator? 2009-04-27 00:38:35 10ren
    From pg's essay: One reason is that you may not get any reward in the forseeable future.

    I find it helps to spend some time laying out a plan of attack that will yield results along the way - like an adventurer laying out a route with ports/oases/base-camps for reprovisioning - and ruthlessly cutting out nice-to-have features that don't contribute (while keeping some nice-to-have features that do contribute). A side-effect of getting results is that they act as a check on whether you are on the right track. There's still the basic fear, of "will I ever get to the end"; the cure for that is to clarify the mission. If things get confusing, step back and simplify, because that is the way to move forward.

    And laying out the approach actually also begins the journey (because I think about the issues I'll encounter), without feeling like it, so it is easier to start on this than on the task itself. So this is one way to overcome procrastination, and get started: "I'll just have a little daydream about the cool little outcomes along the way"

  400. Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator? 2009-04-27 01:11:47 khandekars
    Eat the frogs: http://www.amazon.com/That-Frog-Great-Ways-Procrastinating/d...

    Full of practical advice. In the same vein, it's good to read all e-mails / blogs after lunch. Keeping IM, Twitter off till that also helps.

    In a nutshell, the mind, like money, is an excellent servant, but a terrible master! Hope this helps.

  401. Global Warming Delusions 2009-04-27 01:16:37 DanielBMarkham
    I am procrastinating doing necessary work by means of discussion but I'll try to get the last word in anyway. Since I'm new to the thread.

    By violating underlying principles I do NOT believe that some kind of ultimate catastrophe will ensue. This is an optimization problem and I simply believe there are natural asymptotes. My view of the future is one in which we define "abnormal deviation" down to the point where we're all just homogenized drones. In my darkest days I don't see mankind evolving into some kind of space-faring, trans-human supermen. I see mankind turning into large lumps of homogeneous sacks of fluid mindlessly plugged into a vast brain-masturbatory internet. It's the long, slow, slide to stagnation. I'm not concerned with the end of the world: I'm concerned with the end of chaotic, creative expansion. Without underlying principles that's where we're headed. Private property and the ensuing rights to do things that might annoy my neighbors if they lived 5 feet away is the cause of all kinds of goodness.

    "because principles do not in and of themselves supply a valuation"

    I think they can. I think you right to speak is greater than my desire not to be annoyed by you -- unless I have no way to get away from you, in which case my right of self-ownership trumps your right to speak. Principles give us all kinds of relative valuations. Our entire system of western justice is based on the idea that principles have relative merit to one another.

    "An extreme example is something like trying to build an apartment complex over an indian burial ground; it's a pure battle of aesthetics that can't be won by reason alone."

    Once again we're having the pragmatic versus principles discussion. I say I shouldn't have to justify actions if they are based on principle. Do I have to justify my freedom of speech every time I post on the internet? Of course not. It's a given. Likewise many uses of private property were a given 50 years ago but are not any more. Pragmatically those who make good political arguments in a decayed democracy win more rights than others. Practically decayed democracies do not optimally support their citizens or grow and change adequately to adapt to new circumstances. The more I have to argue to get the same freedoms I had 50 years ago, the more time and energy I am spending just to have the same potential people had naturally before. It's a good observation on your part. It's just incomplete.

    Thanks for the thread. Now back to work!

  402. Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator? 2009-04-27 01:24:05 fiaz
    I didn't read that before...brilliant!

    I would add one more category of procrastination: doing something when the time is right. It's an idea I borrowed from "Zen and the Art of Archery" where the author was struggling with how to know the right moment to shoot so that his arrow will have the right trajectory. His instructor told him that "it" will shoot when the time is right (what I've written doesn't do justice to the lesson I learned in this simple example - so I highly recommend reading this ~96 page book).

    Many might translate this behavior to doing it whenever I feel like doing it (or procrastinating), but most of these downtimes are spent thinking or designing in my head what needs to be done. It would seem that "it" has a life of its own in my mind and perhaps at the right moment, I am compelled by something do get "it" done. I must say that this is merely a model (that works well for me) about transforming procrastination from a negative to a positive.

    I suppose my answer to the original posting would be that if I feel like I'm "type-C" procrastinating, then this can be remedied by thinking about the more important tasks that need to be done. Usually when the thought gets translated into action, the results are much better than if I forced myself to take action without properly preparing myself mentally.

  403. Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator? 2009-04-27 02:14:18 gcheong
    They have recently come out with an updated edition (2008). It still covers a lot of the same ground but has been updated with current research in neuroscience. I would also say this isn't a book that you read once, but rather is something to refer to/re-read again and again as you are working through your procrastination.

  404. Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator? 2009-04-27 03:40:12 nordgren
    Three books have really helped me:

    1) Getting Things Done by David Allen gives you a system that works for keeping track of things and choosing what to work on when.

    2) The Now Habit by Neil Fiore teaches you how to get rid of some stupid things we do and think that keeps us procrastinating.

    3) Tribes by Seth Godin inspires you to go out and do great deeds, big and small.

  405. Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator? 2009-04-27 04:12:48 nostrademons
    I've found this never worked for me. By attacking the problem head on, I made it more of a big deal than it already was, which just made it more stressful and unpleasant, which made me less inclined to do it.

    Instead, I noticed that almost all instances of my procrastination fit into three categories:

    1.) I was trying to do something too ambitious, which I didn't have the skill level for, and so I couldn't complete it, yet wasn't able to admit that to myself.

    2.) I was trying to bite off too big a chunk at once, so I'd get confused and wouldn't know where to start.

    3.) The task is really boring and takes no real skill to complete, so I just wouldn't bother.

    #1 is fixed by backing up and doing something easier - and oftentimes the "something easier" ends up being far more useful than the original task. For example, I spent like 3 years on FictionAlley.org (a PHP/MySQL rewrite of a website that had previously been 40,000 hand-written HTML pages), vs. a week on Scrutiny (Amherst's course-evaluation system). Once I'd done Scrutiny, though, FictionAlley was quite a bit easier for the practice.

    #2 is tricky until you get some practice in breaking things down, but then it becomes quite manageable. For example, I was starting a new project for work this morning, one of those unsolicited I'll-build-it-and-then-show-my-manager things. Spent a half hour or so doing nothing but checking HN, then I created a git repository and figured "Hey, I can create a Django app. That's no problem." Then I figured "Hey, I create a basic HTML page with just the app's name on it. That's no problem." Then I figured "Hey, I can wire it up with django.views.generic.simple.direct_to_template", and suddenly I've got working code that just needs to be refined. The rest should be smooth sailing.

    #3 is best solved with habits and routines, so that it really does become thoughtless. For example, I think paying bills and opening mail is about the most boring thing ever, so I always do it Saturday morning before going to the supermarket. It gets done, and since it's always at the same time of week I usually don't have to think about it. Same with responding to e-mail - usually, I make sure to respond immediately after reading or else not respond at all.

    The smoke and mirrors can be quite useful. It works for me, at least.

  406. Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator? 2009-04-27 05:50:55 electromagnetic
    I'm currently in the progress of writing a novel (not my first, but the one I want to get published) and I believe your quote from pg is possibly the most influential factor upon me.

    It's extremely difficult to sit down and write when I can easily make a living with what I can already do. However, writing is what I've always wanted to do and when I first committed I knew I was not going to get paid for it for a long time. I believe it's been about 7 years now, and I finally know it's time to finish the job.

    Right now, the reward for my current actions is likely to pay off in maybe 2-3 years. There's always the chance I could make a tasty advance, however this is highly unusual. The first book usually doesn't matter anyway, it won't be until my third that I get a true pay-off.

    I believe you have to have incredible determination, planning skills (so you do feel somewhat rewarded, I do this by printing out a chapter as soon as it's complete to give to my wife to read). It's very hard to do, however it helps a lot that I find doing it incredibly enjoyable. When you wake up dreaming from a different world, it's quite an amazing feeling.

    I also don't believe that sitting at a computer screen is work. My brother is an excellent programmer and from what I can perceive is that his processes are entirely the same as mine. In fact, I learnt a few tricks from him. Ideas and solutions usually appear when your mind is relaxed, simply piling on the pressure by stressing out isn't likely to help.

    However, if you don't have the motivation to start a project, I wouldn't necessarily call it procrastination. It's quite possibly it could be atychiphobia (Fear of Failure), as not starting a project is entirely different from losing your way during it as the start of a project is usually immense fun, until the real work kicks in.

    If anyone has a fear of failure, I don't believe I know how to help with that. I have no real fear of failure, I jump into everything from the deep end. I've lost a large number of projects along the way to attrition, all are failures but a failure teaches you and I have learnt a great deal. The first time I'd ever hit a golf ball was when I went out with my future father-in-law who had no clue I didn't play golf. I've found that sheer confidence can usually make up for nearly all lacking. So to anyone with a fear of failure, I'd say fail on purpose because after that it can only get better.

  407. Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator? 2009-04-27 05:55:17 spaghetti
    I've overcome procrastination by doing the following: 1) Never make a long TODO list. Having a long list makes choosing something on it overwhelming because you're simultaneously not choosing the other things. Often the path of least resistance is to choose nothing from the list. So keep short lists. After all anything that's really important will get done whether it's on a list or not. 2) When sitting down at your computer do a tiny bit of work first. Do this before surfing the net, checking email, etc. Often times this tiny bit of initial work will make doing more work easy. 3) Simply don't surf the net on 50% of days. Getting things done really comes down to choosing your project over, say, learning things by reading HN.

  408. Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator? 2009-04-27 06:09:28 _pius
    My advice isn't for procrastination in general (e.g. putting off paying bills or mowing the lawn), but for that special kind of procrastination that stops you from getting a business or important project going.

    Read "The War of Art" by Steven Pressman and internalize its message. You can finish it in a day. In a nutshell, the book describes procrastination and some other vices as embodiments of Resistance, an evil spirit that plagues anyone who tries to do anything worthwhile.

    The strategy Pressman outlines for fighting Resistance dovetails nicely with the techniques described in the other book I'd recommend, which is "The Creative Habit" by Twyla Tharp. With respect to procrastination, Tharp talks about recognizing (1) that creative work is still work and (2) the importance of developing solid daily routines and rituals so that you stop treating your work as something you do only when you're "inspired." She more or less adds details to the Pressman's description of the "hard hat mentality" necessary to get anything done.

    The hard hat mentality is that you don't procrastinate on your job or wait until you "want" to do it, you just put the hard hat on every day and do the work so that you can get paid (whatever "paid" means for you). You're doing it not because you're inspired or motivated; you're doing it because it's your job. Period.

    http://www.amazon.com/War-Art-Through-Creative-Battles/dp/04...

    http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Habit-Learn-Use-Life/dp/07432...

  409. Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator? 2009-04-27 06:28:49 menloparkbum
    I've come to believe that online distractions are legitimately addictive in the same way that gambling is addictive. I.e. a behavior that becomes all-encompassing to the point where it negatively affects the rest of your life.

    I say this because I used to think I was a major procrastinator and looked for all manner of tips and tricks to solve the problem. But I was trying to solve the wrong problem. if I turn off the internet entirely, I have no problem at all doing what I want to do during the day.

    However, if the internet is on, i can get into states where I not only don't do any of the work I need to do, I don't leave the house, I don't hang out with friends, I forget to eat, etc.

    I realized my online behavior was a bigger issue when I started screwing up dates because I was doing something on the internet. Blowing off a boring work task to watch youtube videos is one thing, but when I started missing out on getting laid because I was refreshing HN and getting sucked into a Wikipedia vortex, it realized I had a real problem.

    So, maybe you're not really procrastinating, maybe you're addicted to the internet. Maybe not, but it is something to consider.

  410. Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator? 2009-04-27 06:44:41 simc
    Well, I have had a similar problem. I haven't beaten it but here are some things I have found helps:

    1) Exercise: spending time going running or cycling helps relax and really makes you feel like you have more energy for other things.

    2) Being Organised: When you are organised you know what has to be done by when and what you can start working on right now. I find this lowers the amount of energy required to get started. A TODO list plus calender are probably enough but more high powered systems like GTD also might be worth considering.

    3) Embrace your fears, create safety: In my experience this is the root cause of procrastination. In my case it is the fear of failure, so we try to avoid the experience temporarily be engaging in other activities that don't remind us of our fear. This is covered in "The Now Habit", in which is called "creating safety". You might also might consider looking at something called "Acceptance and Commitment Therapy" which provides strategies for accepting which is aimed at overcoming "experiential avoidance". There is a good self help workbook "Get out of your mind and into your life".

    4) Internet blocker: I was unhappy with with Leechblock as its approach was a bit authoritarian. I wrote a firefox extention that made me type in "this browsing is for the purpose of completing my degree" or "i have worked hard and deserve a break", which unlocks the internet for 20 minutes. I can still browse the internet as much as I want but this helps remind me that some sorts of browsing can wait. It helps but I still don't win constantly (right now for instance).

    5) Time off, sharpen the saw, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. You could combine this with 1) and take up a sport, running, cycling, yoga, tai chi, etc. "The Now Habit" recommends scheduling free time to look forward to after your work is done.

  411. Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator? 2009-04-27 06:49:33 ahoyhere
    Read "The Path of Least Resistance." It's not about procrastination, but I assure you, it will change your life, in a small but critical way.

    The other books scratch the surface, vainly trying to solve the problem at the level of the behavior. They're like slapping bandaids on a stab wound.

    But the Path attacks it at the next lower level, just like that quote from Einstein: "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."

  412. Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator? 2009-04-27 07:14:17 lleger
    In early high school, I was a chronic procrastinator. I became really freaking good at it too.

    Then I got to college and had to start doing work. Not because college is hard (it's actually easier than my high school), but because I'm much busier now.

    To help balance things, I did a number of things. For one, I started putting everything into The Hit List. This works great and it helps me stay sane. Everything gets out of my head, which is important. The second was that I began practicing a process known as gatekeeping. Basically, you have to start making conscious decisions about what you allow into your work flow. (Shameless plug here: I wrote about gatekeeping on an introductory level here: http://loganleger.com/effective-gatekeeper/) This really helped me get down to business and focus.

  413. Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator? 2009-04-27 07:39:47 mlLK
    I think the way to "solve" the problem of procrastination is to let delight pull you instead of making a to-do list push you. Work on an ambitious project you really enjoy, and sail as close to the wind as you can, and you'll leave the right things undone.

    Does making a to-do list for my problem/project count as procrastination?

    I'm actually working on a simple to-do/task list manager right now as a final project for this PHP class I'm taking, but upon reading pg's article I almost feel as if I'm contributing to the problem of procrastination rather than solving it...

    pg sorts tasks according to value, (a) nothing, (b) something less important, or (c) something more important, rather than your typical formulation, according to state (1)do, (2)doing, (3)done...aren't the two formulations of task interdependent [with maybe the exception of nothing]?

  414. Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator? 2009-04-27 12:41:06 papersmith
    This worked pretty well for me:

    http://www.43folders.com/2005/09/08/kick-procrastinations-as...

  415. Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator? 2009-04-27 21:47:07 onceuponapriori
    Note: for the faint of heart not interested in reading my stupidly long post, feel free to scroll to the bottom to see the summary+

    One thing that drives me absolute crazy is waiting. I am very impatient. So any time I am performing a programming or administration task that requires waiting for more than 10 seconds or so, I end up looking for ANYTHING to ease my boredom. So when I need to kill 30 seconds while something processes, I end up distracted by reddit, blogs etc. Then, 30 minutes later, I realize I have been off on some tangent instead of working, and have essentially wasted 29 minutes of my work day.

    One recent approach I tried was less effective but perhaps still interesting thing I've done lately is fill in the gaps by learning my editor during long waits. In my case, this is vim (specifically macvim). You end up sometimes missing the completion of the task, but at least its arguably more productive than getting lulled to reddit sleep. And how else would I know that zomfg, vim has a built in genafyngr gb ebg13 command ("g?").

    But then one day I accidentally stumbled across a very profound idea. If I have something happening in the background that is just interesting enough to prevent me from getting bored, but not interesting enough to consume my attention, then I don't end up off on tangents every time I have to wait 30 seconds to 5 minutes for something to finish.

    Several different approaches work and I'm sure their efficacy varies according to individual habits and taste. I used to put on a movie in a tiny window and turn my attention to it when I get bored for a few minutes. But that takes up screen real estate and can be distracting. You're also less likely to notice that the task you were waiting for has completed...

    So how do I prevent the tangents but still manage to focus on my work? AUDIO BOOKS. Especially audio books that I've already read in paper or audio form. If it's the first time you are listening to it, it's easy to get distracted by the story since you don't want to miss it. But if you already know what happens, it's easy to completely ignore it while its playing in the background. Then, as soon as you click a button and strike a key that fires off a task that is going to take some time to finish, you turn your attention mostly to the audio book, but keep one eye on the task so you know it's over.

    This approach has done wonders for my productivity. Now, I tend to look at reddit, hacker news and google reader as a planned task, or just to kill time when I'm not already coding. Try it my friend. You will love it!!

    As an aside, about six months ago I switched from Windows land to Mac land, mostly because: 0) linux has caused me too much pain in my short cruel life 1) I am a languages geek, and it seems like they're available for mac before Windows 2) as a web developer, I often deploy my products on a linuxy server and macosx is much closer to linuxy then windows is. So until recently, I had a much more difficult time staying on task than I do now. Part of the motivation to change came from a reasonably careful assessment of my days, and how each was spent. I downloaded Slife http://www.slifelabs.com/ and Rescutime http://www.rescuetime.com/ ++, both of which can give you a pretty accurate picture of where your time goes when you are sitting on your computer.

    -----

    + Summary: Listen to audio books that you've already read while you code.

    ++ Unfortunately, I don't feel comfortable recommending one over the other. But I will say that Slife required less time to configure and maintain, but at least felt less flexible. I'd recommend either at least in the short term to help you exorcise your procrastination demons. My macbook was stolen about a month ago and I haven't (yet?) installed them on my new one. They were definitely instrumental though in inspiring me to become more productive.

  416. A Programmer's Work-day 2009-04-28 06:51:57 kiba
    While I don't have a job per see, I once did a 30 day experiment of time-boxing and scheduling.

    I did 4 hours every day. So each week, I clocked 28 hours per week. The hours were choked full of coding effort.

    Mostly, I encountered difficult obstacles that would slow me for a day or two. I couldn't just solve it siting around so I go around to coding different projects.

    It was actually a little understatement. I did a programming session in the middle of the experiment when I tried to develop a game in 48 hours for a contest. By the time I finish the project, I have a hard time protoyping newer versions of the game so I got something like last place.

    I did a the same thing for a week back in the beginning of April. I ended up releasing a new version of a game I made but I worked really late. Mostly it is because I procrastinate until the last minutes. So quality of life suffered due to that. So I learn to not only time-box but also schedule my time so I don't end up hacking at strange hours.

    I got time management down to a few set of tools that allow me to do a lot of solid coding. I can't get much better than that.

    The actual major hinderance is the fact that I am extremely slow in term of programming speed. Veteran hackers can complete trivial games even with unit tests in mere hours while it takes me days or even weeks to accomplish the same feat.

  417. Ask HN: I'm in 10th grade and I hate school. Any suggestions? 2009-04-29 01:26:29 screwperman
    Just to put my advice in perspective: I'm an Indian who will possibly be attending (a pretty good) public university this year. I'm the typical HN/reddit geek: started programming when I was 9, know around 9 programming languages, quite some bit of theory, etc. etc. In school in India, I was bored all the time, got mediocre grades, and had donkeys for teachers. Here's what I feel you should do:

    1. Challenge yourself

    So, you've got to choose from these kinds of activities:

      A: Activities that you enjoy doing
  B: Activities that *might* impress (say) the college admissions staff
    I mostly did stuff exclusive to type A; bad idea. Of course, never do anything that comes only within B. Find what comes under the union of the two.

    You're in America: you don't hunt for opportunities, you are flooded with them. Someone on this thread recommended "taking every AP exam available". Sure, do that: it's really important. But that's not ambitious at all: AP exams cover only about 10% of what Indian entrance examinations do, and you get to use "calculators" and "appendices" (more like textbooks). Do something real, like aspire to be an IMO/IOI/IPhO/IChO/ISEF medalist (if you don't know what those are, shame on you).

    2. Manage your time

    I was absolutely dismal at this. But I've started doing it for a month and it really does wonders: I have stopped procrastinating and started to feel less stressed out. I'd recommend you watch the late Randy Pausch's other lecture (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0) or read Getting Things Done. Most of HN can give better advice.

    3. Skip school (a lot)

    It took me a lot of effort to get my parents to allow me to do this. Alas, it was too late then. Usually, teachers do more harm than good. Read the right books instead of attending their classes.

  418. Poll: Male or female? 2009-05-04 06:03:18 jurjenh
    Then again, people of a like mind tend to be found near each other, so the minority squared is likely to be an underestimation.

    It could also be that women tend to procrastinate less due to better multi-tasking skills, but that's just wild speculation on my part...

  419. Poll: Male or female? 2009-05-04 12:41:01 gambling8nt
    Part of what makes this sort of thing a touchy subject for so many people is that, in the event of this sort of process being practiced (1) men who aren't selected feel angry about the nature of the process instead of feeling that they need to improve themselves to improve their chances for the next round, and (2) women who are selected are sometimes (often?) demeaned by men as needing additional assistance in order to make the cut (this is contrary to a common view I have encountered; that this sort of thing is fundamentally victimless). People subject to either of these circumstances (or close to such a person) are likely to have strong feelings on this subject.

    As to why I personally supplied such a detailed response; it's mostly an opportunity to procrastinate by trying to change some minds regarding an issue important to me instead of working on something I've been avoiding.

  420. Poll: Male or female? 2009-05-04 17:20:16 SwellJoe
    As to why I personally supplied such a detailed response; it's mostly an opportunity to procrastinate by trying to change some minds regarding an issue important to me instead of working on something I've been avoiding.

    We're all more alike than we are different around here, aren't we? I've been working on, and not enjoying, some PHP code all weekend long. Procrastination is the mother of silly arguments on the Internets, it seems.

  421. Milton Glaser: Ten Things I Have Learned 2009-05-05 01:58:22 edw519
    From #3:

    "If you are more tired then you have been poisoned. If you have more energy you have been nourished. The test is almost infallible and I suggest that you use it for the rest of your life."

    I will. This explains so much. Not just with other people, but with everything. May even shed some insight to a little "procrastination" problem a few of us here share.

    And as a hacker, I really appreciate a binary rule to evaluate something so complex. Thank you!

  422. Ask HN: How do you manage your news reading time? 2009-05-05 23:31:49 sireat
    I use HNs no procrastination feature, but still find myself refreshing the page too often as the 3hour self imposed limit draws closer. I am thinking of upping minaway: to 240, but raising maxvisit to 30...

  423. Ask HN: How do you manage your news reading time? 2009-05-05 23:34:59 pasbesoin
    I notice a lot of repetition across the sites I frequent. I'm asking myself, who are the best aggregators, of both story and comments. If they are a bit behind some of the other sites in timing (e.g. Slashdot), perhaps that is a good thing, as it lets the "truthiness" gel and the counterpoints to accumulate.

    I'm not saying I've succeeded, but that's my current thinking.

    Also, I'm using news browsing way too much as avoidance. Inasmuch, it's an emotional activity. Acknowledging this allows me to tackle it more directly. (Some recent... news stories, argh! -- discussed an apparent strong correlation between emotional intelligence and procrastination. They got me thinking...)

    EDIT: I should say "negative correlation", as in, the higher the EI (however that's measured), the lower the incidence of procrastination. It may not be rigorous, but I've found it useful to consider.

  424. How to beat that exhausted feeling 2009-05-07 02:21:05 ondra
    It's making me fucking sleepy. I can't procrastinate well enough now.

  425. Ask HN: Review my idea and free web app (for site monitoring) 2009-05-09 15:09:42 esonica
    I like the idea too, but thought I would offer some comments about the design. Just thinking out loud, so don't take anything personally ;)

    I am not sold on the logo, firstly the icon that looks kinda like a lint ball (is it meant to be the 'cloud'?) and the wording for sucuri, my brain insists it starts with SLI whenever I glance at it... I like the idea of a stylized font, but I don't think its quite there yet.

    Also the menu, although simple and usable, seems like it could be a bit more prominent/flashier. It just doesn't seem to match the layout... hard to explain this one.

    I like the design/layout of the content areas, nice CSS work, but perhaps the login box text could be a little larger or clearer. If you're having trouble fitting it in (hence the small text), try losing "Address" off Email Address, its implied enough these days.

    Under the form elements to enter your site address, the text seems very small, for something so important. Beef that up a bit, its part of your sales pitch, don't hide it away :)

    Actually... while I sat here procrastinating, I did up a quick mockup of what I am talking about... I thought you should make the products you are promoting for more prominent,

    Check it out at : http://www.esonica.com/sucuri.jpg

  426. Ask HN: Hacker News Digest? 2009-05-09 23:55:39 Tichy
    Even now I don't think everybody visits the "new" site. Maybe the digest could also include all submissions of the day (not sure how many there are on average).

    I just imagine it could help with procrastination problems.

  427. Ask HN: project ideas for a noob 2009-05-10 18:02:13 zc
    Stop procrastinating. Just make something.

  428. Brainstorm HN: Outlandish Startup Ideas Pool 2009-05-11 08:42:40 rokhayakebe
    5 Star Jail Hotel (good for procrastinators).

    Pay us and we will lock you up for as many days as you paid. You get one hour per day to hang out within our establishment. Breakfast, Lunch and Diner are eaten with other prisoners. The rest of time we will lock you up in your room (with internet connection). Phones lines are only open for x hours. Emails programs are blocked most of the time... You see where I am heading with this.

    It could be good for someone with a deadline to accomplish something.

  429. Brainstorm HN: Outlandish Startup Ideas Pool 2009-05-11 11:03:09 dxjones
    Can a boss send an employee to procrastinator jail to make sure they finish their task by deadline?

  430. An Idea for Good Procrastination 2009-05-11 19:26:29 v4us
    We are procrastinating too :-) I think it is an information adiction.

  431. Don’t! The secret of self-control 2009-05-11 22:52:29 badger7
    It's the secret to avoiding procrastination too - if you can't stop mulling over all the other things floating around your head, then don't - just start. The other things will be replaced fairly quickly with what you're trying to do, and there you go - you've distracted yourself from your distractions and are now being productive :)

  432. Why We Procrastinate and How to Stop 2009-05-15 16:38:49 antirez
    Fortunately I've the definitive answer to the Procrastination problem, and I want to share it with you:

    if you procrastinate you are working on things you don't care. And if you are in this condition the procrastination is the minor of your trouble, you are wasting your professional life. So... switch to something you really care, and for you to procrastinate will be to work on your things, because they are really interesting to you.

  433. Why We Procrastinate and How to Stop 2009-05-15 18:12:36 badger7
    This is an oversimplification. I have a project that I care about immensely and still procrastinate on. It's because I want to get it right first time, and spend my time mulling it over instead of just doing it. I'm working on shaking that approach :)

  434. Why We Procrastinate and How to Stop 2009-05-15 20:35:37 jnorthrop
    You seem to be dismissing the advice in the article -- take big tasks in small bites. Your advice is good but it doesn't cover all situations. Sometimes the work is just a means to an end.

    For example currently I'm working on a side project that I'm procrastinating badly on -- the work is tedious and uninteresting. But I need the project to help pay for home renovations that are important to me. I could do the renovations myself (and I've done it before) but you see I can make 2x or more money per hour than I'd pay a skilled professional to work on my house. In the end, while I appreciate your advice it is only applicable for career decisions.

  435. Why We Procrastinate and How to Stop 2009-05-15 20:38:30 nop
    I think that if people followed your advice academia would essentially be deserted and not only by students but by teachers as well. :)

    I don't procrastinate because I don't care, I procrastinate because there are multiple things I care about. A few of those happens to be playing games, reading hacker news, having a god awful many feeds in my newsreader, drinking beer and having more then one project at any time. Although I have the personality type that does things at the end of a deadline and I know people who aren't like that think of us as lazy and unstructured but it's not like that at all. I found this to be extremely insightful once: http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

    I also doubt there are many (if any) that has a job that's interesting all the time. :)

  436. Why We Procrastinate and How to Stop 2009-05-15 21:05:51 ryanwaggoner
    False. In fact, just about the opposite is true for some people. I don't know if you're a procrastinator, but I am, and one of the things I've discovered about myself is that my procrastination is closely linked with my perfectionism. The things I really care about are things that I want to be perfect, so I put off doing them. Example, let's say I want to redesign my blog. I start off with a couple simple improvements in my mind. However, I really want this redesign to be perfect. Pretty soon, I've turned a small, simple task into a huge project and the burden of accomplishing it is just too large, so I put it off. Do I really care about this redesign? Yeah, I care way too much about it. If I didn't care, I'd just knock it out in a few minutes.

    I've since learned that I have to force myself to accept the "good enough" solution, to work in iterations, and to do timeboxing (I use the pomodoro method) so that I just get started on something, without worrying too much about the big picture. Most of all though, it really does come down to just mental discipline, to recognizing when you're putting something off (which itself can be difficult to a life-long procrastinator) and forcing yourself to just do it now. Sadly, like a recovering drug addict, I'm afraid it's something I'll always have to fight against.

  437. Why We Procrastinate and How to Stop 2009-05-15 21:16:45 ecaron
    I think a better resource on the topic is Dan Ariely, his 4 minute video on the topic at http://bigthink.com/ideas/dan-ariely-how-can-people-overcome..., and his book Predictably Irrational (http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Hidden-Forces-D... - specifically chapter 6). If you're able to take the time to watch the brief video, you'll more than likely buy the book - its amazingly insightful * incredibly useful even to coders.

    obligatory joke about procrastination, mild chuckles all around

  438. Why We Procrastinate and How to Stop 2009-05-15 21:27:16 justlearning
    I think the commenter meant his post in a sarcastic way - related to procrastination itself. (i didn't vote it up)

    anyhow...you stand right in your assertion - comments like these don't add to the discussion.

  439. Why We Procrastinate and How to Stop 2009-05-15 21:41:27 cujo
    That's not procrastination. That's planning.

  440. Why We Procrastinate and How to Stop 2009-05-15 22:13:33 sofal
    This is absolutely true for me as well. I'll turn something as simple as writing a blog post into a gigantic project because I'm too strict with what I output. If the open source tool I'm working on doesn't perform quite as well as I'd hoped, I have pessimistic visions of it being wholly useless. If a homework problem stumps me, I simply cannot skip to the next problem or else I feel I've been defeated. Pessimism, combined with really caring, is strongly connected to procrastination.

  441. Why We Procrastinate and How to Stop 2009-05-15 22:14:35 rgoddard
    A better way to think of it, is that procrastination is a symptom of another problem. You are referring to one potential problem i.e. not actually liking what you are doing. Some of the others responded with the problem being perfectionism, and wanting to do something that they cared about correctly. Right now I am procrastinating from fixing a bug because I cannot think of how to test it adequately and I do not want to just give it to the customer and hope that it works. Procrastination may not be the optimal solution, but it may be much better then just ignoring the problem and pushing ahead with what you think you should be doing.

  442. Why We Procrastinate and How to Stop 2009-05-15 22:35:59 ryanwaggoner
    It might have been funny the first time, and mildly funny the 2nd time, but now every post about procrastination on every social news site on the web gets a couple of these comments. It's just noise after awhile.

  443. Why We Procrastinate and How to Stop 2009-05-15 22:40:42 mseebach
    In most cases, the path to success contains patches of work that's hard to get really excited about.

    Of course, this argument is invalid if you're able to focus on the ultimate reward, rather than the task at hand, but I just find that leads to more procrastination.

    One personal trait I admire (and don't have) is the ability to just pull yourself together and get an unpleasant task done. This wins many friends and much social capital.

  444. Why We Procrastinate and How to Stop 2009-05-15 23:14:07 msluyter
    One thing I've wondered about procrastination: we view it as a problem, and in modern task oriented work environments, it probably is. (I'm doing it right now!) But what if procrastination is actually a positive evolutionary adaptation? Perhaps by not investing precious resources in certain tasks procrastinators actually did better in certain prehistoric contexts? I'm hard pressed to think of good examples[1], but I find the idea intriguing.

    [1] Ug the procrastinating caveman takes a nap in the cave, while Og the go-getter decides to go hunting. Og freezes to death. Ug waits until it's warmer and survives. This only seems convincing if Og's chances of dying were rather significant, in which case it seems other psychological factors would be at work, like increased social status by bringing in food, etc...

  445. Why We Procrastinate and How to Stop 2009-05-15 23:48:47 TheSOB88
    I think it's more likely that procrastination is a result of our internal reward system. Things considered work are not considered fun, and therefore not done. I mean, have you ever heard of a person putting off masturbation? The only things that people procrastinate on are things that don't seem fun.

  446. Why We Procrastinate and How to Stop 2009-05-15 23:56:06 tekhneek
    Just enjoy your life, stop worrying about it. If you do it you do it, if you don't you don't. No matter how many blogs you read no matter how many comments you post the bottom line will come down to done/not done.

    It's 50% vs 100% Don't be the guy that runs 2.5k in a 5k marathon.

    Procrastinating is probably better for you than everyone makes it out to be. If you never procrastinated you would look at sleep as some sort of slavery, you would look at relaxation as a disease and eventually it would spiral out of control.

  447. Why We Procrastinate and How to Stop 2009-05-16 00:33:10 msluyter
    Side note: I've been able to harness my natural tendency to procrastinate to be more frugal and avoid impulse buys. Whenever I'm at a store and see something that I don't really need but am tempted to buy, I just deflect the intent by thinking "ok, I'll just buy it later." It's fairly easy to put buying stuff off, because it's sort of a pain (standing in line at the register, etc...)

    Typically, I generally just forget about whatever it was I wanted and so I avoid the purchase altogether. If I do find myself obsessing over it later (rare) then it's probably something I really wanted and I'll eventually go back and get it. This mainly works with stuff that's in the "I don't really want it but would be tempted to buy it" category.

  448. Why We Procrastinate and How to Stop 2009-05-16 00:57:27 electromagnetic
    Procrastination does appear to have evolutionary benefits. If you only hunt when you're hungry, not only are you determined but you're not wasting resources. If I go out every day and kill a deer because I feel like it, and not because I'm hungry (I'd assume a fully grown deer would probably last me more than a week) I'm going to cause myself major problems. Either A) the deer will get wise to me and any deer anywhere will run at the instant sight/smell of a human; or B) I'll kill all the deer and then I'm stuck trying to kill rats for food.

    Collecting firewood would likely have a similar problem as option B). When humans get it in their minds to cut down trees for anything other than necessity, historically very bad things have happened to us: the prime example of this is Easter Island. A lesser known example is the Old Kingdom deforestation, which is probably why none of Khufu's descendent's beat his pyramid. The scary thing about both of these incidents, especially Easter Island, is that people would have noticed a rapid increase in wind speeds as the trees disappears, they'd have noticed their crops failing (due to the wind) and yet the island is so small that the person who cut down the very last tree could clearly have seen it was the only tree on the island.

    I'd say in your example Og the go-getter would likely have killed off all the major wildlife around him such that he had a multi-mile trek every day to gather food. Instead of Ug the procrastinator, who could probably walk outside and find a deer foraging on the berries he'd been too lazy to pick.

  449. Why We Procrastinate and How to Stop 2009-05-16 01:10:34 Tamerlin
    I personally think that you're both right.

    I find myself procrastinating at work because what I do for work isn't intellectually engaging, and with tasks that I want to work on for myself (like building my web site) I get hung up on details and make no progress.

    Learning to set smaller milestones has helped with the latter, but the former is something I'm stuck with for the moment. My web site is a step to escaping from that grind, but it's going to take time... so I'm taking advantage of the fact that my job isn't sufficiently challenging to require much thought, and therefore saving my energy for things that actually matter, which is everything else. :)

  450. Why We Procrastinate and How to Stop 2009-05-16 05:21:36 jacobolus
    Your implication that Easter Island would have been fine if people just procrastinated more is pretty thin on evidence and reasoning.

  451. Why We Procrastinate and How to Stop 2009-05-16 05:23:12 jcl
    I must admit I, too, was expecting another fluffy "just do it" article, but I was surprised to find that this is not one of those.

    Rather, they are saying: "If you think about about the concrete, specific steps to doing a task, you will be much more likely to complete it than if you think about the task in general -- and we've done the research to prove it."

    This is much better than other procrastination articles, which are generally speculative punditry and attempts to copy well-known successful people.

  452. Ask HN: Great design without designer on-board? 2009-05-16 08:47:42 dazzawazza
    Here are some tips from what I have learned as a coder that has been forced to design:

    1 - find another product that you like the design for, look for something simple and with an appropriate colour scheme for your market. Use this as a starting design.

    2 - Read smashing magazine for typography and layout tips.... actually just read it all the time. It's a great resource.

    3 - As with code design, keep your interface simple. Initially avoid gimmicks through JS, just make something that is clean and works.

    4 - Release the best interface you can to your users and ask for feedback. Some users offer great feed back others don't. Don't be afraid to ignore some feedback but most feedback has a kernel of truth to it.

    5 - As with code, iterate quickly and ask for more feedback.

    6 - Don't ever think you can't design, everyone starts somewhere, everyone makes mistakes. Stop procrastinating and get on with it.

    7 - Sometimes there is necessary complexity. Apple are famous for simplicity but if you've ever used Final Cut Pro you will know that complex things are actually complex.

    Good luck.

  453. Meditation: Why Bother? 2009-05-17 08:54:25 debt
    First of all, starting a company is not socially acceptable. Having less money cuts out a lot of my options. It means I can't go out as much with friends. After enough times of, "Sorry, guys, can't go out, I have to work.", it becomes very socially unacceptable.

    Secondly, and most importantly, I do not view a free-for-all frat party/charade/parade as winning. They aren't smart. They aren't funny or clever. They are definitely NOT winning. I am definitely not jealous or envious of their situations. Maybe a bit jealous that they get all the girls, but I can look past that once I see one of them break a bathroom mirror over their head.

    A party at Google is a party of people who "got it". They went after what they wanted and got it. That simple. It's not at all a party made up of mindless drones that the author of this article is talking about. I wouldn't even call a party of Googlers a party unless they were doing body shots off Sergey and singing Sweet Caroline at the top of their lungs. But then what? They aren't mindless drones, but they can still party hard. At this point, the author would say, "Perhaps, while they seem to believe that they have gotten what they wanted, they actually have not. Look how they party. They seem to want more."

    If what these party drones are doing is "winning", then they are certainly in the wrong in my mind. Ah, it has just hit me. I know what "ressentiment" is.

    It's seeing amazing potential going to waste and "transmuting" my disgust for that into a moral imperative to actively prevent that from happening to myself or anyone I care about.

    You're right I have ressentiment, but it's for everyone who's potential is going to waste. It's for all the smart people who got caught with a few grams of pot, or some smart girl who only married the guy because he got her pregnant or the philosophy major who spends more time and energy procrastinating, writing HN comments, then he does finishing his thesis or socializing or socializing about his thesis or socializing at frat parties while expounding on his great ideas in his thesis.

    I would think the latter being the most beneficial at least so I have someone to talk to at those damn parties.

    EDIT: All I'm saying, is that there should be nothing wrong with believing television is terrible, pop music sucks, and belligerent drunks are losers. All are a waste of time, money, resources better not spent at all. If Nietzsche says I have "ressentiment", then fuck it, that's what I have. If meditation furthers my distance from those things, then that's what I'll do.

  454. Ask HN: What apps are essential for mac? 2009-05-18 01:11:37 zimbabwe
    I'm going to be a fuddy-duddy and say: most of these apps are not essential for the Mac. Lots of them are nice, but you can skip them entirely when you're just getting started.

    Here are the ones I consider absolute essentials for my daily work:

    MegaZoomer - http://ianhenderson.org/megazoomer.html - lets you full-screen zoom any application. That mixed with TextEdit gives you the best word processor you'll ever need.

    Quicksiler - linked all over - this will fill in every hole you have in your computer usage. I use it to fix a lot of shortcomings in iTunes, for instance, and while I don't use it as insanely as some people do, even light usage makes your life a lot easier. It's also a full-featured file browser, which is excellent.

    Perian - http://perian.org/ - makes your life a lot easier when you're watching videos or listening to music, without forcing a reliance on the ugly VLC.

    GlimmerBlocker - http://glimmerblocker.org/ - Unless you use Firefox, this adds every feature you'll need to every browser you've got. (Firefox is an awful browser that rebuilds a lot of Mac features from the ground up, and so it isn't affected by this.) It blocks ads (selectively, so you can allow the ads you don't mind), blocks entire sites, and adds retroactive functionality to sites. The big one for me is the Youtube downloader.

    Growl - http://growl.info/ - This one's really easy to abuse, but if you set it to notify you of all the really important things - FTP file uploads and long processes and so on - then you get a very nice way of keeping yourself informed of all your computer's goings-on.

    Those are the ones that I absolutely need for my Mac. Here are the ones that are obscure-ish and rarely recommended and yet are terrific:

    Max - http://sbooth.org/Max/ - converts every format but wma, so your library stays neat and organized without any complaints about iTunes.

    Freedom - http://macfreedom.com/ - disables the Internet, so you can't procrastinate at all.

    FuzzyClock - http://www.objectpark.org/FuzzyClock.html - makes your clock much more humane.

    Chax - http://ksuther.com/chax/ - Fixes a few things in iChat to make it an acceptable chat system (I really dislike Adium for a number of reasons).

  455. Ask HN: Your Hacker Workspace 2009-05-18 20:31:37 silentbicycle
    Furthermore, there are very diminishing returns in obsessing about your tools themselves. Sometimes, tinkering with your emacs config (or whatever) is just procrastinating.

  456. Ask HN: Your Hacker Workspace 2009-05-18 20:49:51 pookleblinky
    Sometimes, though, this procrastination does wonders. Like bonzai tree gardening, or a Zen gravel garden.

    As someone who uses Gentoo, Xmonad, Zshell, and Emacs, there's more than enough config code to tweak than there are hours in the day. The happy result is that if I'm stumped, I always know I can pop open a buffer and hack something a bit.

    Hell, the alternative to wasting your time in a fully hackable environment is wasting your time on the interwebs.

    If you're going to procrastinate, you could do worse than by hacking .emacs. Like Runescape.

  457. Ask HN: Your Hacker Workspace 2009-05-18 22:57:35 silentbicycle
    I don't think the problem is so much that it's procrastination, but it's procrastination that seems like work. Like people noodling around with their "productivity systems". Having the option to customize things is worthwhile (I use Emacs, dwm, and screen, and have accumulated a lot of settings for each), but it's a means to an end.

    When I'm hitting a dead end, I usually find it more helpful to get away from the computer entirely and go for a bike ride, work out, talk to someone, have some fruit, etc., and see the problem with a fresh mind later.

  458. Ask HN: What % of friends on Facebook are friends? 2009-05-22 17:39:29 baguasquirrel
    It's a mixed bag. I know plenty of folks in college who were good at mining connections. Everyone made "friends" with them because it was thought these kids would "succeed". These were the folks who could rack up 600 connections, but we all knew that they weren't friends with all those people.

    I personally straddled that line myself, though in a different way. Being a leader of any student organization is likely to boost your friend count by around 100, and I had held important positions in two. But at the end of the day, that's not how many close friends you have.

    Demographics can also make a difference. If you went to a big high school-- say 800 kids per class --you'd probably chit-chat with around 200 other kids on a regular basis. I had friends who did events with other schools in upstate, and that kicked up the contact list even more. Things like that can inordinately inflate your friend count on FB. But again, you were probably only close to maybe twelve of all those kids you knew from high school.

    In all, I feel that Facebook was a tool to keep track of all the people you met in college (while you were still there). After you leave school, it becomes a tool to keep in touch with them occasionally. The other major use seems to be procrastination and banter. By no means is it a true count of how many friends you have.

  459. High IQ Is No Help for Those With ADHD 2009-05-23 08:05:16 cstejerean
    "It is characterized by periods of intense concentration and other periods of complete inability to focus."

    "They tended to procrastinate and be forgetful and had difficulty in harnessing their talent to complete many daily tasks"

    Crap, I guess I really might have ADHD. Would effective and safe is the prescription medication?

  460. High IQ Is No Help for Those With ADHD 2009-05-23 08:21:14 tokenadult
    "It is characterized by periods of intense concentration and other periods of complete inability to focus."

    "They tended to procrastinate and be forgetful and had difficulty in harnessing their talent to complete many daily tasks"

    What's scary for parents is that a lot of that sounds like "teenage boy," and I'm not sure how well I understand differential diagnosis of ADD as contrasted with adolescent brain restructuring. I know young people whose parents have told me that the young people have ADD, and some of those young people are BRILLIANT. Some other young people I know seem every bit as disorganized, but who am I to diagnose someone, even my own child, without a lot of clinical experience?

  461. High IQ Is No Help for Those With ADHD 2009-05-23 09:30:17 wheels
    Not predictably. Right now often jumping into a debugging session I'll have a glass of wine or so, but historically if I look back over the most productive phases of my life they've varied between times where I didn't drink at all to where I drank too much.

    The most effective coping mechanisms have been combinations of removing distractions and sometimes short meditation. More recently I find if I'm distracted that going running for 15 minutes will help clear my head. If I find myself procrastinating too much I often run Freedom.app for an hour or two at a stretch to help drop me into the zone. When I'm working in an office I tend to start extremely early or extremely late so that I'm alone at the office for long stretches. When I'm working from home (I live with my co-founder) I tend to shut the door for long stretches and occasionally notice that I shift my sleeping schedule so that a large block of the time where we're awake is mutually exclusive.

  462. High IQ Is No Help for Those With ADHD 2009-05-23 15:07:17 bokonist
    I've always been puzzled. Is ADD an actual disorder? Or is it the normal state of most humans? I have never been diagnosed with ADD. Nor have I ever thought of trying to get diagnosed. But I identify with your comment. In fact, your work habits actually seem pretty normal. I think a lot of people get most of their work done when they are "in the zone" and then spend the other rest of the time procrastinating and wasting time.

  463. High IQ Is No Help for Those With ADHD 2009-05-23 15:47:03 grandalf
    I was diagnosed very with mild ADD and have had my IQ tested and it's pretty darn high.

    I went to the doctor and asked for Ritalin once during college and I found that I used it just like caffeine -- I'd be extra focused for a while on getting things done and then I'd realize I was staying awake way later than I planned. But I'd be tired the next day, and so the Ritalin seemed like it was more of a stimulant than a treatment, with one pill equal to about 10 shots of espresso.

    I never refilled the Ritalin prescription -- it was no fun being medicated and staying up late and then being tired the next day. I noticed that I was far better at doing mundane tasks that required focus, but FAR less curious and less prone to switching tasks if I was bored.

    Notably, I read tons of linux man files at the time and learned how to use a lot of command line utilities that I'd never had the patience to learn before.

    But I'd also find that I'd read articles that were actually quite boring and upon finishing them I'd regret wasting the time.

    There are a lot of occupations where my Ritalinized state would be an advantage. But one thing I love about my current approach to life is that I am able to leverage my own strengths. Sometimes being a bit scattered is a huge benefit. I also get the "hyper focus" common to people with ADD and there are days when 4 hour chunks go by as if they were 10 minutes and I realize I've accomplished incredible feats of productivity (and yet I remain energized).

    Once in a while (maybe once every 2 weeks) I have a very scattered day. I have come to appreciate those days as good opportunities to restore balance. I use them to do extra exercise, eat extra healthy food, pick up the guitar, take an afternoon nap, etc. They are my brain's way of telling me that it wants a change of scenery.

    I also find that regular, vigorous exercise and a bit of caffeine in the morning is far more effective than Ritalin was at giving me the ability to avoid being too scattered.

    The best insight (which I actually learned from a comment here on HN last year) is that when I do find myself procrastinating it's my brain's way of telling me that I'm not happy with some decision I've made -- maybe an approach to some code, etc. So I use it as a cue to revisit what I've done and most of the time sure enough there is something lurking that was bugging me, and once I address it my productivity is back to normal.

    Bottom line: I view mild ADD as a huge asset. I am extremely productive and while I have not yet managed to achieve my desired level of financial success I think I have plenty of ability to get done what I want to get done and tremendously enjoy the creative process and focused work involved.

  464. Déformation professionnelle 2009-05-23 19:31:44 gurtwo
    Unless I see a convincing citation, I strongly doubt this expression is originally french. As said in other comments, equivalent expressions exist in Spanish, Italian or German, where they are frequently used.

    Conversely, I find interesting that very common expressions in the english language, like "procrastination", are almost unknown in Europe (saved the UK and IE). Spanish, for example, has the perfectly correct term "procrastinación", but it's very seldom used.

  465. You and Your Research 2009-05-26 06:40:40 edw519
    This reminds me of the first pg essay I ever read, "Good and Bad Procrastination," which also references Richard Hamming. This essay directed me to his site, and eventually here.

    http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

    I like pg's treatment a little more. He distills it down to one sentence, "What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you?"

    This single sentence has pretty much directed much of my work since then. It's so simple it's almost counter-intuitive. I have designed systems to sort "problems" by descending value and taught my users to just work on #1 until it's fixed. But it wasn't until reading pg's corollary to Hamming's work that I did it myself.

    Thanks for reminding me.

  466. My Language Is More Agile Than Yours: A Study of Arc 2009-05-28 16:44:39 matth2
    If it takes X characters to achieve something in language A, and X*4 to achieve the same thing in BLUB, I don't think this means BLUB is 4 times slower to develop in than A.

    When I develop software, most of the big delays, and excuses for procrastination are in forcing my brain into action over the higher level concepts. I find a lot of the extra lines of code required when using BLUB can be written at high speed, with little "hurt" to the brain.

    I'm not saying BLUB is just as fast to develop with, I'm just saying the benefit isn't as good as number of lines ratio good.

  467. Ask HN: How to stay focused? 2009-06-01 19:53:08 Feeble
    You can look at it as an agile process. You don't model your whole project at once, but when you start a Pomodoro you commit to working focused for 25 minutes. When the time is up you can prioritize differently or make a push on an unplanned item.

    Also, I totally agree on your in-the-zone statement. I currently only use Pomodoro when I am having a slow day and I don't want to let the procrastination get the best of me. When I am in the zone I don't need Pomodoro to help me! =)

  468. Ask HN: Where do I go from here? 2009-06-01 22:03:35 imgabe
    This really can't be emphasized enough. I repeatedly fell into this trap of thinking, "If I just master this one more discipline, I'll finally know enough to build what I want". What you end up with is a daunting pile of textbooks to read and no real progress. It's a very insidious form of procrastination because it seems like a good and worthwhile thing to do. Of course, it IS good and worthwhile to learn new things, but learning alone doesn't produce any tangible results.

    In the end, you can get a lot further than you think by just puzzling things out for yourself. Try something, see where it fails and adjust as necessary. You'll learn as you go and you'll have the advantage of knowing that what you learned is actually useful knowledge, because it solved a real life problem you encountered.

  469. An open letter to Jason Calacanis 2009-06-02 09:05:15 staunch
    There are downsides to being a great salesman. Sometimes you get what you want. Raising tens of millions of dollars and starting a company has got to be fun. Facing the reality of building a boring ass SEO company? Not so much. Fortunately, he's got enough runway and personal wealth to procrastinate for the next couple years. Maybe a few cheap tricks and shortcuts will keep his traffic growing enough to keep his investors off his back. No? Shit.

  470. Ask HN: What Web apps increase your productivity? 2009-06-04 22:58:43 crocowhile
    I am new to this place so I am not sure I know what you are talking about. Is it about motivation? Reading about successful stories makes you less procrastinating or what?

  471. Ask HN: What Web apps increase your productivity? 2009-06-04 23:19:54 metachor
    I think what edw519 is saying is that reading certain stories on HN induces a paradigm-shift in his/her thinking. This leads not to a slight gain in productivity or slight reduction in procrastination, but instead to a whole new way of working or thinking that completely dominates his/her previous mode of operation.

  472. The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005) 2009-06-14 13:35:14 tc
    I'd hate for someone reading your comment to miss the article because they assume it is just a piece about procrastination.

    This article is a compelling story that suggests there is a moral imperative to engage in anti-aging research, and that we have become blind, in our acceptance of our current mortality, to both the suffering that it causes, and to the fact that we can now hope to do something about it.

  473. Caterina Fake's Hunch.com launches 2009-06-16 00:04:10 pierrefar
    I loved "Do you procrastinate?" and one answer was "I'll come back to this question later". Nice.

  474. Ask HN: Thoughts on performance-enhancing drugs? 2009-06-16 21:20:03 dalecarnegie
    Posting anonymously

    I recently got a prescription for Adderall. I've had trouble with procrastination and some other behavior typically associated with adult ADHD.

    On a typical day, I'll eat a big breakfast, then take a pill. About an hour later I'll get a sense of euphoria and go into the zone. The euphoria wears off after another hour or so but for the next few hours I'm able to concentrate really well on whatever I'm doing.

    The most noticeable side effect for me has been loss of appetite. It's kinda creepy for me to look at my watch, realize I haven't eaten in 8 hours, and not feel hungry at all. I also notice sometimes that I'm thirsty, but don't bother getting a drink because I'm too engrossed in whatever I'm working on.

    greengirl512 is right though. I still have to force myself to start working. But once I start I don't stop. It's the same for books and video games too. In a way it's like replacing ADHD with OCD.

    I think it's worth trying. If you're 21 and in college it shouldn't be hard to get a pill, but I would recommend scheduling an appointment with a doctor and telling him or her what you've told us. With most health insurance, a month's prescription will cost you what a single pill would cost you from a dealer.

  475. Ask HN: Thoughts on performance-enhancing drugs? 2009-06-16 21:27:01 fendale
    I would say all drugs have side effects and should be avoided.

    If you are always procrastinating on your studies, maybe it's because you just are not very interested in what you are studying? Getting through a 3 or 4 year degree you have little interest in is a very tough task. I have seen very smart friends fail just about every CS exam they took for this very reason - they had no interest, no will power to study and ended up failing.

  476. Ask HN: Thoughts on performance-enhancing drugs? 2009-06-16 21:31:05 aarongough
    My first question would be:

    Do you enjoy what you're doing?

    I've noticed that most people who complain about having trouble with motivation, willpower and procrastination when it comes to their job (or 'occupation' in the case of a student like yourself) actually hate what they are doing.

    If you don't enjoy the things you should be spending your time on then obviously it's going to be hard to get the motivation to do them.

    My first point of recourse in this situation would be to examine exactly what your motivations are behind taking this course. Is it because you love it or because your parents told you to, or because you couldn't think of anything else to do? If the answer is anything other than "Because I enjoy it" then you probably need to re-examine your decision.

  477. Ask HN: Thoughts on performance-enhancing drugs? 2009-06-16 22:09:54 lallysingh
    Frankly I'd go after the motivation/procrastination problem. If you're 21/EE, then you're probably hitting close to burnout.

    I spent many years of undergrad & grad school drinking to vent stress, but eventually it wasn't doing it for me. I got a motorcycle and I picked up a martial art. I haven't been happier.

    Look around for better ways to vent stress, not work better under excess stress. The former's a lot easier and more pleasant than the second.

  478. Ask HN: Thoughts on performance-enhancing drugs? 2009-06-17 00:38:20 donaldc
    I've isolated the problem to be with my will power - I never take initiatives, and I keep procrastinating on doing homework.

    Drugs will not fix this problem. You need to improve your willpower and your study habits.

  479. Ask HN: Thoughts on performance-enhancing drugs? 2009-06-17 04:55:33 GHFigs
    I've found that thinking love/hate is not sufficiently granular for most problems and rarely suggestive of many solutions. It can be good for making very high level emotionally charged decisions like whether you want to even stay in school or not, but when it comes to implementing those decisions, you often need to be more specific about your feelings to figure out exactly what needs to change.

    There is a chart in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's classic Flow, that I've found enligtening. It shows the "flow channel", the desirable state where the activity seems friction-free, surrounded by anxiety on one side and boredom on the other. Most people don't think of activities this way, where the goal is a mean rather an an extreme.

    I've found that every instance of procrastination or avoidance in my life stems from anxiety or boredom irrespective of things like desire, enjoyment, or willpower, while all of the things I do get done are things that I don't feel much anxiety or boredom about, likewise irrespective of desire, enjoyment or willpower. (Those factors only seem to come into play with planning what to do, not in actually doing them.)

    So it follows that the way to get things done is to figure out whether the problem is anxiety or boredom and then do what you can to counterbalance it back towards the flow channel. If you're procrastinating on something because you find it boring, the way to become motivated is to make it more exciting. Add constraints, make it more challenging, tighten deadlines, expand scope, batch repetitive tasks, turn necessary goals into desirable ones, etc. If you're procrastinating on something because it makes you anxious, the way to become motivated is to make it less exciting. Remove constraints, reduce the challenge, loosen deadlines, break up tasks into small pieces, reduce the harm of mistakes, reduce risk, etc.

    What that means specifically depends on what bores you or causes anxiety and how much control you have over circumstances, but I think there is always something you can do on a practical and tactical level to bring any activity towards that channel where you don't have to force yourself into doing it.

  480. The California State of Mind (As a Cancer on Atlanta) 2009-06-19 13:01:55 quizbiz
    "We need an open forum where young founders can learn about problems that our large enterprises are facing"

    => Where do I pledge my support and sign up?

    My personal response, not limited to the contents of the written piece:

    It's a nice dream to be the next big thing, I convince myself that I will launch the next big thing just to motivate myself. I don't see how that has anything to do with geography.

    I heard some where that if Atlanta were a country it would be of the highest carbon emitters per capita. Atlanta is completely suburbanized, tons and tons of trees with roads and homes in between but everything is very spread out without any real geographic barriers to induce compression. Perhaps that does some damage to the startup community.

    I haven't personally entered the startup community, in fact I procrastinated this interest of mine by choosing Emory over GT. But I really like the city, despite its imperfections, and I do hope it can be a base for my own international business one day because if anything Atlanta is very good at being an international hub (UPS, Cocacola, etc.) And with all of these giant companies here in Atlanta, not that I have tried asking, but is it true that there is no cash flow? And why limit yourself to VCs in Atlanta, when I do get more practical about my radical ideas, I plan to email and call as many people as possible, despite their geography.

    In Israel, where I am from, the local demographic is microscopic. In Israel, almost in exact opposite to the american tradition, successful business men and entrepreneurs are sometimes viewed as frauds/scammers. It's not a good thing to be a business man there like it is here but despite that, look at all the startups, the big tech innovations, the brilliant products that have their roots in Israel because in Israel people don't let their geography, the fact that they are surrounded by enemies limit them. They are driven by ideas for products and solutions to problems.

  481. Mind-enhancing drugs: Are they a no-brainer? 2009-06-21 20:29:29 euccastro
    Or maybe it is just because they have procrastinated and want to cram, in a stressed night, the material they were supposed to absorb in one semester.

  482. Google to cut China porn results 2009-06-23 02:50:32 stcredzero
    optional, but on by default so most will end up using it.

    They're betting on laziness and ignorance. That's a smart bet! They probably learned it by watching the US. ("No one's ever gone broke underestimating the intelligence of the American Public.")

    I joke with my girlfriend and my friends that my current relationship is fated to last, because it's based on a force even stronger than love: procrastination.

  483. Ask HN: Tool development as a job applicant filter? 2009-06-25 02:40:01 diN0bot
    i've also found an inverse relationship between blog reading and hacking, both in myself and others. i'd almost take off points if a new hire was too much into online procrastination or vanity blogging.

    certainly there are developers i respect who are fairly ocd when it comes to reading hn and reddit. it's just stuff to do when chillin'; to each his own.

    big ups to building tools and open source communities, though. getting things done is the awesome.

  484. The natural evolution from side project to full-time business 2009-06-26 02:41:35 staunch
    > You box yourself into a position where you have to profit immediately or the whole thing goes under. You’ve got to make it work now or give up forever.

    That's a feature, not a bug! Procrastination kills more businesses than anything else. With a day job it's too easy to put off building a new business. Without one it's easier to succeed, than to fail.

  485. The natural evolution from side project to full-time business 2009-06-26 06:17:34 MicahWedemeyer
    Got any stats on that procrastination claim? I thought the conventional wisdom was that projecting profits too early and running out of startup capital kills most new businesses.

  486. The natural evolution from side project to full-time business 2009-06-26 07:09:37 staunch
    I think procrastination (caused by day jobs) usually kill startups in their infancy, before anyone except the founder(s) would even notice. Maybe the founder(s) launch a version 1.0, over the course of months. They work on it for a while, but it's not profitable and sucks up all their free time. When something important (like a high priority project at their day job) comes along they neglect it, and it eventually dies.

    I personally have met dozens of people who have this kind of story. Probably quite a few people on HN do.

  487. MySpace now a “digital ghetto” 2009-07-03 08:10:45 tokenadult
    "This quote provides the key to understanding the distinction between MySpace and Facebook. Choice isn't about features of functionality. It's about the social categories in which we live. It's about choosing sites online that reflect "people like me." And it's about seeing the "other" site as the place where the "other" people go.

    " Anastasia (17, New York): My school is divided into the 'honors kids,' (I think that is self-explanatory), the 'good not-so-honors kids,' 'wangstas,' (they pretend to be tough and black but when you live in a suburb in Westchester you can't claim much hood), the 'latinos/hispanics,' (they tend to band together even though they could fit into any other groups) and the 'emo kids' (whose lives are allllllways filled with woe). We were all in MySpace with our own little social networks but when Facebook opened its doors to high schoolers, guess who moved and guess who stayed behind… The first two groups were the first to go and then the 'wangstas' split with half of them on Facebook and the rest on MySpace... I shifted with the rest of my school to Facebook and it became the place where the 'honors kids' got together and discussed how they were procrastinating over their next AP English essay."

  488. Ask HN: What's the Purpose of Hacker News to You? 2009-07-06 21:36:02 kristiandupont
    To a certain degree, HN is a source of procrastination to me - which it is really bad for because almost every link requires a substantial amount of time to consume. I still go to Reddit to click on a few [pic] links every now and then, but HN is much more inspirering. I agree with you though - I generally consider the interesting topics to be the less technical and more startup-related ones.

  489. End All Taxes...Except One 2009-07-08 01:25:36 mr_luc
    Ideally, we'd all devote consistently high-quality attention to both reading and writing on hacker news. I don't always do that, in part because of 'forum training,' and in part because I hardly ever respond to comments unless I'm procrastinating, and thus 'in a hurry.'

    Can we address the problem by extending the language? Another poster mentioned a /noextrapolate tag.

    What about qualitative metadata, to indicate how carefully one should read the comment?

    We could end our comments with a comment character in a representative language.

      ;  means "brief"
  #  means "pretty normal"
  // means "I am (tired || pained 
  //              || procrastinating worse than usual)"
    Now, let's see if it works.

    //

  490. How to Learn Stuff While Procrastinating Online 2009-07-08 13:31:25 HalcyonMuse
    I guess I just assumed that the title wasn't "How to Learn Useful Stuff While Procrastinating Online" due to negligence.

    But no. If that was the title, it would be fraudulent advertising.

  491. Why I do Time Tracking 2009-07-09 21:21:15 Pistos2
    I somewhat disagree. It is _difficult_ to change certain aspects of yourself. If it were so easy, everyone would do it; nobody would be lazy, nobody would procrastinate, nobody would be addicted to any substances or have bad habits. Nobody would get into (or stay in) depression.

    The human condition is such that, with respect to various things, what we are and what we know we should be are different, and sometimes quite distant from one another, and moving from the "are" to the "ought to be" is often a struggle.

    I have learned some strategies over the years, but these strategies are not ones that everyone is willing to employ.

  492. Night owls have more mental stamina than those who awaken at the crack of dawn 2009-07-13 16:07:35 Maktab
    My experience mirrors this. I get through a lot more work and admin in a given day if I work from 7am-4pm, especially if there's a lot of drudgery involved. In contrast, if I work from 9am-6pm or later I'm more likely to procrastinate but I get a spurt of creativity that starts in the late afternoon and gets amplified at night. So I try to structure my work day around that, using early mornings to race through necessary but boring work and to tie up the remaining loose ends from the day or night before while leaving particularly challenging problems for later in the day or the evening. Not to mention that the feeling of getting a bunch of tasks out of your way early in the morning usually acts as a potent motivator for the rest of the day.

  493. Have you ever been successful in changing your personality? 2009-07-14 06:16:15 adamcrowe
    Some no nonsense anti- procrastination/perfectionism tips:

    Structured Procrastination http://www.structuredprocrastination.com

    The Cult of Done Manifesto http://www.brepettis.com/blog/2009/3/3/the-cult-of-done-mani...

    Merlin Mann on Doing Creative Work http://www.maximumfun.org/sound-young-america/maxfuncon-merl...

    Beating The Little Hater http://www.podtech.net/home/4760/beating-the-little-hater

    Ze Frank on Executing Ideas Vs "Brain Crack" http://lifehacker.com/5142776/ze-frank-on-executing-ideas-vs...

  494. Have you ever been successful in changing your personality? 2009-07-14 06:42:29 shughes
    One thing I've learned is that you have the power of mind control. And the more you use it, the better you are at it.

    So, in the case of trying to commit yourself to new goals, first decide on a goal. Then decide when you want to apply time to the goal. And then, most importantly, when you're not working on your goal, use mind control to not negatively think about the goal and the efforts involved to accomplish that goal.

    Here's a dumb example, but it can be applied to many cases. Unloading the dishwasher. If, ahead of time, you think about the steps that you're going to have to take to unload the dishwasher, you won't do it. But if you use mind control, and don't think about the steps it's going to take to unload the dishwasher, but just think about the fact you need to unload the dishwasher, you will do it.

    In other words, procrastinators over think things, to the point they overwhelm themselves. But you have to constantly use mind control, and understand that the more you use it, the easier it is to use.

    I used to be a huge procrastinator, but using mind control, I've literally transformed myself into a person that can't stop working. I've been successful at this transformation for the last two years, so it's definitely working.

  495. Have you ever been successful in changing your personality? 2009-07-14 07:02:43 domodomo
    +1 here too. Living abroad and especially learning another language changed me, and a positive way. Not exactly practical for everyone, but if more people did this the world would be a more understanding place.

    Did it make me procrastinate less? I'll tell you the day after tomorrow =\ (not really).

    What did get me out of the procrastination habit though, was the Getting Things Done book, I'm not ashamed to say. I'm not an adherent of everything in that book, but I followed the basic system it outlines until it became second nature.

    The system allowed me to clear my plate enough for me to realize that the cause of my procrastination was a sort of paralyzing fear of all the 'stuff' I needed and wanted to do. The amorphous blob of stuff was completely overwhelming. It can be a very scary thing. And that fear gets converted into inaction. But when you have a reliable framework like GTD to break the stuff down into concrete action steps, that fear is evaporates, and you can actually DO.

    I'm an armchair psychologist over here, but this was the case for me. YMMV.

    Also, to echo the point of the post above, my girlfriend at the time (now wife) also was totally not supportive of the GTD thing...but later became very impressed with the transformation. Just because people aren't supportive of you changing, doesn't mean they don't love you, and that they won't come around. I catch myself behaving this way towards other people all the time.

  496. Have you ever been successful in changing your personality? 2009-07-14 07:17:57 JacobAldridge
    There's a lot of excellent forward looking advice here - I particularly agree with those suggesting you set some bigger goals to motivate yourself, and commit for the 4 weeks / 30 days it takes to build a habit.

    I have also found benefit working on my past with a personal coach (therapist, shrink, good friend - whatever works for you). A lot of my procrastination came from feeling guilty relaxing and doing casual things just for me - if I did that task right now I'd be able to relax, but because I felt guilty about that outcome I would drag out the task in front of me.

    There were some other root causes I needed to work through, but in the last 3 months I've seen a massive turnaround in my personal energy and productivity. Results may vary, but I was ready to change and found dealing with past stuff helped me stick to the future goals and planning.

  497. Have you ever been successful in changing your personality? 2009-07-14 07:22:24 ruby_roo
    Is your personality type 'INTP', perchance?

    INTPs have these constant internal battles. We're good at concentrating and love working in the realm of ideas. However, we're often an impractical lot and procrastination is pretty rampant among the other INTPs I know. The biggest problem, I think, is that we just really suck at perceiving the passage of time, and the daydreaming, writing, or discussion of ideas is often rewarding enough just to stop there.

    INTJs are supposed to have many of the same qualities of INTPs but tend to be more sure of themselves, and therefore, more productive (or more capable of delivering 'products' within 'deadlines'). They seem to live in the moment a bit more, and I would venture to guess that they make better entrepreneurs.

    As an INTP, I feel I can relate to your situation. I too often wonder if my problem relates to a personality temperament, and truly can be changed. It really bothers me that I have little to show for all the work I do in my head, and this frustration has helped motivate me, but I still don't feel like I've been truly 'unlocked'.

    To compound the problem, INTPs make up about 1% to 3% of the population, which means not many people can relate to the INTP mindset and are more likely just to call you a whiner without attempting to appreciate where you are strong, and why that strength makes you weaker in other areas.

    Any INTPs out there who feel they've overcome their temperament's negative traits? How did you do it?

  498. Have you ever been successful in changing your personality? 2009-07-14 07:37:35 ellyagg
    You can change this trait! I promise you, you're not stuck with it.

    I'm about your age and I was a huge procrastinator and underachiever until only 2-3 years ago. Since then, mostly through "grit", I was able to acquire a job as a senior software engineer, despite having no degree, and not even owning a computer until I was 23.

    I suspect you are like me in that you are much more interested in novelty and idea generation than in execution. I always had good ideas and did well on aptitude tests, but was seriously short on follow-through. I overcame my procrastination mainly following two principles:

    1. Focus on one main project/goal at a time. Period. I know it sucks, but it's simply too easy to get distracted if you don't handcuff yourself. Every project has interesting parts and boring parts. If you have multiple projects, you end up thinking about the interesting part about some other project as soon as you get to a boring part of the first.

    Figure that you'll do everything you want to do serially instead of in parallel. This makes it all the clearer how little time there is in life to do everything you want to do, and the realization is painful, but that's too bad. You aren't actually getting more done just because you've got multiple projects going on at the same time. In fact, for some (most?) of us, you're getting less done.

    When you don't try to do anything seriously, it seems like you can do everything. It will be demoralizing to see how slow progress is when you're focusing on only one project. It's still worth it in the end, and you'll finally get a better understanding of the actual scope of your capabilities. This will allow you to make better decisions about time expenditure going forward.

    Make the one thing you focus on have a definite end point. A goal. It can't be "get better at the piano". It has to be, "give a live performance".

    Maybe some people can have multiple concurrent goals/projects. You can't. The sooner you face up to this, the better off you'll be. You'll feel like you're cutting off the boundless possibilities open to you. You ARE. That's life.

    2. Do the boring parts. If you can learn to take pride in doing the boring parts, you will be formidable. A lot of idea people/dreamers never figure this out. Ideas are so damned fun to think about.

    Count your blessings. In my opinion, it's easier to learn to do the boring parts than it is to become creative.

    The advantage of focusing on one goal/project is that there's nowhere to hide when you get to the boring parts. If you want to finish, you have to do them. Your mind can't casually escape into thinking about the interesting part of another problem because there is no other problem. This is huge because the problem of avoiding boring parts is abstract, often gradual. It sneaks up on you. You've got to constantly be on guard for avoiding the boring parts of the project.

    These days, I always know what my project is, and I can state it succinctly in one sentence. I keep it in my mind at all times so I know exactly where I'm going. In addition to the original inspiration, I take pride in powering through the dull intermediate steps of a project that most everyone else fall down on.

  499. Have you ever been successful in changing your personality? 2009-07-14 08:36:49 snitko
    If you're anything like me, I hope I can explain to you what's that and how to fix it.

    I started digging into Rails and writing my first project with it while working on my dayjob. At this time I was still taking bass guitar classes and spending my last year at the university. Having all this things at once did not allow me to work on each one of them long and hard enough. Which led to procrastination. Which led to general unhappiness.

    Then I decided to eliminate the less important things one by one. I quit the bass guitar lessons, then graduated from the university, then quit my job. Finally, I only had my Rails project on my mind. One thing. I became extremely productive and felt happier. Of course, later I had to look for another job (which I also quit), but I knew this was going to be temporary and I'm working on my new project again now.

    I'm actually 23 and I imagine things are a bit different for a 30 y.o., probably with a family and responsibilities. But it seems to me that the real reason for procrastination is not being a lazy jackass. In fact, lazyjackiness is a reaction for trying to do too much things at a time and not thinking about the real priority, which is going to make you happy both in the short and long run.

    So my advice to you: find a way to concentrate on this one most important thing for now, by all means find this way.

  500. Have you ever been successful in changing your personality? 2009-07-14 08:41:32 electromagnetic
    I'm a procrastinator, but that didn't stop me learning guitar or becoming a writer. I can easily write around 2,000 a day, just because I want to write, but that didn't come without a lot of effort.

    As a procrastinator you'll never have the motivation to do something creative unless you force yourself to do it. I've wanted to be a writer since before I can remember, I was writing stories at 10 years old that were about as talented as a large bowel movement.

    I'm now 21, I successfully procrastinated myself through highschool, college and into immigrating to another country. I'm forcibly unemployed (I don't want to jeopardise my immigration as I'm moving for QoL not money, UK->Canada) which gives me ample opportunity to procrastinate, but I quickly put an end to that.

    I spent several months writing at every opportunity possible. When my wife naps, I'm on the computer writing. When I'm home alone, I'm writing. When I'm on the train I'm thinking through the next few paragraphs, I'm having arguments between characters in my head.

    My advice for doing something creative, you've got to devote every free second you have to the task. Any work breaks, especially lunch breaks, the daily commute (either read a book on the train/bus or listen to an audiobook if you drive) . . . when you've done what you planned then you can procrastenate.

    I've done my quota for the day, that's why I'm wasting time on HN and not working. I've always been lazy and I've never let it stop me from doing something I wanted to do.

    It's entirely your choice if you do something creative or not, but to change who you are you've got to live the new life before it'll become you.

  501. Have you ever been successful in changing your personality? 2009-07-14 10:19:35 mackeeeavelli
    Consider this aphorism every time you want to procrastinate: "Make decisions based on what will lead to happiness, not what avoids discomfort." Think it over...

  502. Have you ever been successful in changing your personality? 2009-07-14 11:35:38 fingergunslngr
    I, like you, spend a great deal of my time "up in the clouds,"so to speak. Grandiose, whimsical ideas are for the most part what keep me going, and do well to quell the drudgery of routine/secondary education. All I can say is a bit of pragmatism (which is borderline sacrilege to the ears of a dreamer) goes a long way in overcoming inhibitions or procrastination.

  503. Have you ever been successful in changing your personality? 2009-07-14 11:52:38 nostrademons
    I'm on the border between INTP/J. Was definitely an INTP as a kid, then have gradually moved towards the J, such that I'd probably test as INTJ if I took it now.

    For me, it helped being exposed to people who Got Things Done. My high school was a startup, my teachers were a bunch of go-getter early-20-somethings, and one of the school's founders was an experienced entrepreneur. That started my shift towards the dark side of the force.

    Then when I got to college (still very much an INTP), I volunteered to rewrite a major Harry Potter fanfiction archive and couldn't exactly back out without disappointing 100k users or so. I think the experience of pushing through on that and finishing it was a major portion of what led me to believe I could finish other stuff as well.

    It also helped that I can now concentrate on stuff I like doing and avoid much of the stuff I hate. I used to always procrastinate on writing papers - now, I just don't have to, because I went into computers. (Ironically, I still sorta write fiction as a hobby, but I'm as unproductive with it as I ever was with my school papers.)

  504. Have you ever been successful in changing your personality? 2009-07-14 12:15:04 ddemchuk
    You described me exactly except I'm only 22. I've lost a pretty serious relationship as well because I became a very "going through the motions" kind of guy and basically stopped really caring about anything.

    My advice is to get yourself a mind mapping tool (xmind is free) and name the center item "Life" and just put down everything in your life on there. I just did this and have branches for Projects, Work, School, Social, Personal, and Financial. Fill up the the whole thing with both where you are and where you want to be.

    I have found that having everything objectively in front of me instead of floating around my head drastically improves my ability to line them up and evaluate everything for what it's worth. By having it all laid out in front of you, you can see what areas need attention and which ones can hold off for a while.

    Also, ideas aren't a bad thing. I find myself drowning in new ideas, almost to an ADHD level of lack of focus. The best thing you can do is pick 2 or even 3 of the main ones you want to focus on and write down everything else. You don't want to forget your ideas but at the same time you don't want to lose focus, so keep a notebook full of everything you think of until you have time to go through it.

    Bite sized chunks are really important too. I fell into a lot of financial troubles because I just stopped caring, stopped opening my bills, just overall gave up. If that's the case, go through your finances and find out exactly how much you need to live on, add a few hundred for just in case, and divide that by 20 to find out roughly what you need to be making on a normal work day to get by. That way you can see at a moment's notice if you're working enough or not.

    Lastly, I kind of just started feeling really guilty about the way I was acting. It didn't take much for me to drop everything and head to the bars with friends, and that lack of self control greatly impeded my ability to get work done. I've since developed a bad taste in my mouth and am consciously working on making sure I don't screw around as much.

    It's easy to be lazy man, it happens. You have to harness your willpower to pull yourself out of the rut. Start small, track everything, and improve upon yesterday always. You'll get there, it just takes active thought to make it happen. Good luck.

    EDIT: I almost forgot a big part of fixing things. Make lists. For everything. Grocery Lists, todo lists, goal lists. Todo Lists are the most important thing to help with procrastination.

    What's important to remember is to make everything on your todo list "actionable" (to borrow from GTD). so don't put "build website for Greg"...instead put "setup server, install CMS, mockup template, etc...you want individual, achievable items, so that you can both: see what needs to be done, and see what has been done. This is key to you breaking your habit...

  505. After 20 Years, Maryland Man’s Mac IIci Finally Dies 2009-07-15 11:07:14 kirubakaran
    I am still procrastinating it to death for no reason whatsoever! :) Thanks for the nudge dude.

  506. Tim Ferriss' New Book: Become a Superhuman 2009-07-16 10:45:11 colinplamondon
    You use credit in the HN "go change the world!" sense. In this case, it's about cash- the capitalist, the individual who provides capital to an enterprise and pays workers, is the one who receives cash. It's not about who gets credit and getting more gold stars than the next guy, it's about cash. That's capitalism.

    Social entrepreneurialism, making a dent in the universe, helping those less fortunate, those are all awesome things. But capitalism, which is the issue at hand when talking about 4HWW, is about the accumulation of capital. Ferriss just talks about some cool ways to make money efficiently and spend money in ways that get you good bang for the buck.

    And, with that, I'm going to stop procrastinating and go pack for my trip to Tunisia, paid for by creating an iPhone application, the development of which was made feasible by the savings achieved by moving to a country with low cost of living (Hungary). Cheers :D

  507. Ask HN: Updated recommendation on Rails versus Django? 2009-07-20 00:01:59 tptacek
    No offense, but how amazing can your idea be if it allows you to procrastinate on web frameworks?

  508. Ask HN: Updated recommendation on Rails versus Django? 2009-07-20 01:35:32 mechanical_fish
    Because, in all likelihood, worrying that you're going to be stuck with your initial choice of technology for a very long time is premature optimization. You should be so lucky.

    I have no idea what the original submitter's idea is, but I'll still predict how it's going to work out: It won't find product-market fit. So it won't need to be maintained for a very long time. So he might as well just build it with the framework he already knows, get it over with, and move on to the next idea.

    Anyone want to bet that I'm wrong? If so, please make out your angel checks to the original submitter.

    Moreover, while fretting too much about the apparent greenness of the grass on the other side of the fence is always a warning sign of procrastination, doing so when you already have three years of Rails experience and know exactly where its pain points are is really a sign of procrastination. Just build the thing already! You will save time by working in a framework that you already understand. And, if you like, you can use that saved time to improve the bits of the framework that you dislike.

  509. Ask HN: Updated recommendation on Rails versus Django? 2009-07-20 02:12:56 timr
    "fretting too much about the apparent greenness of the grass on the other side of the fence is always a warning sign of procrastination, doing so when you already have three years of Rails experience and know exactly where its pain points are is really a sign of procrastination. Just build the thing already! You will save time by working in a framework that you already understand."

    I don't disagree, but I think I should point out the danger -- this is exactly how programmers become dinosaurs in the industry.

    Next time you feel the urge to make fun of that guy with 20 years of C++ experience, keep in mind that he was probably just working in a framework that he already understood. One day you look up from your last successful project, and everyone is 22 years old and coding in Blub. Only those old guys are working with Rails....

  510. Ask HN: Emotion hacks? How do you work despite crummy love/life things going on? 2009-07-20 05:39:41 symstym
    I second this. I can't relate the the part about a sense of security, but I've found that it's very important to "take care of myself", in whatever form. For me that often means cleaning my apartment, taking care of business I've been procrastinating on, etc. Those are concrete, actionable tasks that are guaranteed to make me feel better, even if only a little bit. At work, I similarly try to focus on specific small tasks if possible, to keep my mind off of things.

  511. Ask HN: Emotion hacks? How do you work despite crummy love/life things going on? 2009-07-20 07:15:37 TomOfTTB
    It's really neither

    The military makes no secret about "breaking down their recruits" and then "rebuilding them as soldiers" (to use their language). What that entails is using whatever means necessary to form a habit of discipline. Because when you're disclpined you do the simple things on auto pilot. Things like pay bills and clean your living space.

    If people in the military seem more emotionally controlled it's because they can marshal all their mental resources to deal with whatever emotional challenge comes their way. They don't have the added distractions of "did I pay the electric bill this month?" or "I have to do that thing at work that I've been procrastinating on"

    In other words, they have the same capacity as everyone else but they are trained to live a life that eliminates as many distractions as possible.

    Finally, for those who have already commented about military vets bottling stuff up and exploding I'd offer this insight. All the military's methods can do for a person is elminiate distractions so big problems can be dealt with. If a person still decides to ignore those problems the results will be disasterous just like they would be in any other person.

  512. Why Does Time Go Faster As We Get Older? 2009-07-20 16:25:32 kqr2
    My take: As we become older, we become more aware of our mortality, in other words, time is running out; therefore time seems to go by faster just like it does when you procrastinate right before a deadline.

    If we were immortal, I wonder if we would continue to perceive that times go by faster?

  513. How To Give Yourself A Procrastination Inoculation 2009-07-21 23:18:22 greengirl512
    Does anybody other than me procrastinate by reading articles about avoiding procrastination? Ahh, the irony...

  514. How To Give Yourself A Procrastination Inoculation 2009-07-22 02:19:53 edw519

      if (NbrOfProcrastinationTips>1)
    {
    Result = (NbrOfProcrastinationTips-1)+" tips too many"
    }
  else if (ProcrastinationTip[0] != "Do Something")
    {
    Result = "Invalid Procrastination Tip"
    } 
  else
    {
    Result = "Stop Reading Hacker News and "+ProcrastinationTip[0]
    }

  515. Extremely simple productivity tool I wrote 2009-07-23 14:40:23 alanthonyc
    I'm curious:

    What tasks did you manage to procrastinate on while putting this app together?

  516. Extremely simple productivity tool I wrote 2009-07-23 21:55:20 greengirl512
    Hmmm....I like the idea of having two goals to switch back and forth from, but I'm not seeing how your app is any different than putting a post-it note on my computer screen. In fact, a post-it note on the computer screen might be a little bit better about keeping me focused, simply because it would always be there, staring me in the face accusingly as I procrastinate by reading HN.

    Of course, the fact that I have to babysit myself may be more of a reflection on me than on your app...

  517. Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule 2009-07-24 00:09:53 logicalmind
    The problem I've had with coming in early is that most of the people I work around are procrastinators. So if the business day is 9 to 5, they will push off most of their work to close to 5. If I come in at 7am and expect to leave at 4 it is nearly impossible because that is the busiest time of most peoples days. It is a let down if I leave "early". I end up working 7 to 5 and then can't do my usual nighttime distraction-less work because I need to get up early the next day.

  518. Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule 2009-07-24 03:47:12 mannicken
    Yes! Microtasking is the enemy of procrastination. When I feel like procrastinating (99.99% of the time?) and nodding off, I just tell myself, - I'll go play this game but first I'll let myself know what exactly I'll do after I get bored with procrastination. And so I write something like:

    1. Pull init code from old repository.

    2. Find function that accepts the data.

    3. Insert init code into the class.

    4. Debug and see if it works.

    5. Write callback for accepting data from TCP.

    6. Link callback to init.

    7. Refactor.

    Then, as I have successfully broken down the huge (2-4 hr for me) task into 20-30 minutes tasks I go and run, or swim, or play 3d shooters (love Tribes 1). Interestingly, while I do that, my brain subconsciously works on the stuff from todolist and when I get back and look at the tasks it's extremely easy to get started, plus, I got a chance to think of a better way (if exists) to do stuff.

  519. Ramen Profitable 2009-07-28 04:55:19 dhouston
    Having gone down both the ramen-profitable and the traditional-VC roads, here are some pitfalls that deserve mention with the former. The two are not mutually exclusive, and the angel/VC road has its own well-known brambles, but anyway:

    - Your biggest fear should not be flaming out spectacularly, but rather creating a zombie that neither truly lives nor dies. The downside of ramen profitability is that (by definition) it's easier to waste years rather than months on an idea that won't ultimately succeed.

    - In fact, you may lose your window of opportunity to someone who figures out how to use cash to get further faster.

    - Outside investment forces you to get your head out of the day-to-day firefighting every month or so to 1) think big picture 2) set long term goals 3) be accountable for your progress. The key is "outside"; otherwise it's easy to meander along and procrastinate on hard questions.

    - The upside of ramen profitability is a culture of frugality. The downside is it's easy to waste time on things you could be paying others to do. For example, paying an accountant to do your company taxes might blow away the entire year's earnings -- does that mean you should learn the tax code and do it yourself? What about negotiating a contract, or even taking out the trash? (These are real examples of things we did ourselves at the ramen-profitable company.) Delegating is harder if it means losing your hard-earned badge of profitability.

    Joel has a good post on this topic (Amazon vs. Ben & Jerry's): http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000056.html

  520. The power of Focus | Change your thoughts 2009-07-29 20:39:59 edw519
    Every time I read about scheduling, prioritization, and focusing on your top tasks, I think of the movie "The Exorcist" when father Karras briefs father Merrin:

    KARRAS - I think it would be helpful if I gave you some background on the different personalities Regan has manifested. So far, there seems to be three. She's convinced-

    MERRIN - There's only one.

    If you're a programmer, forget about scheduling, prioritizing, and focusing on multiple things. Work exclusively on the #1 thing. Nothing else has made me more productive. See how simple.

    pg even talks about it in his essay "Good and Bad Procrastination"

    http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

    "What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you?"

  521. Ask HN: how do you learn Math? 2009-07-31 06:39:57 Shooter
    Hi Chocobean,

    I can sympathize. Completely.

    I had a horrible math education in high school (more detail is provided elsewhere on YC.) I hate the plug-and-chug rules approach, and I'm fairly math-phobic. I completely avoided math during my first college experience, even taking a class in C++ once just to avoid taking Calculus for an analytics requirement. I had no interest in programming at the time, and the C++ class was probably worse than any math I could have been subjected to. The instructor was just learning English, so we practiced (inflicted?) our developing skills on each other. Anyway, I taught myself math before going to college the second time. I have no idea how I did it, other than tons of practice problems and a tutor. Youthful ambition, I guess. All of the math related to econ and finance examples, so I think that made it easier for me. I needed to have a conceptual understanding of why you were doing something in order to understand the 'rules.'

    Then I 'lost' what math I had learned on my own after a mini-stroke around age 30 (or maybe it was lost from the brain lesions, who knows.) I work mostly in software and finance now, so math is kind of important. Attempting to cram again, I found that the same learning techniques no longer worked for me. Nothing stuck. I bought about $15,000 worth of self-instruction materials, in part because I hate streaming video or reading lengthy books online, and also because there was less material available online at the time. Most of what I bought sucks and was wasted money. I stopped reading any books that lost me in the first few minutes, or that had many obvious errors. I procrastinated quite a bit. I eventually rebuilt my basic math foundation (up through basic Calc), but I've never advanced to the level I want to be. Someday.

    If you're a visual learner and willing to spend some dough: Thinkwell, Chalkdust, and MathTutorDVD were pretty good and were better values than the rest of the 'courses' I bought. Thinkwell was easily the most entertaining, and their courses covered a good bit of material, but their interface is kind of a pain. MathTutorDVD was good, but it has less of a conceptual overview or explanation component. It's just a dude working out problems on a whiteboard. Chalkdust, like many multimedia math courses, is spendy - but the guy speaks clear English if that's important to you. [If you can, watch a sample of any training before you buy it. I spent $300 on a course from a professor in NY, and I wanted to stab my eardrums out from his voice and accent (mostly his specific voice, the accent just made it worse.) I had a similar problem with a course from an Indian professor... I couldn't understand about every other word. It was like the C++ class all over again.] Now, of course, there are tons of FREE online video courses at MIT OCW, UC-Berk, FreeVideoLectures.com, etc. etc. Try those first. If something doesn't click or you don't like the presenter, move on. I'd definitely try to find materials that balance concepts (why, how) with completed practice problems. Just keep trying...eventually something will stick. I'm pretty much hopeless, and some stuff eventually seeped into even my melon. I'm sure you'll do well...the fact that you're worried about it at all is a good sign. Good luck.

  522. Why I don't find HN useful anymore 2009-08-04 00:17:57 yef
    Not exactly the most eloquent criticism, but I do see what the OP is getting at. For me, HN has gone from a daily read (too much noise, hit-or-miss quality), to a weekly scan of http://news.ycombinator.com/best - which is generally pretty good. Techmeme is my daily scan for news, which I can go through in less than a minute with Instapaper as my procrastination shield.

  523. The 7 vices of highly creative people 2009-08-06 04:29:26 jacquesm
    procrastinating...

  524. Write when inspired 2009-08-10 00:27:06 GavinB
    There's a huge difference between writing "when the mood is on" and not writing when you're exhausted. Zeldman seems to conflate the two in this piece.

    I find that inspiration comes from forcing my way through the first paragraph. Usually after that point, I'm ready to go and can keep going to the point of getting cranky if anyone interrupts me.

    The strategy Zelman describes may work for him--he's published books so clearly he's found a method that works. Still, I've seen these same arguments used time and time again in order to justify procrastination, resulting in nothing ever gets done.

    Edit: Having written this, I guess I'm now obligated to go open up the ol' word processor, huh?

  525. Introducing the Lean Startup Cohort subscription program 2009-08-10 02:31:35 mr_luc
    Well-said.

    Why try to convince the most frugal people on the planet to spend still-unearned money on workshops instead of working?

    Maybe because they're highly motivated to procrastinate ...

  526. The challenges of Creating a Civilization Web Game 2009-08-10 04:12:35 dood
    I suggest dropping the project, since civ has cost humanity enough already - browser civ could cripple my productivity... just a few keystrokes away when already procrastinating. I both love and fear this project.

  527. Let's Abolish High School 2009-08-12 08:31:52 leecho0
    >John Taylor Gatto has long warned about the dangers of artificially extending childhood, and has blamed our schools for damaging families and stifling creativity and a love of learning.

    I think it's ridiculous that it is now normal (or actually preferable) now to be in school until you are done with 1/4 to 1/3 of your life without seeing what "the real world" was like. This means the average person won't be able to do anything significant until they have already wasted their best years in school and low level positions.

    I can get decent grades pretty easily (much like many people here) and so slacking off and procrastination was just a smart way of using my time. Now that I think I'm of the age where I can make something of myself, I need to unlearn a lot of the bad habits learned in school in order to get things done. Many smart, ambitious people I know do not try to start independant projects because they are still "just students," but then go on to do amazing things after graduating and finding their purpose in life. Much of this can be prevented with an early firsthand exposure to a life outside of the artificial punishment and reward system of school.

    Chances are, even after reform people will probably still go on the same path -- highschool, college, graduate school, but they will have a much better reason to do well, since it will be what they chose to do.

  528. Ask HN: Bad habits 2009-08-14 22:05:32 raju
    A smoker myself - Not that much anymore, but still a smoker. Need to find that willpower.

    Also, exercise procrastinator. My problem is I don't put on weight, so weight loss (or maintenance) is not an incentive. But I know I need to work out, and have been doing some lately, even if it is a stiff 1 hour walks in the evenings

  529. Ask HN: Bad habits 2009-08-14 22:09:44 bbuffone
    Procrastination - I haven’t been able to overcome it yet, things that mitigate it is - keep track of tasks, make them small easily achievable. Also make a new list every morning.

  530. Ask HN: Bad habits 2009-08-14 22:37:49 DanielBMarkham
    I have an addictive personality, which means I like doing everything too much: coding, writing, visiting interesting web sites, smoking, drinking, eating. Basically if it has any sort of positive feedback loop at all, I can make a bad habit out of it.

    Fortunately I began suspecting this early in life, so I didn't end up a coke-head or worse. Instead I've learned to balance all of my bad habits in a way that continues to optimize productivity for me. So for example after smoking for five years in my early 20s, I quit cold turkey. As for eating, I'm learning to control my blood sugar levels. I'm finding there is a blood-sugar/caffeine/alcohol feedback system that I'm dismantling. But then there are big problems that I'm still working on, like procrastination and too much web reading (which are related!) I probably lose dozens of hours a week on these. Sometimes I make progress, such as no TV (except for movies) Still others seem intractable, like enjoying coding so much I keep over-coding things.

    I think as you get older you begin to realize how screwed up you are -- if you are introspective at all, that is. Some folks aren't introspective at all, or if they are they aren't able to critically see what needs fixing. These are the ones to be pitied. But introspection always has kind of a sad quality to it. I know for me it was a lot more fun when I used to think I was bullet-proof.

  531. Ask HN: Bad habits 2009-08-15 00:04:51 babyboy808
    Super Procrastinator, I mean I'm here and I should be working.

  532. What Movies Get Wrong About Time Travel 2009-08-15 15:27:18 derefr
    > I'm sure there are even more interesting kinds of time-travel you could come up with given a simulated universe. It actually could be fun to write some sci fi short stories with this in the background, unexplained.

    I'm actually working with this exact idea, more or less, for a [roughly proposed] series of books, the first of which I'm procrastinating upon as I type this. :) Time travel, though, is a rather small part of what is possible with my metaverse model. I assume that the simulations are infinitely stacked, and each one has a 0:1 time-passage correspondence, so that for a "parent" simulation, the "child" simulation runs instantaneously, no matter the in-sim execution time, thus making Hypercomputation and such possible. All sorts of fun-with-philosophy falls out of that:

    The protagonists are Star Trek-style "everything is science" types, who discover that magic exists (for "magic," read "simulation runtime bugs.") They go on "Hard Science-based Fantasy" adventures using said magic for ten or twelve books, before figuring out that it was (very complicated) science all along. They then care for their own sim for a while, hacking it to fix some kinks (such as the inevitable existence, given probability, of a malevolent entity who has the root password.) Bored of that, they proceed to "break out" of their simulation, repeatedly, visiting "higher planes" that each have radically different physics and sometimes even logic, but that all share the property that Turing machines can be constructed within them. Eventually, they get to the "root" universe (really just a chroot jail) and meet God—that is to say, an AI who was left to run for an infinite time on an analogue computer and thus became omniscient merely by evaluating all possible states of all possible universes (that it could detect from within the chroot.)

    And that's only the first half of the sequence. 's called "Infinity's Tale", by the way. :)

  533. Ask HN: Bad habits 2009-08-15 18:40:08 billswift
    Procrastination has many, many causes. I strongly recommend Burka and Yuen's book "Procrastination: Why You Do It, What to Do About It" and Rubin's "Overcoming Indecisiveness".

  534. Ask HN: You have a start-up idea. Now what? 2009-08-16 13:26:36 thaumaturgy
    Yeah, this is the closest to how I do things, too, fwiw. All the other stuff, to me, is procrastinating.

    Get idea -> If I have time to implement a rough working version of the idea, then schedule it and do it; else, do not do it, and possibly file away in brain for later.

    I'm horrifically busy at this point, so I don't have to bother with most of my ideas right now.

    It helps that I've finally broken the bad habit of talking about ideas.

  535. How not to die 2009-08-18 06:18:28 edw519
    I have cut & pasted all of pg's essays onto my Palm pilot. Along with my bridge program and a bunch of other great content, I never have an excuse not to learn something.

    Whenever I sense that I'm getting stagnant, I always go back and reread old faithful, "Good and Bad Procrastination".

    http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

    (When someone invents an ebook reader that plays bridge, I'll make the switch.)

  536. Why not make Y Combinator applicants compete by developing the same site/app? 2009-08-20 06:21:16 jpwagner

      "Good procrastination is avoiding errands to do real work."
    http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

    This would be an errand.

  537. The 99 Percent: A Site About Making Ideas Happen 2009-08-20 08:57:02 danhak
    Love the idea and design of this site. The irony is that I'd be most likely to visit while procrastinating on a project.

  538. Erlang articles on HighScalability.com 2009-08-21 05:22:46 peoplerock
    Just think of today as a no-procrastination holiday...

    We can all catch up on meaningful hacker news when the reddit-ers evaporate overnight :)

  539. Haskell is 4.2x as good as Erlang at lightweight concurrency. Give it some love. 2009-08-21 05:32:35 mr_luc
    That's pretty cool! Thanks for the informative response.

    Yeah, when I looked at the definition of the problem, it sort of made sense.

    Le sigh ... dammit, I should give Haskell more of my attention.

    I just hate camel casing and type errors :( And if I'm going to procrastinate about writing For Reals code in a language, various lisps have that covered already.

    Although, I'm writing a For Reals app in Ruby (w/merb) at the moment, and it's turning into a bit of an uggo. Maybe I'll procrastinate about finishing it, and give Haskell another go.

  540. How Professional Writers Write 2009-08-22 01:44:09 shalmanese
    For me, my best writing happens when I've procrastinated away the day and I'm on the verge of falling asleep and I'm fighting tiredness as I write. I've tried so many other ways but that's the most conducive environment to get me into flow.

    Unfortunately, this means that half the time, I end up falling asleep before I get into that zone.

  541. Facebook May Expand Staff by 50%, Zuckerberg Says 2009-08-25 15:31:25 unalone
    Use astericks to italicize. :-)

    If I can do it, so can they. Perhaps not for 16 hours a day. I tend to cut myself off at 12 or 14 (call me a slacker). A smaller dedicated staff with an ethos of accountability beats out a large supposedly genius and top notch staff that has a reputation for playing games during the majority of their shift.

    I'm not a programmer, but I'll tell you that this is a belief that's widespread throughout almost every industry and it's one that's very rarely accurate. The man who's most indicative of the flaws in this thinking is Ricky Gervais, the man who probably influenced highbrow comedy more than any man in the last 20 years. The DVDs to The Office include lots of behind the scenes showing Ricky dawdling during the writing process (he plays a rubber band, shoots it at his cowriter, spills coffee on the script, mashing napkins into his mouth and throwing them up), and then again during the process of directing/acting, essentially sabotaging things to have fun with the process. His work ethic is famously bad, yet the products he puts out are more tightly made than nearly anything else I've seen.

    The creative process - and making a huge web site like Facebook is absolutely a creative process - is not one that can be forced out. Creative minds work to their own schedules. Some people are capable of churning out a dozen hours of work every day. Others procrastinate and still end up with great pieces of work.

    (again, ask FriendFeed, Myspace, Friendster, Six Degrees of Seperation, Orkut, Yahoo 360, and the rest of the zombies beckoning from the graveyard)

    It's not worth the time it would take to argue with you, but I've spent a lot of time in this particular medium and you are dead wrong comparing Facebook to these.

  542. The Man Who Sells America’s I.O.U.’s 2009-08-25 16:19:30 jedc
    It's more like procrastination... why pay today what could be put off to tomorrow?

    Regarding your second point, the situation isn't hopeless. The graph with the article shows that it is possible to reduce the national debt, both in real terms and as a percentage of GDP.

  543. How do you keep yourself disciplined when you are freelancing at home? 2009-08-27 13:33:36 chipmunkninja
    Honestly, for me, it's critical to be working on something enjoyable. If I don't like it, then it doesn't matter if it's at home or in an office ... I'm going to drag and procastinate.

    However, if it's fun, I can go 80 hours a week by myself at home on it.

    I recall a contract I did for a big software company a few years back - the other devs there were insanely jealous of the 40 hours of programming I was putting in a week by working remotely. They spent so much time in meetings and reviews and planning that they were lucky to break 10 hours a week of actual programming.

  544. Ask HN: How do you get things done in hourlong intervals? 2009-08-31 06:08:52 edw519
    Sorry, I must have misunderstood.

    how do you know WHAT to work on

    For me, that's easy...

    "What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you?"

    From http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

    If being with your friend or working at a coffee shop keeps you from doing this, then decouple your friend/coffeeshop time from your work time.

  545. Olark (YC S09) Brings Chat to Any Website - Whether You Own the Site or Not 2009-09-03 10:31:59 diN0bot
    true. i think the parent question is more about adding "goodness" to the world, and less about commercial success.

    my personal opinion is that search, which sates the quest for information, is a problem worth solving. chat, at least as the text-based instant message kind of things, creates problems. or rather, it's an opportunity loss.

    the fact that i'm talking means i'm not listening. even if this weren't procrastination, even if my main goal in life was to communicate with strangers better, is IM helping me get there? is this the problem olark wants to solve, or do they just want to make yet another IM service?

    (ps - i think visually. i communicate best with diagrams. discussions with my husband require a whiteboard or paper scrap. i'd love a communication company whose mission was to prevent misunderstandings. make exchanging perspectives faster, help us get along and respect each other while disagreeing, help us make decisions better.)

  546. The Anatomy of Determination 2009-09-06 15:35:57 bigmac
    This essay seems to be somewhat at odds with http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html from January 2005.

    Now, PG argues that discipline is an important component of determination. For startups, determination is called "the most important predictor of success."

    In the earlier essay, these comments were made:

    Now I know a number of people who do great work, and it's the same with all of them. They have little discipline. They're all terrible procrastinators and find it almost impossible to make themselves do anything they're not interested in. One still hasn't sent out his half of the thank-you notes from his wedding, four years ago. Another has 26,000 emails in her inbox. I'm not saying you can get away with zero self-discipline. You probably need about the amount you need to go running.

    PG, does this difference in opinion represent increased wisdom due to the experience gained from doing YC rounds? Or is it simply a nuanced or superficial difference?

  547. Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks? 2009-09-08 02:58:37 edw519
    I like to keep it simple. My list has 1 item on it. I work on that until either it's done (often) or I struggle so much with it that I decide to change plans (rarely).

    For the last 2 days, I've been writing a model configurator that explodes input parameters into individual objects. I probably have 8 or 9 things dependent on this (not really sure yet), so I plug away until done. Then I'll figure out the new only thing on my list.

    I've tried every conceivable "productivity hack" and nothing has worked as well as this. I have scratch pads, paper on the wall, 20 colors of markers, and all kinds of automated tools for scheduling and planning. I've varied my diet, my exercise routine, my daily routine, and almost anything else I could vary, and none of it really mattered. All it ever really did was take focus away from the real task at hand.

    Just identify your critical path, remove it, and repeat forever.

    I started with this and fine tuned what worked for me:

    http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

    Other inspiriation:

    "I see only one move ahead, but it is always the correct one." chess master Jose R. Capablanca

  548. Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks? 2009-09-08 03:40:48 djm
    I've tried every productivity trick under the sun but very few things ever work for me, or at least not for very long.

    The system that has worked best when I can bring myself to stick to it is:

    1) Write a small paper list before going to bed of what I want to do tomorrow.

    2) Tidy my room and get any work materials that I will need (which for me normally just means relevant books etc) ready on my desk.

    3) Try to start work the moment I get up.

    4) Record what work I do on a simple paper based schedule in 30m blocks during the day. I'm somehow less likely to procrastinate if I know that I am going to have to write down that I've done it.

    Thats about it. Getting up at the same time every day and avoiding too much coffee helps too.

    I seem to be able to stick to this system fairly well most of the time but when something happens that causes me to stop, then it often takes me weeks to get back on track.

    Whatever system you use, just make sure it is as simple as possible. You don't want maintaining your time management/productivity system to become your full-time job!

    Hope this helps ashishk

  549. Launching a start-up and having a family life: It’s possible 2009-09-08 07:15:00 abalashov
    I think one of the most difficult things about this to manage politically is actually the reconciliation of http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html with the comparatively pedantic, very detail-oriented and exacting household maintenance methodologies of most women, and the expectations they have for you to participate.

  550. The Y Combinator Experience 2009-09-10 02:17:52 jacquesm
    Where to begin?

    Why so insecure ?

    Surely you know the level of your skills ?

    It's like the prettiest woman walking up to you and admitting her insecurities about her looks.

    Trust me, every entrepreneur has these fears. And the ones that tell you they don't are lying through their teeth.

    We're all up here working our asses off to prove that we can do better. We're all cowards in one form or another. Afraid that our next venture will be a failure. Afraid that we're past our prime. Afraid that someone will outdo us. And so on.

    But we've overlaid that fear with concrete and self-discipline (except of course, for procrastinating).

    It's fine if YC gives you the power to overcome your fears, but make no mistake, you had that power all along, you are the one doing the work.

    The fact that someone watches you seems to make a huge difference to you, and it is great that they can provide you with that assistance but on the whole I figure that is but a small part of your accomplishment. And I doubt anybody at YC would disagree with that.

    The real fight is with yourself. To judge your competence accurately and your failings ditto. No need to go overboard and to think that you could not have made it any other way.

    I'm 100% convinced that you would have. It might have taken longer, you might have followed a different path.

  551. OpenBSD needs your help - call for donations 2009-09-10 06:39:45 nate_meurer
    I've been procrastinating on my first OpenBSD install, and this pushed me over the edge. I just bought the CD set, and I'll have a go at it this weekend (or maybe next weekend).

  552. I wrote this essay on procrastination as a way of not completing another task. 2009-09-10 15:54:31 nopassrecover
    Nice read. These may be of interest to people as well: http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles/overcoming-procrastinat... http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/03/conscious-procrasti...

  553. I wrote this essay on procrastination as a way of not completing another task. 2009-09-10 20:54:28 RyanMcGreal
    Interesting read. There's some great advice in there - especially his take on the importance of play - but much of it reads like the standard approach to procrastination that has consistently failed to work for me. For example:

    > Sometimes you may have more items on your to-do list than you can reasonably complete. This can quickly lead to overwhelm, and ironically you may be more likely to procrastinate when you can least afford it. Think of it as your brain refusing to cooperate with a schedule that you know is unreasonable. In this case the message is that you need to stop, reassess your true priorities, and simplify.

    My experience is exactly the opposite - the only time I'm really productive is when I have way too much to do. In fact, when the density of my agenda drops below a critical threshold of overwhelm, my productivity collapses to zero.

    His section on laziness is a bit more ambiguous. I agree that exercise is a great way of jump-starting an inert brain (I commute by bicycle and generally take a brisk walk every day after lunch), but disagree that laziness as such is necessarily a problem.

    Again, in my experience laziness has been a strong and persistent incentive for me to figure out how to accomplish more with less work - i.e. increase my productivity.

    Similarly, his section on lack of motivation rings hollow for me. I chronically lack the motivation to do whatever is the most important thing I should be doing; but instead of fighting against it, I've learned to leverage my work avoidance by doing other productive work as a way of not doing what I'm supposed to be working on.

  554. I wrote this essay on procrastination as a way of not completing another task. 2009-09-10 21:32:23 nopassrecover
    I'm similar (work best under pressure) but I often wonder if it's a case of avoiding failure (PG) by delaying work and also increasing the internal excuse you have if it all goes pear-shaped. Then again, I find that I don't get enough time to just relax normally, so anytime I do have a light agenda I "procrastinate" because I haven't met that minimum threshold. If you give me a few weeks holiday to catchup I'm all pumped to be working again. Given this, the only time I will work is when I've either had enough rest (very rare) or when the workload is so great that I can't afford not to.

  555. I wrote this essay on procrastination as a way of not completing another task. 2009-09-11 00:55:29 jamesbritt
    ObVid: http://cdn-www.i-am-bored.com/media/1450_procrastination.mov

  556. Procrastinate Until You're Ready 2009-09-14 19:48:38 jcw
    Steven Pressfield (author of Gates of Fire and Legend of Bagger Vance) would disagree: http://home.stevenpressfield.com/books/war_art.asp#excerpt

    I highly recommend The War of Art, his book on overcoming procrastination for artists. Sit down every day and work.

  557. Procrastinate Until You're Ready 2009-09-14 20:25:11 rooshdi
    Procrastination is inversely correlated with motivation and is usually a sign of disinterest or misunderstanding of a task or project. Usually this problem can be diminished through setting realistic goals that one feels passionate about achieving. I believe an aura of constant mystery within a project is a key motivating factor for most individuals due to the intriguing unknowns and self discoveries that one constantly encounters throughout the process of development.

  558. Procrastinate Until You're Ready 2009-09-14 20:49:35 edw519
    For me, I need both creativity and grunt work to make progress. And they depend on each other.

    Sometimes that creative leap is only possible because I've done all the little stuff to put me at the point where I can finally "see the light".

    OTOH, a creative breakthrough usually generates a whole bunch of tasks to be done in order to implement that creative idea.

    I have never been able to "force creativity". It comes much more easily at certain times and in certain situations. So what do I do when the creative juices aren't flowing as much as I'd like? The grunt work, of course. There's always plenty of that.

    Procrastination as a strategy? Never. As an excuse? Sure.

  559. Procrastinate Until You're Ready 2009-09-14 20:51:38 chipsy
    No, procrastination and slow pacing can be a sign that your creative batteries are recharging; it is a cycle. You abruptly plunge into intensive focus on a problem, rest, and repeat. On a long project you just take many, many cycles to finish, and the key to success is simply to be able to fight through the melancholy that occurs at the bottom of each wave, getting enough done to get back on the upward trajectory again.

    If your motivations are intact this won't be a problem, though you may have feelings of self-loathing since this sloth is in conflict with the Puritan-style work ethic.

  560. Procrastinate Until You're Ready 2009-09-14 22:24:53 moron4hire
    Creative inspiration is not a bolt of lightning that hits you at random. It's a process of cascading train-of-thought. If you never get that train to leave the station, you're never going to get anywhere. You need to stop procrastinating and force yourself to work to put yourself in the necessary conditions for creative work to happen. Sitting around, watching movies, eating cheezy-poofs isn't going to do it.

  561. Procrastinate Until You're Ready 2009-09-14 23:31:47 rooshdi
    Well there seems to be many interpretations of what procrastination actually is, but who is to say the "recharging of batteries" is procrastination and not the actual process of one continuing the organization/development of their tasks through the brain unconsciously. The type of "brain-charging" procrastination you are implying is different in the sense that the individual is usually motivated to accomplish a certain task or goal and is just taking a break to regain his "senses", while the type of procrastination I was referring to was a consistent lack of desire to work on certain tasks. Both types of procrastination may be similar in the minds of some, but provide very drastic consequences when compared side-by-side objectively.

  562. Procrastinate Until You're Ready 2009-09-14 23:37:02 messel
    "recharging of batteries" is a great example of the type of procrastination I was writing about.

  563. Procrastinate Until You're Ready 2009-09-14 23:47:40 rooshdi
    Yes, besides procrastination, the "recharging of batteries" can be applied to the term "rest", which is required by all human beings to a certain degree in order to function normally and become productive members of society.

  564. Procrastinate Until You're Ready 2009-09-15 00:34:39 yef
    From personal experience, procrastination does nothing to improve my readiness. Diligence, working at my craft, developing a process for working through setbacks and obstacles, etc...these are all things that improve my readiness AND my overall level of inspiration and creativity. My outside reading on creativity confirms my personal opinion.

    Frankly, I think procrastination is the single worst drain on an information-based economy, and I have a hard time seeing any arguments in defense of procastination. Just being honest about my bias.

  565. Procrastinate Until You're Ready 2009-09-15 00:39:06 ddemchuk
    Procrastination can also be an outward symptom of other problems, such as anxiety, depression, or excessive stress. Also, those with attention problems tend to do everything but focus on their tasks at hand, often without any means of controlling themselves.

  566. Procrastinate Until You're Ready 2009-09-15 01:21:51 messel
    Right on. Looks like we have more in common than I first guessed.

    Once you are "ready" you've got to spend your time and effort (over sometimes very long periods) into transferring abstract concepts into concrete/shareable products.

    Bookmarked your post for later reading: http://quandyfactory.com/blog/1/productivity_and_procrastina...

    Glad I read your post, now I found a couple of others to read. (you Pointed to Paul Graham: http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html & John Perry: http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/ )

    Looks like procrastination is a hot topic for many of us.

  567. I wrote this essay on procrastination as a way of not completing another task. 2009-09-15 01:52:38 messel
    Fantastic take on procrastination and how we may organize our schedule to manipulate ourselves into getting more done.

    Cognitive biases are something I'm worried about, because by definition they're something I can't recognize (I blogged about it a short time ago). Procrastination is a form of trick our mind plays on us, funny how we can turn the table.

    Take that Mind!

  568. Procrastinate Until You're Ready 2009-09-15 02:38:59 RyanMcGreal
    The secret to procrastination is to do it productively. :)

  569. Alex Payne — My Get-Back-To-Work Hack 2009-09-15 21:55:37 gila
    An alarm would ruin my train of thought so much, this idea probably works better for those of us that can't control our procrastination.

    I know I have used my hosts file (windows and *nix) to block those domains that server such good distractions.

  570. Alex Payne — My Get-Back-To-Work Hack 2009-09-15 22:12:14 sophacles
    That is disingenuous. In any job/work, even if you love it, there are tasks that blow. Documentation, bug hunting, administrivia, the boilerplate crap that crops up are all examples of this. Some or all of them are required, and since they are not fun, it is easy to get distracted and procrastinate. Some people are just prone to such things. Is it not better that they figure out how to not procrastinate, or that they search for the elusive (possibly mythical) work that has 0% sucky tasks?

  571. Alex Payne — My Get-Back-To-Work Hack 2009-09-15 23:15:16 gizmo
    Complete overkill, but my router enforces a daily limit for sites I visit too often. It's not that difficult to set up. Make a iptables chain, route all traffic that matches certain ips to that chain, add a --limit and --limit-burst counter to that chain, deny by default, allow when below said limit.

    For bonus points, make all http connections redirect to your favorite todo list when you've exceeded your limit, and deny all ssh access (to the router) during working hours.

    Setting it up was complete procrastination of course, but it works better than any manual block list. By slightly lowering my daily time waste allowance I can reduce the time I spend on sites like these.

    EDIT:

    Blocking with hosts is terrible, because you don't want to block sites permanently, and if you continually enable/disable the block list your muscle memory will unblock a site even before you realize you should be working. Cron job limits don't work when you don't have very strict working hours. Basically, you want to take a break for a few minutes every hour or so, and you need soft limits to enforce that.

  572. Sinatra - Hyper Fast Mini Webapp Development in Ruby 2009-09-15 23:16:41 tptacek
    Our product is built on Rails, but I do almost all my development in Sinatra now. The biggest win for me is that Sinatra strips away everything that would allow you to procrastinate in Rails (such as figuring out whether your actions are RESTful enough, or making sure you're serving all the content types, or making sure you've balanced code properly between controllers and models).

    There is nothing to do in Sinatra except to get to work on your application, which is a good thing.

    I highly recommend Datamapper over ActiveRecord, too; between Sinatra and Datamapper, you can literally pop open a single file and have a complete working application when you exit the editor, with no external setup steps.

  573. Alex Payne — My Get-Back-To-Work Hack 2009-09-15 23:28:09 mrtron
    Concentrate app for mac users breaks the procrastination cycle.

  574. Programming: Choosing the right name is everything 2009-09-17 00:36:10 tptacek
    I learned about 7 years ago that "choosing the right name" for things was slowing me down. I was breaking flow every 2 minutes or so to come up with function names. It was like an unintentional form of procrastination.

    It was a hard habit to break, but now I just write a first draft, and go fix the names afterwards if I have to.

  575. Ask HN: Feelings of regret over career path? 2009-09-18 02:39:58 jyellin
    First and foremost, procrastination is death. We were born to take action, even if the action we take is not in the direction of our ideal life, it still enables us to begin a journey and experience everything that the world will present on our path. I believe that life is a puzzle, made up of millions of pieces, or in other words experiences; career, school, relationship, money, vacation, camp, good times, bad times, sickness, regret, deceit, etc. This list could literally go on forever, but what is important to realize is that every single experience that takes place in your world will provide you with a piece to your puzzle of life. Each of these pieces will enable you to get closer to completing your puzzle and having your ideal life being revealed to the world. Now you might be asking yourself, how many people get to the point of actually completing their puzzle? And the answer is extremely few, if any, because human nature is most comfortable, in an uncomfortable way, to be a “fence sitter.” The definition of a “fence sitter” is someone whose complacency and over-analysis of every situation prevents personal growth, and ultimately the puzzle from being completed. So, what I ask you to keep in mind as you begin to make the first magnanimous decision in your life is to listen to what your “gut” is telling you to do. Your intuition will never lead you in a path where you will not grow and when making a decision, if you are unable to look in the mirror and feel comfortable with the person who looks back, then realize that you lying to yourself. The feeling of doubt is called “The Unknown,” because regardless of what path you take, it will be uncharted territory in your world. But like Alan Alda once said, “You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.” Trust yourself…we are all born with all of the tools that we need to live a life filled with endless opportunities, but it is your choice if you decide to use all of them! Good luck….

  576. WebGL in Firefox Nightly Builds 2009-09-20 01:44:57 mr_luc
    Do their forums even work for you?

    I just got back, and I'm needing to look at the google cache of almost every mozilla forum page; I haven't gotten through to their forums a single time yet.

    Their 'search moz code' thingy still works -- searching it for WebGL turns up lots ... I mean LOTS ... of code. But even though I've found a list of enums for contexts, etc, I still haven't quite found where the mapping is, or where the actual base getcontext() function is located.

    I have powerful procrastination forces pushing me, though.

  577. Run as Fast as You Can, Push Yourself 2009-09-20 23:49:26 messel
    After reading many of the comments from HN, I decided it was time to explore the counter of Procrastinate until you're ready ( http://www.victusspiritus.com/2009/09/14/procrastinate-until... )

    Here's a link to the original HN discussion ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=821462 )

  578. Run as Fast as You Can, Push Yourself 2009-09-21 09:58:40 messel
    Hey, that's cool too and what I first mentioned: http://www.victusspiritus.com/2009/09/14/procrastinate-until...

  579. Advice to a Beginning Graduate Student - Manuel Blum (CMU) 2009-09-21 10:29:29 yters
    I read them all the time during grad school, as a form of procrastination.

  580. The Dog Ate my Global Warming Data (key climate data is missing) 2009-09-26 02:11:21 anigbrowl
    Deciding against globally orchestrated emissions programs -- which will have very real costs in terms of economic growth, which fuels increases in living standards, especially in countries where it isn't so high -- isn't denying climate changes

    I cannot help observing that skepticism of environmental problems correlates strongly with economic certitude. Those argue most passionately that we have insufficient data about the climate are so totally confident in the predictions of economic ruin that they don't even bother to explain their reasoning.

    Why this spurious equation of energy efficiency with a halt to economic development? The goal of the green movement is to increase the ratio of productivity to waste, particularly external waste (ie that affecting the commons). Your argument implies that economic development in poor countries must follow the same path that of the west during the industrial revolution, and that fossil fuels are the only coin that buys future prosperity.

    If I'm wrong, and we don't take the decision, then we're much better equipped, both technologically and financially, to handle the situation in 20 years than we are today.

    I've been following (but not crusading for) environmental issues for 20 years, longer if I include youthful awareness - for example, my uncle used to be an agricultural inspector who'd tackle farmers dumping manure into rivers. We have greatly enhanced our technology over the last 20 years, so why can we not put that expertise to work now, instead of waiting for some future panacea?

    As for being in better future financial shape, you assume an inevitable upward trend, a future in which we will all be richer and have more disposable income, so we can afford to kick the can down the road. Only a few short years ago the bull market was hailed as a great economic success, this time it was different, the mistakes of the past would never be repeated, etc. The fact is that we are just as likely to experience a recession or other financial bust in the future as we are experiencing now. When the market is going up people procrastinate on distant necessities in favor of short-term profit. When the market is down such investments are called too risky. To believe that some future market will be so awash in capital as to render environmental improvement a trivial overhead is to subscribe to a form of socioeconomic teleology, not so different from belief in a technological singularity which will obviate all current problems as we become beings of pure energy or suchlike.

  581. Ask HN: good strategy to parse all that information 2009-09-26 08:51:21 petercooper
    First, deem things that have been in your reading list for a certain time to be unimportant and get rid of them. That's because they are unimportant if you can't even be bothered to read them.

    Second, stop procrastinating and actually set some time aside to read several of your items (or in the case of books, a few chapters). Put the time in and you'll find you don't have too much to read - just not the concentration to keep it up.

  582. Review of a Linux laptop: Thinkpad T400. Do not buy it. 2009-09-28 10:40:01 rsheridan6
    Actually, that sounds like an ideal machine to implement pg's idea of having a dedicated work machine where you don't screw around procrastinating. Your screen doesn't have to look good to use Emacs.

  583. GNU Screen - A Hacker's Ideal Terminal 2009-09-29 03:02:02 noonespecial
    Many thanks for posting this. This is exactly the kind of thing I come to HN to find. I use screen on occasion but never really had it in my mind that I should be using it as a productivity tool.

    I have once again found minor enlightenment and am already more productive because of it. Its nice when procrastinating on HN turns into a net win!

  584. Melbourne Australia Hackernews/YC Meetup, this Sun 4th Oct 2009-09-29 10:18:00 tomhoward
    For those not on Facebook...

    By popular demand, we're inviting Melbourne's Y Combinator/Hackernews devotees to come together for a lazy Sunday afternoon of sunshine & startup talk.

    Tom & Fenn, alumni of the Winter 09 Y Combinator program will be there. If you're considering applying to YC, either for the upcoming Winter 10 cycle, or in a future round, this is your chance to talk to Melbourne's only YC startup about their experiences and seek their advice.

    But you needn't be a YC aspirant to attend, anyone who procrastinates with obsessive re-reads of PG essays and eloquent dissections Michael Arrington's character is encouraged to come along, as is anyone who manages to avoid such distractions in the pursuit of startup success.

    Get along and help make Melbourne the startup hub we know it should be!

    Details:

    3pm, Sunday, October 4th

    The Order of Melbourne - Rooftop

    401 Swanston St Melb

  585. Most of us have a finite supply of willpower 2009-09-29 13:31:25 keeptrying
    If you've really been working on a startup in your free time from your regular job then you'll be painfully aware that this is true.

    Every friday, I try to plan a well balanced weekend so that my willpower to work on my startup is kept topped up after my regular job workweek. I do this by:

    1. Planning for one activity during the weekend which I absolutely love to do: kiteboarding or watching football. Its usually good to have this on sunday so that you look forward to it during friday night and saturday. (Yes I've stopped going out on friday night.)

    2. Recapping who my most likely paying customers are going to be. And writing out a list of bugs and features that I will work on to be able to acoomodate those users.

    3. A list of UI (simple) and fun features which I can do when I start to get tired working.

    The system seems to work but is not procrastination-proof. I think I still need to add:

    1. A well stocked fridge.

    2. A little more face time with my friends. (This is a great willpower rejuvenator.)

    3. More time in the gym. Right now this is at 0.

  586. The Infinite To-do List 2009-09-30 00:51:36 diN0bot
    > "I’ve dedicated my life to how the web helps companies connect with customers, it’s something I knew I wanted to do for many years, I’m lucky I fell into my passion. It comes with costs however, I’m out of shape, stressed, I don’t sleep well, and my blood pressure is up."

    > "That’s OK, though. In fact, that’s how it’s supposed to be. Start-ups are evolutionary creatures that don’t care one bit about your schedule or how many items are left on your to-do list."

    that's not OK. falling into your passion is crucial for maximum work-time efficiency. i hardly ever procrastinate, and i frequently come back from sports or dinner and want to work again. but being stressed and out of shape? i think that would completely demotivate me, not to mention literally sap my energy away. i want to be my most energetic, productive, clear-thinking best. for me that means being healthy and focused. i make my own schedule, so when i want to pull a 16hr work day or wake up at 4am with a burning desire to solve some problem, that's fine. but i don't feel stressed out or out of shape. i feel great.

  587. The Angry Evolutionist 2009-10-01 11:44:26 jballanc
    (Disclaimer: I'm reading HN because I'm procrastinating work on my Ph.D. thesis...on an evolutionary model ;-)

    There isn't a good reason why this would ever matter to someone.

    How's this for a reason why it should matter: You pay taxes, as do your neighbors. When you pay those taxes, you expect them to pay for things you feel are worth while. You also vote, and you will probably vote for people who you are confident will steer those tax dollars to projects you feel are worth while.

    I'm a scientist (or at least, I am for now...I don't think I'll be able to make a living at it for much longer. I'll have to get a "real" job). Most of the research I do is funded, directly or indirectly, by tax dollars. When the people who value evolution and an understanding of the biological world had their way, a lot of money was steered toward funding that sort of research. Then, people who didn't accept evolution came into power. They steered money away from this sort of research, and into fighting wars of aggression. For nearly the past decade, funding has remained flat (after doubling in the preceding 5 years...a rate which was probably too fast, but that's a whole 'nother story).

    Why would you care about my research? Well, I research evolution. Specifically, I'm interested in how to determine what factors will function as selective pressures a priori. Why is that important? Remember last April when OMG SWINE FLU!!!1!!11 Do you remember the pundits and professors and learned people of all sorts that got on the TV and the radio? Do you remember the hosts of all those show asking: Now what? How bad? And do you remember that nobody could give a straight answer?

    You know why they couldn't give a straight answer? It's not so much because the don't know why the flu might be more or less severe. There's been a lot of research into that lately, and we have a good idea what mutations might make the flu a killer, and which are mostly harmless. No, the reason they couldn't give you a straight answer is because which of those mutations would be acquired, and in what proportions, depends on evolution, on selective pressures...and we can't predetermine what those selective pressures will be! Maybe we could, if you'd be ok giving some tax dollars to fund evolution research, or at least vote for people who would be ok with that.

    Oh, and for the entrepreneurs that will predictably say that I shouldn't rely on the government for funding, and that I should instead count on the private sector? Here's the deal I'll offer you (and I think you'll be hard pressed to find a better offer): I give you a 5% probability that the research I will do in the next, say, 40 years, at a cost of only $15mil a year, will lead to being better able to predict where the next pandemic might occur. Would you fund me? Or, more importantly, could you find a government that would allow us to keep that information as a trade secret until the original investment of $600mil (adjusted for 40 years of inflation, of course) was recouped?

    /rant phew...now about that thesis...

  588. The Angry Evolutionist 2009-10-01 15:25:17 izg
    @jballanc as i procrastinate myself, allow me to tell you your comment was not a waste of time. i thoroughly enjoyed it and it addressed a very significant problem under the previous administration which has and will continue to have major repercussions, not just within the scientific community.

  589. Ask HN: Concentrate on work when you have personal problems.. 2009-10-02 18:24:34 jeromec
    If you're a programmer this can be troublesome because a focused mind is what is needed to be productive, whereas you could get away with many other types of work while letting your mind wander. I think the best approach depends on the type of problem(s), but many problems, like emotional ones, may need time to get better. One thing I always try to remember is that nothing lasts forever - good or bad. This can be a comfort in bad times.

    A technique I use to be productive as a programmer is to try and finish a section of work in half the time. This mental demand won't let the mind wander. Promise yourself a reward at the end (such as being allowed to slack off at HN for a while ;). This works for both problems and procrastination, and can give you a positive boost for having accomplished a task. Try to break your workload (and problem solutions if possible) into smaller chunks to deal with, otherwise you can easily feel overwhelmed.

  590. China celebrates 60 years 2009-10-03 23:29:12 unalone
    I like that you're quoting one of Ayn Rand's "Communist" talking points rather than talking about Communism proper.

    Let's get something straight. There is no Communist-central plan. Russia and China each approached Communism differently. If somebody else were to try Communism, they'd have a completely different approach to it. As it is, the only Communist regimes we talk about are the ones installed by violence, and as a result we get this idea that you can't have Communism without violently murdering people. The smaller communes that manage to last decades without violence, they're the ones we ignore when readying our anti-Red talking points.

    You're showing a fair spot of anti-intellectualism when you bash abstract philosophy. Who do you think invented capitalism? I'll give you a major hint: He was an abstract philosopher. Adam Smith was just like Karl Marx, only we like him more. Every major idea we've seen in the world stems to some degree from abstract philosophy, as you call it. It's not particularly abstract, mind you, because it has concrete effects on the world. We're not talking Nietzsche, here.

    Now, let me explain why the Holocaust is really so touted, and why Mao isn't mentioned as much. Partly it's because Germany is a European nation, and the world is still very Euro-centric. In bigger part, however, it's because the Nazis did a pretty good job at its attempt to exterminate the Jewish religion, which, though small, is a pretty major force in the world. People still think Judaism is one of the three major religions in the world, because they like ignoring Hinduism. Jewish people are usually well-educated, hard-working, and ambitious, which is why there's still a disproportionate amount of them in executive positions at companies, in top-notch colleges, and in the literary world. (If we go by the utterly lame judge that is IQ, the average IQ of a Jewish person in the United States is higher than of any other arbitrary demographic, including asian.)

    There were 18 million Jews when Hitler took power. When his regime was ended, one in three of those Jews were dead. Remember Nazis also killed 5 million Protestants, but nobody cares about that, because there are so many Protestants. Hitler showed a lot of Jewish people the mortality of their faith. In a time when Jews were still hated in most parts of the world—and they were certainly still hated in the 40s—they were dealt an enormous blow.

    So a lot of well-educated and influential people all took up the cause. We've got literary masterpieces regarding the Holocaust. I can't think of any that have to do with other genocides; if they exist, I haven't heard of them. There's Eli Wiesel's Night, there's the diary of Anne Frank. Authors wrote a slew of kid's books about the subject, so that a lot of us grow up with the Holocaust ingrained in us. Number the Stars; the Devil's Arithmetic. Those are the books used to teach 10-year-olds about morality. It's all Holocaust-based, because many of the best kid's book writers are Jewish. (Even the ones that don't make being Jewish a big part of their writing. My favorite Child's Lit author is Daniel Handler alias Lemony Snicket, one of whose adult books is about the Golem in the Jewish religion.)

    Finally, we have the fact that World War II is perhaps the best and easiest story ever told. We've got a brilliant military leader and outright psychopath whose childhood is tragic and fascinating, whose seconds-in-command were all rich characters, and whose uniforms were all made by Hugo Boss, still a big name in the fashion industry. There's the famous swastika. Then there are Hitler's allies: Mussolini, who's almost comically corrupt and bad, and Hirohito, the faceless emperor of a nation that was batshit insane when it started fighting and that tortured American soldiers in unspeakable ways. On the other side you have the heroic crippled FDR, and the brilliant procrastinator Churchill, and you've got the morally uneasy compromise with Stalin. It's a made-to-go movie, which is why so many movies are made about it. Whereas World War I was hell, World War II had a very clear villain. And how do we know he's a clear villain? Because he's cooking Jewish people in ovens.

    So World War II is an easy story, and it all revolves around the Holocaust as proof of our moral superiority. Therefore, the Holocaust gets celebrity attention, which complements nicely all the talented Jewish people who remember the Holocaust because their parents died in it.

    (I'm saying all this as a kind-of Jew who grew up listening to a different Holocaust survivor each year. Apologies if that colors this narrative.)

  591. You Can't Do What You Want By Doing Something Else 2009-10-04 23:59:00 GavinB
    [Assuming you want to write books here, not magazines or technical writing]

    Most writers start writing and sell their first manuscripts or non-fiction projects while working at another job. Another large group are stay at home moms, which is really no different because they're still working writing around a time-consuming job.

    Set aside 1-2 hours per day for a year. At the end of the year you should have a complete, revised manuscript and be able to start querying agents. Very few writers sell their first manuscript, so expect to have to go through the process at least a couple of times.

    I would not recommend quitting your job to write full time. That puts too much pressure on you too fast. Once you're comfortable writing frequently you can consider leaving the industry for a year if you can afford to, but don't expect that quitting your job will help you overcome procrastination.

  592. The Einstein Principle: Accomplish More By Doing Less 2009-10-05 21:42:39 edw519
    The content is not bad. Basically, he says to focus on the most important thing and provides antecdotes on how he accomplishes this. This is a recurring theme here at hn:

    http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

    http://paulgraham.com/hamming.html

    I'm not knocking the guy, but I would not agree that this is good marketing. Am I the only one who is becoming immune to sensational titles and tactics?

    Here's an idea: Just call your work what it is, promote it well, and let it stand on its own merit. But, "The Einstein Principal"? Please.

  593. What "Super Achievers" Know About Time Management 2009-10-07 02:17:43 mrshoe
    To-do lists can work for some people, but here's why they're dangerous:

    1) The urgency-importance matrix theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MerrillCoveyMatrix.png). Given the 2x2 matrix of (important, unimportant) x (urgent, not urgent), the two urgent quadrants tend to get done and the other 2 don't. In the case of the (unimportant, not urgent) quadrant, that's probably fine. But for the (important, not urgent) quadrant, this is a problem. To-do lists can make it even easier to focus on the urgent, short-term tasks while starving the important, long-term ones.

    2) To-do lists provide fuel for the procrastination fire by helping you find ways to occupy yourself while you put off a big task that you don't want to do. See http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

    I think that's the crux of his argument. People who achieve a lot can see the big picture; they can see the long term. They don't let the small tasks get in their way.

  594. Forced Coding 2009-10-08 22:17:22 kakooljay
    Great tips - reminded me of a post on beating writer’s block: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/8864

    Note: It's a FUN post, not really practical for coders [eg: "Graham Greene wrote exactly 500 words per day, even stopping mid-sentence if necessary"] but a nice distraction.. just what you need when you're battling procrastination.. :)

  595. Ask HN: Name for people who study without getting around to doing 2009-10-12 02:45:44 yannis
    At first I thought you were defining a philosopher when you wrote "but never feel like they know enough to start" then I thought it is just the opposite they alway know enough to start but have a never ending story.

    I also understood your question to exclude the person who can just afford to study perpetually, just for the love of learning similar to 18-19th century aristocracy.

    So we are looking for a name for 'fear to start'. Excluding procrastination we replace fear->phobia, since phobia is Greek we will replace 'start' with 'archi' which results in:

      - archiphobia : fear to start
    To be honest I am envious of people who can just afford to do that:)

  596. Ask HN: Name for people who study without getting around to doing 2009-10-12 06:17:09 ahoyhere
    I don't have a suggestion for a new word, since many of the others are so good. But it's just procrastination, when you come down to it, and it probably has different root causes in everyone who exhibits it.

    But, as somebody who procrastinated for 6 years and then in the past year has shipped 4 new products, I can tell you... whatever you call it, whatever the reason you do it, it's a symptom, not the disease.

    Find the root of the disease, work to fix it, and you will get rid of the symptoms.

  597. OSX Apps To Help You Focus & Be Productive 2009-10-12 10:37:31 chrischen
    I'd have to say that Self Control is probably the only useful one for me. If an IM pops up or I have an urge to browse HN, I'd circumvent any of the apps that just dims other apps if I want. And for the Pomodoro timers it's too easy to deviate off schedule, and too many tasks that are too short to time.

    Self control however is ingenious. I can impulsively block sites, only to block impulses to visit sites afterwards.

    That reminds me though, I seriously have to start using the procrastination feature here at HN.

  598. OSX Apps To Help You Focus & Be Productive 2009-10-12 12:44:38 stcredzero
    Instead of taking away all network, what about your own configurable proxy server? All I need is some sort of periodic restriction on my favorite procrastination sites. (Like Hacker News)

    I couldn't use a total network restriction for my current work. I need to interface with stuff I can't install on my own machine. (Legacy enterprise software running in a basement data-center room.)

  599. Learning to juggle grows brain networks for good 2009-10-12 18:41:06 notauser
    Juggling was recommended to me by a physio because I was getting shooting pains in my wrists. I used this to learn:

    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6366713757585864298...

    I find it rather good for thinking about bugs, as it's totally automatic once you get the hang of it.

    Learning new things (mills mess at the moment) is great for coding productivity too. I can only handle dropping things every 10 seconds for about five minutes before giving up on procrastination and getting back to work.

  600. Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself to do un-motivating work? 2009-10-13 04:18:51 ScottWhigham
    Okay - let's get the obvious out of the way: are you ADD/ADHD and, if so, have you been taking any recent meds? If not, let's talk about your diet: tons of carbs but lack of protein? How about sleep - getting enough of it? Lastly, when was your last vacation?

    These are all major factors in feeling a sense of restlessness or being lackadaisical towards critical, yet mundane tasks. Sometimes burnout is the term for this whereas other times it is simple procrastination. So which is it?

  601. Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself to do un-motivating work? 2009-10-13 04:32:28 jlees
    If the work that has to be done has a deadline, and you find yourself procrastinating right up until the deadline, whereby you work frantically on the boring work for far too little time but still manage to get it done - I wouldn't worry so much yet. In fact, if you can gauge your ability to get things done at the last minute, and you've sussed that you only work well under extreme pressure, you can enjoy your procrastinating and schedule in the real work for the last minute. I don't advocate this for a life strategy but it sure got me through undergraduate maths supervisions.

  602. Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself to do un-motivating work? 2009-10-13 04:38:52 moosecake
    "are you ADD/ADHD and, if so, have you been taking any recent meds?"

    Don't think so. I'm not on any medication.

    "If not, let's talk about your diet: tons of carbs but lack of protein? "

    I guess so, but I don't feel that my diet is particularly unhealthy. So far today I had: an apple, oatmeal, avocado, carrots, some (whole-wheat) toast, a hard-boiled egg, a sweet potato, and a bag of steamed mixed vegetables w/ corn, asparagus, green beans etc, and just water to drink.

    "How about sleep - getting enough of it?"

    I usually get 6 – 8 hours (except at the beginning of the week when I'm typically feeling apathetic about school and stay up late working on a project or something), so yes, I think so.

    "Sometimes burnout is the term for this whereas other times it is simple procrastination. So which is it?"

    A combination of both, I think.

  603. Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself to do un-motivating work? 2009-10-13 04:44:53 jeromec
    It sounds to me like you need a good hack. If you're truly the type "c" procrastinator PG talks about then let's visualize this. This means your intellect is running on a higher level than the mundane circumstances around you. Would Einstein flunk out of high school because his mind was in neutron land while sitting through a lecture on some obscure part of history? He might, but that would be bad form. I strongly believe you should at least get a high school diploma (or GED equivalent), because it's too simple.

    If you're on this board then you are likely entrepreneurial. You need to be able to analyze and solve problems. At the end of the day your teachers (now they are customers) need you to produce either a certain test score, or paper. Find a way to give them what they want, even if you have to hack it so that you're not doing all the tedious work yourself and/or simply test out of subjects.

  604. Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself to do un-motivating work? 2009-10-13 05:15:16 mattjaynes
    [Edit: Sorry - this probably won't apply to the OP's specific problem, but it will apply to others facing un-motivating work (assuming they have an hourly rate that will allow them to do this)]

    Answer: oDesk, eLance, etc...

    Seriously, my life and productivity have improved dramatically since I started outsourcing the grunt work I used to dread doing. For me it's well worth it to pay someone else 1/2 or 1/3 of what I make per hour to do something I would just stress out over and procrastinate.

    With my money I'm buying: 1) Time (a scarce resource) and 2) Will-power (an even scarcer resource).

    For instance, I have a side project that requires a lot of web scraping. I found a great scraper guy in southeast asia that is a much better scraper than me and is happy to work for 1/10th of what I make per hour. It's a great trade off.

    I can then use the time and will-power to do all sorts of more important things to me - exercise, intense learning, systems design, etc. Specifically, with my extra time lately, I've worked on marathon training, speed reading, learning short-hand, esoteric ruby concepts, practicing the ukulele, etc.

    If you are getting stuck on something you don't want to do - outsource it. Even if a poorly skilled outsourcer makes it through my hiring process (rare, but can happen) and they churn out some crap - it is oddly motivating for me to go and fix the issue and get it right. For some reason I get a mental block sometimes when starting a project from scratch - but if I hire someone else to take a stab at it and they fail horribly, I'm like "Wo, that sucked, you really should have done it this way...." My motivation is then unblocked since I'm 'fixing' something, not 'creating from scratch'.

    oDesk is basically a store where you can go and trade money for time and will-power. Seriously, how cool is that ;)

  605. Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself to do un-motivating work? 2009-10-13 07:28:43 mburnett
    This is similar to what grosales said but a bit more drawn out with some fancy psychology thrown in: ------------------------------------------------------------

    I have struggled with a similar problem and know how debilitating it can be. What I mostly offer here is a few questions to ask in hopes of getting honest answers for yourself. These tend to turn into much deeper issues than they seem at the surface. Not that deep issues are bad, but just take longer to work through. To encourage the full reading of this comment, I have broken into three parts. I should also note that I am not a certified psychologist, but will pretend to be one if the price is right.

    PART 1 of 3

    ------------------------------------------------------------

    I think the key is in what you said here: "The main problem I have is the pervasive feeling in the back of my mind whenever I spend time doing something that I could be doing something else." When you say, "I could be doing something else", I imagine its just not anything else. Instead it's something that internally drives you to become "completely engrossed in my work and won't sleep, eat, etc. until it's finished".

    What is it about this other stuff that seems so appealing? Because it can be different for everyone, let's just say it's "stuff that makes me feel X". For me, this was "stuff that makes me feel creative/unique". I found that anytime I was doing "stuff that makes me feel creative/unique" I became "completely engrossed in my work and won't sleep, eat, etc. until it's finished".

    SUMMARY - Some tasks/activities/stuff can organically motivate you because it makes you feel a certain way

    PART 2 of 3

    ------------------------------------------------------------

    Now, there are some tasks that were towards the middle of the spectrum ("stuff that kind of relates to X or gives me some feeling of X every once in a while"). But then, and this is the dangerous part, there were tasks that were the opposite of X. So let's say Y = -X and call it "work that makes me feel like Y". Y work was terrible. Y work made me question whether I should be in the industry and even made me feel depressed. So, in order to avoid these bad feelings, I would "procrastinate terribly [which in turn] accomplishes nothing but adding more stress to my life".

    This is where you start to go nuts. You feel like its lose/lose (hate my life when doing it / stressed out when I don't). Sounds like this is the point you may be at. But as I eluded to before, the avoidance of these feelings makes sense. Logically, if something feels bad, we will either put an end to it or try to not let it happen in the first place. But let's dive into these feelings a little bit more. If you are not sure what kind of feelings this Y work can cause. Just ask yourself this question:

    "What would happen to me if I had a job where I did nothing but Y work"?

    Obviously, its much more effective if you fill in the Y. Again, as an example, for me the question was: "what would happen if I had a job where I did nothing but fix other people's bugs, uncreative maintenance work and writing a bunch of documentation?" My answer was (and this is where is gets very 'psychological'): "I would feel like I am not contributing anything special to the organization. Then I would feel I wasn't unique. Then I might be lost in the crowd, forgotten or abandoned". Everyone answers will be different, but in most cases it fits a model of "I would initially feel _________, but that might lead to ___________, which just feels REALLY scary for some reason". The second 'blank' is usually one of the basic fears: unworthiness, abandonment, loss of safety, ill health, etc. I found that being able to honestly and accurately complete that sentence exposed many subtle, but clearly driving forces in my everyday and long term decision making.

    SUMMARY - Answer the question: "What would happen to me if I had a job where I did nothing but Y work"?

    PART 3 of 3

    ------------------------------------------------------------

    Once you see that some work "makes you feel Y", and that Y feelings suck, its easy to understand why procrastination might happen. But because some of these tasks seem necessary (I'm afraid it's going to cause me to fail school), you try to find a way to do them. So let's address your specific question: "How do I make otherwise un-motivating work intrinsically motivating".

    I would say you could accomplish this to two degrees:

    * first degree - somehow believe that doing Y work will NOT result in something that seems terrible (answer to SUMMARY question above)

    * second degree - figure out how Y work can let you feel traces or bits of X

    Imagine, abstractly, that the first or second degree is possible. Do you think you would procrastinate less? I imagine you would because you would not be avoiding what seems like the realization of something terrible.

    Now, these two suggestions don't seem very actionable (i.e., 'okay now what?'). Things you can actually do or take action on usually results in a change of behaviors and patterns. Unfortunately, behaviors and patterns become so specific to a given person that to give a general diagnoses would be a waste of your time. Thus, you have to find the change that works for you. I will continue to provide a personal example, but be sure to read the summary at the end as it will give you a more specific question to be asking yourself and others.

    My major catalyst turned out to be a "positive vs. negative framing" situation. I framed all of my Y work as "negative." Anytime I would be assigned something in the Y work category I would have quick and subtle thoughts run through my mind, "Great... now I have to put up with this crap again. This work is so meaningless and doesn't even make sense. What I really want to work on is X. But this Y work is holding me back... how dare you Y work!".

    Framing my current or future situation in this negative way didn't allow me to provide myself with any "intrinsic motivation". Instead my motivation was thinking about all of the cool X work I could be doing. By simply identifying the framing of my thinking, catching myself in the "quick and subtle" negative thought process and a bit of self-coaching, my stress level (and thus happiness) shifted dramatically! Doing these tasks became much easier. The reason this happened was because I was able to stop my "quick and subtle negative thoughts" and tell myself things more along the lines of "okay, so it looks like we were assigned some Y work. Is Y work really that bad? It is going to kill me. Probably not. In fact, I can't believe they are paying me to do Y work. Oh look it's sunny outside!". Again, this was a behavior or pattern that was specific to me. Yours may not be the same, but your outcome should be.

    SUMMARY - find out what behaviors or patterns are holding you back from achieving the "first or second degree" and change them

    TIME TO START

    ------------------------------------------------------------

    So, in summary, look into what about the Y work really makes you avoid it. Then, determine if what you are avoiding is as bad as it seems. It is at this point that honesty really pays off (Personally, I could have easily answered this question with more "quick and subtle negative thoughts", but that would defeat the purpose). Finally if it doesn't seem worth avoiding, change your pattern or your behavior to something that serves you better. To provide some encouragement, I have been able to achieve the "second degree" with my job. I literally went from despising it to enjoy it! It seems impossible, but it's true. I could really have just responded with the comment "Oh hey, that sucks. You should do more positive framing". But my guess is that would not have helped you that much. Instead, the change needs to be specific to you.

    It's easy to just shove these kind of things to the side, but situations like this can cause a great deal of stress and unhappiness. I am sorry that you are currently experiencing it. But, my advice would be instead of taking a large risk: switching jobs, switching careers, dropping out of school, etc., try taking a small risk: asking yourself if what you are avoiding is worth the stress of avoidance.

  606. Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself to do un-motivating work? 2009-10-13 07:49:49 bkovitz
    > I've been having issues lately trying to motivate myself to do mundane, or at the very least "unappealing", work (namely, [high]school work). It's not that I'm lazy — actually I'm afraid I'm a workaholic sometimes — but that I always find myself giving priority to another project or hobby I enjoy doing and find more worthwhile. I personally find I have one of two reactions to tasks I have to do: either I'm completely engrossed in my work and won't sleep, eat, etc. until it's finished, or it is the last thing I would ever possibly want to do with my time and I will do everything but that task

    Amen, brother. Same here.

    Here are some things I've done about this, with some success:

    1. "Pair" on it, even if it's not programming. Just doing the job with someone else often makes it a lot easier. Maybe it's theoretically not as efficient a use of time, but, bottom line, the unpleasant task gets done.

    2. Find a way to not do it. That is, instead of procrastinating, cancel the task. This approach calls for creativity: you might redefine your goal so the icky task isn't necessary, or you might pay someone to do it (this is how my kitchen stays so clean), or you might abandon the larger goal that's driving the boring task (e.g. drop out of college), or who knows.

    3. If the problem is simply lack of momentum rather than true revulsion toward the task, the 5M method ramps up momentum without too much pain. http://false-epiphany.com/2009/04/incompletion-causes-and-so... I usually find that it takes me about two to three days to ramp up momentum so I'm merrily humming along and don't need to play any more mind games with myself. Kinda slow, but it does work. A variation: Wait until the deadline, and rush; or do a rush job right now, with a fairly short time limit, after which you have a hard commitment to go do something fun with someone, somewhere else.

    4. Pause and theorize about the task. Why does it arise? What social/physical/mathematical givens and relationships explain its existence? Why these tools? What other tools could do it? What change in the broader world could make it obsolete, or change the way it's done? What is the absolute minimum you could do and still get the benefits? What is the most efficient way to do it? Optimizing is "bad", but it's also fun, and it gets your mind immersed in the task. Devise the most efficient method you can for doing it, and test your method/skill by measuring your results.

    5. Just fucking do it. Sometimes ya gotta suck it in and deal with it. For inspiration, read what Paul Graham says about determination. http://www.paulgraham.com/determination.html Take pride in your will of iron, and taste the sweet fruit at the end of a forced march, when your sweat has dried and the Sun hangs low in the sky. However, if your whole life is sucking in and dealing with, it's time to make a systemic change. Don't turn into G. Gordon Liddy or something.

    I have found #1 to be the most effective by far, but it's very hard to find a good pair partner for crud like writing a meaningless paper for some stupid class. I have also found #5 surprisingly effective. It's usually been my last resort, but empirically, that weird attitude shift, the resulting commitment, and all-out expenditure of energy actually feel good. You might do a couple "forced marches" and take notes on your own emotional state, to see if the same is true for you. (This is actually a form of #4.)

  607. Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself to do un-motivating work? 2009-10-13 08:34:09 jibiki
    > Just approaching it as if it were a difficult task helps.

    I have literally the exact opposite experience. I procrastinate horribly on difficult tasks (or just any task that I don't know exactly how to do.) I guess different people are wired differently. If the OP is wired like me, I'd advise him to try to do work as quickly as possible and not worry about quality. Just come home from school and finish everything before 5:00.

  608. Student Loans are the New Indentured Servitude 2009-10-13 11:39:46 wdavis
    The borrower is SLAVE to the lender. This statement has been true since the creation of the floating rock. Our grandparents knew this. That's a big reason why they are the "greatest generation". They live by this creed and thus prospered. We ignore it so we pay...and pay....and pay.

    There are two issues I have with our system.of education 1) who said that college was all that important 2) why is there a necessity to jump from high school directly to college. The apprenticeship model works ten times better. In my opinion an aspiring lawyer would do much better if he just got a job working at a law firm. By working his way up he/she would gain valuable experience, hands on training, and here it comes MAKE MONEY. Even if he worked for peanuts the experience alone would be worth more than a college or university could ever teach. I would bet any amount of money that, after the same eight years the apprentice would have spent in some pampered cocoon of a college/university, he/she would be a better lawyer than 99% of Yale or Harvard graduates who at most may have done an internship. The same goes for doctors. Even still, if the individual wanted the college experience let him have a year or two to learn how the world works. It's not doing any of these teenagers any good to go from the sheltered atmosphere of mom and dad's to that big and expensive procrastination of true life we call college. By experiencing life and understanding the value of a dollar, individuals will be better prepared to make proper financial decisions. Furthermore, by waiting a few years and not throwing people (in there most immature and naive stage in life) you avoid the ignorance and stupidity that is college life.

    If an individual decides to seek their higher learning from one of our countries institutions the first lesson taught should always be: the borrower is slave to the lender.

  609. Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn 2009-10-14 01:05:12 Psyonic
    Yes, but if you take that attitude too far you'll never learn from your mistakes. It's quite possible that if you had stopped procrastinating and called earlier, you really would have had the chance the rent the house.

  610. Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself to do un-motivating work? 2009-10-14 07:53:14 gcheong
    Have a look at the book "Procrastination - Why you do it, what to do about it now" by Jane Burka and Lenora Yuen.

  611. Can You Be Shy and Still Succeed in Business? 2009-10-14 19:21:37 pbhjpbhj
    Eventually you'll learn that the worst that can happen is very likely a stern look or a snap comment back.

    I'm shy. It's not a logical consideration - I often have no problems in social scenarios; I used to do some Am-Dram have given lecture-style talks, etc.. I find it's the anticipation of a situation that works as a sort of potential barrier that builds over time. If I tunnel through immediately then I'm usually fine. If the situation is further in the future then I can have weeks of torment but ultimately one just has to do the thing.

    Phone calls have been a particular problem for me. I think this was due to being chastised as a child for not taking good messages. I can procrastinate for a week to make a call, but once I do it - though I get nervous and sweat and have a wobbly voice - I can just do it.

    Personally I think my understanding of social situations and repercussions is above average. I don't find people boring. I work in a public facing role often leading groups of 10-20 people (adults and/or children).

  612. Marc Andreessen - Guide to personal productivity 2009-10-17 07:09:09 jon_dahl
    Great summary and some interesting ideas - especially 3x5 cards, no schedule, and structured procrastination.

    While I agree with his point on structured procrastination - sometimes the most inspired work is done while avoiding something else - it's also important to balance that with focus. I find my focused procrastination valuable and my scattered procrastination frustrating. Procrastination is rarely productive when it means bouncing between four things (reading HN, hacking on a library, writing a blog post, and buying a book at Amazon).

    Procrastinate in serial, not parallel.

  613. Marc Andreessen - Guide to personal productivity 2009-10-17 09:42:36 jlees
    I find more and more recently I'm not just procrastinating in parallel but generally working in parallel. I'll switch from task to task and keep forgetting what I was doing, go back to a tab and realise I've left something half-done, walk through my office on the way to the toilet and sit down and do the crossword instead... I actually feel like an absent-minded professor!

    I can't really figure out why I've started doing this or quite how to stop it; it feels a bit like those Choose Your Own Adventure books where I used to skip ahead to see if certain choices would end up with death, end up with about ten branching paths (I couldn't mark any more than ten pages with fingers!), then collapse the paths one by one. I ultimately do get everything done and marvel at it, but the sheer bamboozlement I face when realising I've "done it again" is getting annoying.

  614. D. J. Bernstein 2009-10-20 02:15:55 tptacek
    Which he doesn't; qmail is public domain.

    (I'm in 100% full-on maximum overdrive procrastination mode today, since what I need to get done is to script and record a screencast of my app, and I'm frozen up about where to start with it. Sorry for being so fast to respond).

  615. Global economy has no substitute for falling dollar 2009-10-26 05:19:58 cturner

        Why?
    If they let the dollar go, it won't just slide, it'll collapse. It'll be game over for the dollar. The leadership will lose staggering amounts face over all these savings they've accrued in this rotten dollar. This will undermine their attempts to push further towards a market economy but - something they can be more fearful of - it will threaten the stability of the state.

    In the west we can have an economic collapse, and the government is thrown out, and things shake but we swap in a new political class and get back to work. China doesn't have pressure valves, and they're an already unwieldy nation - lots of ethnic groups, many of which don't want to be part of China, a culture of corruption, a huge wealth gap. They have a further problem in that there are examples of small nations of Chinese doing very well without being part of a juggernaut state - Taiwan, but Singapore and the legacy of Hong Kong/Macau in their own way also.

    As in the west, the Chinese leaders are using stimulus to procrastinate. But the stakes are much higher. The USD situation is like cancer for the Chinese. The only play I can see out of their situation will be to force an arrangement where they could get their holdings of USD reinterpreted into a more trustworthy store of value.

  616. Why Good Programmers Are Lazy and Dumb 2009-10-26 18:27:04 RevRal
    lazy

    True. I tend to get things done with less effort than my peers and I don't think it has to do with being smart. I just have an all round better understanding of the surrounding tools/ideas of a problem.

    When a lot of people have a project in front of them, I see them jumping in with both feet with a very narrow focus. Afraid of going off in tangents.

    Me? I spend most of my time sitting around drinking coffee. Walking. Reading useful stuff on the internet.

    I've seen it written before: learn to procrastinate well. I think that's a better way of putting it, no real need to be too derogatory.

  617. Ask HN: what's stopping you from launching? 2009-10-27 05:36:09 dpcan
    Initially I thought "failure" as well. But it turns out, I could care less about "failing", it's my fear of PROBLEMS that stop me from launching.

    I have a lot of stuff in my life to take care of already. If launching a product means more problems and little extra money, I definitely procrastinate.

    Here are just a few problems I worry about before launch (just off the top of my head):

    1) Connection problems that aren't even something I can personally fix (client-side)

    2) Feature requests. Tweak requests. People that don't understand that the app isn't a CUSTOM program and wonder why they can't get what they want even though they are paying for it.

    3) Credit card payment processing problems. Denied cards, expired cards, overdraft cards, PayPal, Auth.net, 2co, etc. The problem of what to do with accounts when someone isn't paying or when someone says they are trying to pay, or will pay, but don't pay... blah blah blah. PROBLEMS!!!

    4) Meetings and Training. The app can be STUPID SIMPLE, but there are still those corporate people that want a training session, or a conference call, white papers, or a live meeting to discuss the benefits of our app. Seriously. Pay $20-$100 and just find out. If you are thinking about my app that much, it's probably not for you.

    4) Monitoring backups, restores, server problems, data center problems, storage space, vps, dedicated servers, s3, e3, cloud, load problems, twitter api, facebook connect, etc, etc, etc

    Problems, problems, problems, problems.

    Maybe this isn't an issue when you have VC, but in the bootstrapping world, failure doesn't matter as much as PROBLEMS do.

  618. Alexis and Steve are leaving Reddit 2009-10-27 22:35:29 khafra

        Some people say social media's made from slinging mud
    Reddit's made from users and CRUD
    Users and CRUD, and Alexis and Steve
    A coterie that loves them and the trolls that are peeved
    
    I write sizteen comments, and what do I get?
    A hundred fifty karma, procrastination and regret
    Li'l alien don't you call me 'cause I can't go
    I owe my soul to reddit/store

  619. Google Wave: we came, we saw, we played D&D 2009-10-27 23:31:29 joeythibault
    hahah, at least it's a good demonstration of the possibilities. Honestly I think the best personal use I will find is with my morning emails exchanges with a few friends on the east coast (about 25 emails go back and forth every morning, including links, videos, etc.). We just to do it with a blog but that didn't fit. Chat is too time consuming, but Wave might be just right.

    At least it'll make procrastinating more efficient.

  620. Making money takes practice like playing the piano takes practice 2009-10-28 02:24:47 pohl
    The author's point is that the true nature of practice is that you get good at whatever you repeat. This is because practice uses the brain's built-in automation mechanism. If you spend all of your time procrastinating, for example, it becomes automatic...because you have practiced it a lot, even if this was not your conscious intent. (That is my example, not the author's.)

    Taking outside money, the author claims, encourages you to practice spending money. This is at odds with what the author suggests that you should practice instead: making it.

  621. Ask HN: What do you wish you were better at? 2009-10-31 05:05:06 bgnm2000
    coding from scratch, not procrastinating, eating more

  622. Dustin Curtis's new web app 2009-11-01 01:29:37 robotrout
    I've just been pondering such a service, as the result of a friend of mine, being moved to an assisted living facility. He has no email there, and wouldn't be able to use it if he did. I would love to send him quick updates on my life and my kids, but, while I could spare him five minutes to dash off an email and attach some photos to it, the task of printing the photos on a color printer, finding his address, etc., usually gets the task procrastinated, sometimes for weeks, in that "I'll do it tomorrow" procrastination dance.

    My thoughts on this line were as follows.

    1) It needs to allow photos. They can be an extra charge of course, but I would want to send photos.

    2) There's a ton of paper handling equipment out there. If you invested about $20K, maybe 10K if you bought used, I would think you could get a solution that was 100% automated. It printed, stapled, folded, printed the envelope, and stuffed the contents. A service with such an automated capability, that showed pictures of their equipment on their website so I knew it was real, would definitely be reassuring from a privacy standpoint, as well as a reliability standpoint.

    3) As for API, my thought was to make the whole thing, just email. Parse incoming emails to confirm the sender is an account holder. Parse the email for the markup headers that you define to designate recipient address. If they don't exist, fire off a reply email to the same address, telling them they messed up and didn't mark up their submission properly. Done. No visiting your website at all, after I set up my account.

    3a) I would also suggest a way for me to assign frequently used snail mail addresses as part of an email address. For example, say you assign me the email address QWERTY@mailservice.com. Whenever I mail to that address, you know it's my account, and send the contents of the appropriately marked up email to the recipients. OK, fine. But now, allow me to assign sub-addresses. So, for example, if I email QWERTY.terry@mailservice.com, and I've already defined the address of terry, now I don't have to mark up my email at all. I just put QWERTY.terry@mailservice.com into my email address book, and my friend Terry is the same as contacting anybody else with email. With such a system, mailing somebody and emailing somebody take exactly the same steps on my part. In fact, I can even CC them on an email I send to somebody else.

  623. Poll: What is the fuel for Hacker News' success? 2009-11-05 00:30:15 bbg
    Procrastination

  624. Poll: What is the fuel for Hacker News' success? 2009-11-05 01:27:24 kdiehl
    - Keep a finger on the pulse on what's new - grow old more slowly - keep stimulating the mind to encourage new idea generation - and of course - procrastinating

  625. How to write a great novel - writing habits of famous authors 2009-11-06 20:24:49 vorador
    What strikes me is that they seem to lose much time fighting procrastination.

  626. How to write a great novel - writing habits of famous authors 2009-11-07 00:39:35 electromagnetic
    I worked as a reviewer and I'm trying to write a novel I would like attributed to my name. When I was a reviewer I worked exclusively on a computer.

    However when I began writing novels there was much more inspiration involved. It wasn't an organised stream of consciousness like reviewing often is, and becomes more about inspiration and catching it when it strikes. I frequently have a small 3"x8" notepad stuffed into my pocket, I keep a large A4 notepad by my bed and I try to write anything down when I can, even if it serves no purpose in the end.

    On the downsides of a computer, there are downsides of anything. I've mucked out my rabbits litter box as procrastination when the internet has been down. The main upside to not using a computer, is that when you procrastinate it actually saves you time later. The computer is the only machine where you can efficiently procrastinate and produce nothing whatsoever out of it. If you procrastinate by washing the dishes, well suck it self you don't have to do it later! You eventually finish everything you can procrastinate with early, and end up with nothing but writing to do. When you have a computer, you can piss about on facebook and your day amounts to nothing . . . then you have to do the dishes anyway.

  627. Ask HN: Overcoming coder's block? 2009-11-07 23:28:06 DanielBMarkham
    Two things:

    1) Understand whether you are blocked on a design question or a coding question. Is the problem you can't find the answer or the problem that you can't make the answer happen in code?

    2) Purposeful distraction. Sleep. Go for a walk. Play a FPS. Learn to distract yourself for short periods throughout the day. When done correctly, this gives your subconscious time to work on the problem. When done very well over a period of days, it "ramps up" your problem-solving skills.

    I'm starting off a small project this weekend. After a few hours of coding last night (my first coding session in a while) I got blocked.

    So I went to sleep.

    As I slept, in my dream (or when I was barely conscious, hard to tell) I realized what I needed to do next. When I woke up I was ready to get at it.

    The trick is to make these times purposeful (not random procrastinating) and to never try to code your way out of a design block. Sometimes problem-solving is best approached like night vision: you see the most at night by not looking directly at the thing you're tying to see.

    Hope that makes some sense.

  628. How to Follow Through: The Emerging Science of Self-Control 2009-11-08 23:56:22 oliveoil
    In the summer I used to procrastinate through a lot of time here, on Hacker News. Now I'm coming back mostly only during my semi-free time (but like everyone I probably have better stuff to do). And the first thing I see here is an article about how you shouldn't just check a couple of websites and do serious stuff instead. Great.

  629. Ask HN: What music alters your state of consciousness? 2009-11-09 04:37:24 Sapient
    I find trance music extremely unobtrusive and yet motivating. Almost everything else is distracting.

    I am a sworn procrastinator, yet as soon as I turn on one of Armin van Buurens radio sessions, I can do an entire days work in two hours.

  630. How to Follow Through: The Emerging Science of Self-Control 2009-11-09 13:08:34 raheemm
    Goal setting is one of the best ways for me to get around the self-control/procrastination issue.

  631. Mandelbulb: The Unravelling of the Real 3D Mandelbrot Fractal 2009-11-11 22:52:44 wglb
    This could lead to some serious procrastination.

  632. Anti-Akrasia Technique: Structured Procrastination 2009-11-13 18:50:57 prakash
    The original '95 version is here: http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~jperry/procrastination.htm

  633. Ask HN: Developer workstation setup to promote startup culture? 2009-11-14 09:54:23 dotBen
    "It seems that you are very insistent on the idea that the iMac will cause work to take place in the office. Really what it will do is cause work to not take place other places."

    That's actually part of the point. I would like developers to put in good hours in the office but I don't want to create a culture of 80hr work weeks.

    I'm mindful we're a startup and it's about putting in the hours - but my experience has been that "putting in the hours" often includes the procrastination in the office during the day OR it means doing lots and lots of work and the quality drops off as it's not sustainable.

  634. Fools and their Money Metaphors 2009-11-14 11:32:54 Anoncoward
    <regular posting anonymously> Through joining a firm at the right time, and paranoid saving thanks to growing up poor, I've ended up with $400k in savings and no plans for kids.

    It's way better than being poor, doesn't even compare, but I'm completely unprepared. I left bigco last year and have been self-funding a startup, but the security of having those savings to fall back on has been a curse. I still freak out about not having a salary, even though that's not logical, but at the same time I've been able to procrastinate on compromising my grand vision to achieve revenue without the company dying.

    Anyway, world's tiniest violin, most of my life I'd never even have dreamt of having 'problems' this good, but I wish I could get some good advice on how not to screw it up.

  635. How to acquire and develop mental Focus 2009-11-15 21:14:44 milestinsley
    Break your time down into 1 hour segments, and just think about what you want to achieve during that hour. Be strict: turn off all distractions until the hour is up. It sounds like you have time, but it's the knowledge that you have time that causes you to procrastinate.

    Treat it like an important deadline. When you finish, enjoy the sense of achievement, take a break, then start the next hour. The goal ultimately is to be able to concentrate (productively) for 3-4 hours at a time.

    Why not put a big countdown clock on the wall (that's what I've done!)

  636. Tell HN: Auto-Blackmail 2009-11-15 21:59:05 aohtsab
    I often feel this way. I try not to tell anyone what I'm working on, because I usually don't finish it—the expectations drive me crazy.

    Also, for me, talking about a project is another way to procrastinate actually doing it.

  637. Ask HN: Which is the best way to keep yourself organized 2009-11-16 09:45:36 steveplace
    Organizational issues often are a proxy war with procrastination. So as a cousin to other tools that have been offered up:

    1. Uninstall IE and chrome and use only firefox.

    2. D/L leechblock plugin, start your bad-site list (HN is in my list).

    3. Set a random password, write it down, hand it to your wife and say "don't let me see this ever again"

  638. RescueTime (YC W08) (finally) Releases Project Time Tracking 2009-11-17 01:15:41 diN0bot
    i totally agree, though i'd phrase it as: RescueTime is too granular, whereas i want something with low but abstract resolution.

    i manually track every hour of my day into categories such as startup, sleep, professional-fun, social, sports or waste.

    1) some of these can't be tracked by computer usage; eg, sleep, social, sports and unprofessional-fun which includes making music and reading books.

    2) when i'm doing work i don't want to sift through which websites i'm visiting. localhost:8000 could mean i'm doing startup work or i'm doing a professional-fun side0project. i visit hundreds of online blogs and APIs for help with coding, but i also procrastinate via hn.

    i use iCal to mark my time and leave notes, though i can see using a spreadsheet work as well if not tracking 100% of your time.

    i wrote python scripts to analyze my iCal files and create weekly stats and graphs:

    http://github.com/diN0bot/iCal-Analyzer

  639. 2.5yrs later, why isn't the site finished? a list of excuses from a freelancer 2009-11-17 11:29:20 mxyzptlk
    The client that enables this behavior for 2.5 years is worse than the procrastinating contractor.

  640. Ask HN: How about this idea, a 'friends of HN server' ? 2009-11-18 03:12:39 ankeshk
    I used to give free hosting to Indian bloggers and startups. (More bloggers took me up on the offer than startups though.) Tips from my experience:

    * I kept it as a first-come-first-serve thing. I didn't want to become the judge out there.

    * But I kept a rule from the beginning: people had to move once they became ramen profitable.

    * There was no other rule except the obvious: don't abuse the resource. It worked well.

    * The only problem I faced is: quite a lot of people who took me up on the free hosting offer didn't do anything with it for months. Didn't put up a single web page online. And only used email. It was free. So they procrastinated. And weren't as aggressive as they would be if they had to pay for hosting.

    * So if I were to repeat my offer, I would add Rule # 2: their website or beta has to be up within 2 weeks.

    (Also to weed out people who wouldn't use the free hosting after getting it - I started relying on how good they were with follow up. I usually asked a question on their first request. Once they answered that, I asked another question. And only then did I gave the hosting. Its amazing how many non-serious people drop out by that stage. These questions were basic ones: who is going to be your target audience? How many people in your team? Anything to just see their response reaction.)

  641. What Makes an Entrepreneur? Four Letters: JFDI 2009-11-20 06:15:45 dennykmiu
    This is a great article, truly enjoy it.

    In my own experience, I have learned that there are two kinds of decisions in startups. Any CEO who is capable of trusting his/her own instinct tends to make the right life-and-death decision, which is like avoiding a car accident that never happens.

    Decisions that are not life-and-death are much more difficult to make and are in fact more important to the success of startups. What I have learned is that the key is not in making the “right” decision but making any decision right.

    As technologists, we prefer to make the “perfect” decision, which means that we would have to have “perfect” data. Typically, in a startup, there are two ways to compensate for the lack of perfect data. One is to wait for more data and one is to seek consensus.

    CEO who procrastinates hoping to get incremental data is as deadly as a CEO who jumps to the wrong conclusion before enough data is in. Similarly, a CEO who is afraid to make tough and unpopular decision and hides behind the shield of consensus will almost always lead a startup to the proverbial cliff.

    I highly recommend this article ... JFDI

  642. Ask HN: What are your fav new web apps at the moment? 2009-11-21 19:52:48 whimsy
    Wow... never before have I seen such a high quality procrastination tool.

  643. All this learning means nothing until you make something happen 2009-11-22 05:27:37 tjsnyder
    This is good advice. One thing that has plagued me is that I procrastinate actual (personal) work with reading blogs/books. This isn't always a bad thing in that I am learning something, but it can severely set me back on projects.

    This is why I now set goals for myself of what I want to finish each month. I enjoy learning and reading as much as possible, but I now set those aside to make my "deadlines" for whatever project of the month I have.

  644. Violins "go to sleep" if not played for a long time ... 2009-11-22 23:25:11 procrastinatus
    Anyone consider that the difference might have to do with the strings? For example, perhaps the strings gain slack while not in use and the linear density or string stiffness changes as a result.

  645. Violins "go to sleep" if not played for a long time ... 2009-11-23 04:23:59 primo_violino
    only affects cheap violins? first time I've heard that one - not syaing it's untrue, but it seems strange. I think it's more likely that a more expensive violin gets looked after - and if it's played regularly, the player is a little more sensitive to the sound since they want to get their money's worth.

    I find it really strange that no-one has mentioned the sound post at all - this is a prime part of how the instrument sounds, and it need adjusting fairly frequently.

    Also, no one seems to think that the bow makes a difference - or the age of the hair, or the resin and the residue of older resin.

    There isn't really a way to prove sleepiness of a violin. The variables are not all able to be controlled sufficiently to do it reliably and repeatably: (some in the list below can obviously be kept the same - e.g. you use the same violin. But, some are introduce a lot of inconsistency.)

    1. the player 2. the bow and its factors - resin, tension (yes, they get tightened before everytime you play, and how do you know you tightened it the same?), also centre of gravity does differ between bows, material (pernambuco, carbon fibre) and overall weight (though not by much - most violin bows weigh around 60g, and the variance is about +/-2g). A player needs to get used to a bow in the same way that they need to get used to an instrument. 3. strings - age of string, has the string been played in?, type of string - all metal through synthetic core, metal winding, through gut core, metal winding, through to all gut. the sound differs between even the same type of string - one synthetic core string will sound different to another (cf dominant strings to evah pirazzi). 4. the resin - not as much of a difference between resins, but plenty of room to con people also - heard about the resin with gold flecks in it? makes a hell of a difference to the sound... ;-) 5. the sound post - this is critical. this is not held to the body using glue - it's jammed in place. if this is not set correctly, it really affects the sound. you can get weird effects - e,g, strong lower tones and flat higher, and 6. The bridge - this tilts backwards over time, due to tuning, and additional tension during playing. 7. humidity - some players stick humidity 'worms' into their instruments to keep them at the correct humidity. 8. temperature - affects the strings and the player mostly! 9. fingerboard 'action' - players tastes differ a bit in the action of the instrument - some like a bit more space between the string and the fingerboard, though this is rare for classical musicians. the nut, bridge and fingerboard angle all affect this 10. violin design - fat depth (like French) or thin depth (like Italian). French sound rounder, won't go as loud; Italian sound thinner, goes much louder. Great violins break this rule - e.g. look at a Gagliano - some are loud enough for concerto with orchestra. Then how big is the bass bar? the f-hole's width (& general size)? 11. violin material - what sort of woo? 12. varnish - thickness, type, age, how much UV radiation it's had. 13. dust/dirt and crud that's worked inside the instrument over time

    enough for now, this reply is getting abit long, and I should be looking at some Shostakovich... (this may be structured procrastination!)

  646. Ask HN: How do I regain my attention span? 2009-11-23 09:48:53 natrius
    The most effective thing for me has been social pressure. If I'm working with people who are depending on me to get my work done, I'm more likely to get it done on time. If my coworkers can see my computer screen, then I'll definitely get it done on time, because I'll feel too ashamed to procrastinate. This system falls apart if my coworkers openly procrastinate as well.

    It is extremely difficult for me to complete projects on my own these days. Luckily, it's relatively easy to find someone to work with on most things that are worth doing.

  647. Ask HN: How do I regain my attention span? 2009-11-23 11:55:44 akkartik
    Wow, so many possible causes for poor concentration! I like this thread as an exagesis.

    What works for me is I think also the lowest hanging fruit: a combination of working on things I care about, and actively bringing my wayward bad habits under control.

    A reset requires a change of scene. It's likely that you don't like what you do now. That's the root of the problem. Chop it down. Go find something else to do.

    Once you pick something, do it all the time. It's analogous to shocking your system with a new diet. Everytime in the past that you procrastinated, you gave strength to these demons. Now it's time to starve them completely for a while.

    Get better.

  648. Ask HN: How do I regain my attention span? 2009-11-23 20:42:56 scorpion032
    Procrastinate until when you can. When you know, if you don't do it now, you are screwed, you will do it.

    PS: Kidding of course!

  649. Science vs Reason 2009-11-25 21:09:47 tybris
    Stuff like this is why I have anti-procrastination on. What a waste of time. Stop voting up please.

  650. Why you should build an application (even if it already exists) 2009-11-26 05:43:00 biggitybones
    I've been struggling with this one for a while, and finally realized that it's just an easy way of avoiding getting my hands dirty and a form of procrastination. There's really nothing bad that can come out of designing and building an app from start to finish, even if you're the only one whoever uses it. I finally dove into my first full app and if nothing else it's a great hobby and gives me something to look forward to after work.

    That being said, I'm still of the thought that an identical clone isn't something worth sinking hundreds of hours into; I think you need at least SOMETHING that is different (if only just a bit). Example: After a recent 2 week cross country road trip, I created a quick and dirty travel log to track our adventure on our web comic site. When we got back, I planned to implement this as a web app, but discovered Everlater, which does EXACTLY what I wanted to write (even down to the exact target markets and usages..). Reading their development blog felt like they were stealing the thoughts out of my head, so when it gets to that point I think finding another idea is best.

    Ideas are a dime a dozen - if you need help, just use this list http://www.sixmonthmba.com/2009/02/999ideas.html.

  651. Universities and Economic Growth 2009-11-26 06:23:01 diN0bot
    corporate work spaces always bothered me this way. i don't have any trouble focusing and working on stuff. in fact, i only started using hacker news (let's face it, it's procrastination) when i started working at a company after college.

    it drained my moral to see others goofying off at work, and to feel my own self tired at, say, 3, but hanging around until 5 just to blend in. you can bet when i got home i didn't want to work, whereas when i contract or work on my own projects i'll happily go play tennis at 3 and then work in the evening once i've settled down.

  652. Hnsh - Hacker News from the command-line 2009-12-07 22:19:05 wglb
    Looks interesting, but it does defeat the distraction-limiting device of having the only browser in you office on the laptop across the room. With this, I can procrastinate from any terminal.

  653. Sacrifice Your Health For Your Startup 2009-12-08 12:29:17 benatkin
    Yeah. This article doesn't contain practical advice about reducing health risks to sane levels, though. Paul Graham, on the other hand, has given lots of practical advice for living healthy (but not optimally so) like eating beans and rice instead of junk food and being a smart procrastinator. I daresay people following his advice will on average age less than the typical unhealthy eater, even if they're stressed out a lot.

    http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

    http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html

  654. Step one is admitting you have a problem 2009-12-09 07:53:38 pyre
    I feel more motivated if I'm slightly sleep-deprived for like a day because I'm in a frame of mind where I have to force myself to do anything so it makes it easier to motivate myself to do things that I would normally procrastinate (so it might just be the power of forward momentum). But that only lasts for a day. If I don't catch up with sleep after that day, I just deteriorate.

    That said, it's kind of weird to look back at code I've written in such a state. I usually don't recognize it. Sometimes it a good way, sometimes bad (i.e. sometimes I'm amazed that I wrote something that good, and sometimes I'm amazed that it works at all).

  655. GWT 2.0 2009-12-11 08:15:38 ivenkys
    oops - sorry , my procrastination settings on HN mean that i have to type really fast , meaning no time for proof-reading.

  656. A simple Chrome extension that replaces your New Tab page with a to-do list 2009-12-14 15:31:29 r11t
    Apart from the minimalism I feel that the extension doubles up to hinder procrastination since the list is visible every time you fire up the browser or open a new tab.

  657. Getting things done by procrastinating 2009-12-18 04:45:47 ryansloan
    I think you're both probably right. It's a habit I've wanted to break, but I just haven't gotten around to it. ;)

    In all seriousness, I think it probably -is- wise to eliminate the procrastination before I go from "intern extraordinaire" to "fully functional productive member of society" but it's just a tough habit to break. I've also found that it's not as bad when there's some passion behind the project. I know that's a pretty obvious observation, but it supports the "do what you love" folks.

  658. Getting things done by procrastinating 2009-12-18 05:32:22 joe_the_user
    Woo hoo!

    I've found it!

    This is the first article that give me a ghost of an idea of how to effectively organize my life.

    It might even knock the procrastination out of me for a little while - but hopefully, just long enough to organize it effectively....

    Thank you for posting it, seriously

  659. Writer of "Of Geeks and Girls" responds to some HN comments 2009-12-18 05:45:19 joe_the_user
    The mainstream works harder!?

    My whole love of all things math and computer has been based on the slogan "the other guy works harder, I work smarter"!

    If geeks aren't thinking that way, they're losing something.

    And like the procrastinator, of course I'll work really hard in order to work smart.

  660. Getting things done by procrastinating 2009-12-18 06:25:16 christofd
    Yes! How to cure the fear of the blank page. One of the first articles that I've found how to deal with this problem.

    You can't break procrastination head-on. It's gotta be tricked to defeat it.

  661. Getting things done by procrastinating 2009-12-18 06:27:02 dunstad
    The essays linked to by the author are much more valuable than his own.

    PG's: http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

    Perry's: http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

  662. I think I just failed out of college... 2009-12-19 00:08:04 9oliYQjP
    I never thought about it that way. I was able to make huge strides in learning. All the time to myself coupled with a desire to prove that "a degree doesn't matter for me" was a great recipe for my self-education. I look back and was not a happy person, but boy was I ever productive when it came to learning stuff. That period of my life is when I discovered Paul Graham's essays, became a much better programmer, stumbled upon the Getting Things Done methodology (way before it went mainstream), and seemed to have made all the right choices when it comes to choosing technologies to study.

    My big regret is that there probably was a way for me to accomplish the same thing without being a hermit. I spent a considerable amount of time procrastinating on IRC and forums when I could have been exercising (which would have yielded more energy) and having a better social life. I happen to have a great set of friends, they didn't let me be a complete hermit but I would do social things maybe 2 times a month, 3 if I was lucky.

  663. The Puzzling Paradox of Sign Language 2009-12-20 19:02:43 thirdusername
    I think you meant to type the composite word "varsågod" (and not "Be so god" ^^), it's not a phrase. A similar problem exist with "lagom" which roughly means something like: "enough, not to much or to little.", with a strong positive meaning. It also goes the other way too as computer engineer doesn't have a good exact translation as the English "engineer" is more nuanced than the Swedish "Ingengör".

    If you feel like procrastinating and want to have a laugh at how ambiguous and strange Swedish can be I recommend Mastering Swedish by slay radio: http://www.slayradio.org/mastering_swedish.php

  664. Wikipedia’s climate doctor 2009-12-21 19:47:15 pyre
    What are these extreme actions though? Are you saying that it's a bad idea to do things like focus our attentions on more renewable forms of energy? Even if there is no Global Warming whatsoever the idea that 'Texas Tea' will gush forth from the Earth until the Sun engulfs the Earth is a bit 'out there' to say the least. I don't even care if you believe that 'peak oil' is still 200 years off. The idea that we should greedily waste as much oil as we can, procrastinating on looking for alternative energy sources is juvenile at best.

  665. How to say nothing in 500 words 2009-12-22 06:43:05 mmt
    It's a useful skill to be able to write well in that situation.

    I guess I'm of a class of people who disagree with this assertion. My counter-assertion is that all contrived writing is a waste of time, both for the writer and a reader.

    Early in school, I had a tendency to procrastinate such assignments. What I found useful from these experiences was recognizing the fundamental distastefulness early and giving myself permission simply not to do it. One always has a choice.

  666. How Duke Nukem Forever Failed: Unlimited time, budget and ambition 2009-12-22 08:55:01 alanthonyc
    The worst case of procrastination ever.

  667. Do what you love mirage 2009-12-22 19:10:02 gizmo
    Life is about compromise. When you have a family to support you often can't afford to dabble with a startup or to quit your job at a whim. "Do what you love" isn't meant to encourage people in this situation to recklessly drop everything to search for perfect job satisfaction.

    The "do what you love" mantra to me means making conscious decisions that improve the likelihood that you get to do what you love for a living, instead of optimizing for other metrics such as money, or prestige. Or the worst option of all: just winging it.

    The mind boggling thing is that many people make no conscious decisions about their life at all if they can avoid it. In the spirit of the underpants meme:

        1. Graduate high school
    2. Graduate bachelor & master
    3. ???
    4. Happiness / Fulfillment
    Not only do people often go through both (1) and (2) without really thinking about it (e.g. study Law because "laywers are rich" or French Lit because "I like French books"), there often is no plan for (3). None at all. So people end up doing a PhD as a form of life procrastination, or take a job working with technology that will suck the life out of them (or will seriously limit future job prospects) for marginally better pay.

    So when you see "do what you love", read "plan your life such that you get to do what you love". And I don't think this can be repeated enough.

  668. Stop being a productivity nerd, and chill out 2009-12-22 22:57:53 discojesus
    "Honestly if you were to work like this you may as well work for a big corporation where you can save yourself the hassle of having to audit your time – as some jerk of a manager will do it for you."

    Your managers have other crap to do than to watch what you're doing 24/7 (or "8/5" for that matter) - they're much more likely to just hand you something so they can get it off their own plate and just expect you to handle it.

    " You’ll end up spending your entire day “being productive” without actually achieving anything."

    "Being productive" == achieving things. If you're not achieving something, you're not being productive (either because you're not doing anything [procrastination] or because you are doing the wrong things [i.e. your priorities are not set properly])

    "Rather than this stupid auditing crap, come up with 3 tasks that are most important to your success. Do each one first thing in the day (my day is backwards btw, as in my day starts at around 9pm at night, im a bit wierd). Take a break in between each task and then feel free to procrastinate after."

    This DOES NOT WORK. The only case in which this is a viable strategy is if you work for yourself and have no hard deadlines and you just want to keep yourself from reading reddit all day long - it doesn't work in most real-world situations. Like for example, your boss puts another project on your plate. But that never happens...

    Take the advice of the late Randy Pausch - keep a time journal [http://www.scribd.com/doc/2519267/Time-Log-Sheet], and REVIEW that data (the data is useless if you just fill out time journals and let them sit in some folder somewhere).

  669. Stop being a productivity nerd, and chill out 2009-12-23 01:54:48 discojesus
    ""This does not work"? It works for me."

    Inheriting money might make someone a millionaire - that doesn't make "Have a rich uncle" a viable financial plan. "Having a rich uncle" therefore "does not work". The same goes for making a simple list of your three goals for the day - for 99% of people, it just doesn't work because your simple plan is most likely going to be blown to hell by some emergency/meeting/new project that just landed on your plate. I believe you when you say that it works for you, but it just doesn't work for the vast majority of people.

    " i think you missed the joke about being productive and not achieving anything"

    I got the joke - you almost certainly meant that someone who is "being productive and not achieving anything" is engaging in busywork but not doing anything worthwhile, which would mean that they are active (i.e. they are not procrastinating), but they are not properly prioritizing the actions they take. I covered that case explicitly.

  670. Ask HN: So HNers, whatd'ya get for Christmas? 2009-12-26 06:51:10 dmarble
    From my dad: A card that says, "This card is redeemable for cash in the amount of the cost of the Feb 2010 bar exam if you pass it." He's trying to incentivize me to study since I'm such a procrastinator. I have to admit, that's pretty creative of him.

    From my two younger married sisters who each have kids: a box with a stuffed baby bunny and a handwritten sign inside urging me to "MAKE BABIES!".

    FYI: I'm 30, male, single, working on a law-related software startup, and considering a New Years' resolution of flying away from the bay area to other cities on weekends to meet more women. Good idea?

  671. Schneier on Security: Separating Explosives from the Detonator 2009-12-28 00:44:37 tlb
    The "stay in your seat during the last hour" rule isn't completely frivolous. Bombers arriving in the US are likely to wait until they are over their destination city because it will make the bombing more dramatic. The goal is fear, not deaths. Also, people tend to procrastinate suicide bombings.

    Obviously, stewardesses telling people to stay in their seats won't prevent bombers from detonating their bombs, but it may make their behavior more noticeable to other passengers.

    I'm very surprised that there still isn't some screening machine that detects all explosives. How hard can it be? It'd be much nicer to just walk through a big sniffing machine than all the other ineffective rigmarole.

  672. Ask HN: How do you get in your "productive" mode? 2009-12-31 01:51:15 gkoberger
    I need to make a to-do list (on paper, preferably) of the specific things that I need to get done

    Then, I do them in order. Doing them in order is important- otherwise, I'll waste time procrastinate by trying to figure out what I should do next. If I do them in order, disregarding importance or difficulty, I don't spend half my time debating over whats next.

  673. Personal Productivity Checklist 2010-01-05 03:08:13 JayNeely
    When I was reading, I wondered if I just consider different things as "mistakes" than Jason, or if he was actively censoring himself. I agree with you that "dialing the wrong number" isn't the kind of mistake I feel like is keeping me back. But I can imagine that if I were to do the 'Week of Pain', I'd have a lot of mistakes written down along the lines of:

    - Procrastinated Task X

    - Spent too much time watching CSI marathon instead of working

    - Didn't reply to Person Y soon enough.

    Those are the kind of mistakes it might be worth keeping track of to see which ones are the kind of "D'oh!" mistakes everyone makes once in a while, and which ones are really bad habits that are holding me back more than I realize.

  674. One Packet and it all Falls Down (Youtube) 2010-01-08 16:05:29 colonelxc
    Easier said than done. In the ideal network, sure, you'd have extra network hardware to test the update on, to make sure it didn't break your configuration. You might also have failover network equipment so that the network would stay up while you upgraded it in pieces.

    Of course even with few resources, you should still strive to make updates, maybe during the middle of the night (hope your customers don't need to access your network until morning), and be prepared to roll back if things don't go according to plan.

    That is, if you even knew there was an update. Unlike Windows, your router isn't going to keep popping up little bubbles to tell you to update.

    So yes, it is your responsibility as an IT admin to keep the network secure, but there are still a lot of obstacles that means that overloaded admins will forget or procrastinate. I don't know much about the vuln, but it appears to affect telnet. If that was the only thing patched in that update (or I didn't care about the other features that were being patched at the same time), I would just make sure telnet was closed and leave it be.

    EDIT: Ok, looked more into the vuln, apparently any open ports make it vulnerable, as it is a problem with how they handled the tcp headers. Only reasonable solution here is to patch.

  675. Do It Now 2010-01-08 17:02:07 boundlessdreamz
    "We procrastinate because we are afraid." This struck a chord.

  676. Boost your productivity with Hemingway’s hack 2010-01-10 04:12:21 alanthonyc
    Sounds familiar...this is what I do when I procrastinate.

  677. How A Kid Funded VoodooPC With His Credit Card And Sold It To HP 2010-01-16 07:09:24 AndrewWarner
    I can't disagree with that. It's a reasonable point.

    But when I left school, I used tens of thousands in credit card debt to build my first business because I just HAD to be an entrepreneur and there was no other way.

    - I didn't want a side job, because I felt it would be an excuse to procrastinate when the going got tough at my startup.

    - I couldn't raise money, because I didn't have the slightest clue where to begin. (All the books I bought on how to raise VC money were useless. My family didn't have the cash. And my family friends kept telling me I should get a job.)

    I would have given anything just for a chance to start a business. My kid brother and I actually talked about me selling a body part to raise money. Sounds ridiculous now, but it shows how determined (desperate?) I was to be an entrepreneur.

    Losing my money, credit, house, etc, all that meant nothing in comparison to a shot at being like the people I admired.

    I wonder if you can make it without that kind of determination. I wonder if someone who thinks rationally about not taking on too much debt can have the irrational passion to be an entrepreneur (or to do anything exceptional).

  678. The work you do while you procrastinate is ... 2010-01-20 08:28:35 thibaut_barrere
    Full tip: "The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life"

  679. The work you do while you procrastinate is ... 2010-01-20 08:50:53 vinutheraj
    I watch movies/read HN while I procrastinate ! :(

  680. The work you do while you procrastinate is ... 2010-01-20 09:32:11 10ren
    It says "the work you do while procrastinating". Sometimes when you procrastinate it will be by playing (movies, HN); but sometimes you put off one kind of work by doing another kind of work.

    And some kinds of play actually involve some work within them, such as writing funny answers on reddit, photoshopping, gathering evidence by online research to prove how someone on the internet is wrong, carefully articulating an argument or idea, attempting to inspire or encourage someone, narrating a personal experience as a relatable story. Even the act of reading is a form of work.

    I'm not saying that all those examples of work can be done in exchange for money on their own, but each of them is required by one job or another.

  681. Hacker News sounds like a pause from work. Games are the best pause. 2010-01-25 23:19:55 Kliment
    The title of this post reminds me of the Office paperclip. "Are you trying to procrastinate? Would you like to play a game?" Shameless advertisement though.

  682. Geek behaviors present during conversations 2010-01-27 06:55:09 dkarl
    Your observation about geeks fearing phone conversations is spot on, but I think it has to do with more than just turn-taking. I think it's a general social anxiety that manifests more strongly with phone calls because they're easier to avoid or procrastinate and because they often intrude social anxiety into a very safe, non-challenging social environment. I would guess that face-to-face conversations that are easy to avoid or postpone are just as anxiety-provoking as phone calls.

    Anyhow, I am certainly a phone-phobic geek. When I was a young child, I was terrified of talking on the phone. I was too geeky to understand the social aspects of a phone call, but I was smart enough to know I didn't understand most of what happened during a phone conversation. When my parents called somebody to ask a question or invite them somewhere, it would take fifteen minutes. Typically, I had one goal in mind, such as asking my friend Jon if he wanted to play. That was all I understood, but I also understood a phone conversation was supposed to be more complicated than that, and that I had to be polite to whoever answered the phone. I had terrible performance anxiety.

    Strangely, I still have an aversion to making phone calls to people I don't know well. Even simple, low-risk, impersonal tasks like calling to ask a restaurant's hours or calling the dentist to make an appointment produce a significant amount of anxiety. The more often I talk to someone on the phone, the more the anxiety decreases, though. Talking on the phone to my family and close friends generates no anxiety.

  683. Ask HN: What's your problem? 2010-02-02 08:53:33 prawn
    Yes, a private group to share ideas and motivation could be useful and I'd be willing to be involved. Could be very low-tech too - just IM/email and some FrieNDAs.

    I'd like to share two techniques I've found somewhat helpful (though not quite the ultimate answer, unfortunately).

    1. While side projects often have no deadlines and thus less motivation, employees don't really have the same problems. I've delegated more components from side projects to my employees and the result is things getting done much faster. Now the progress block is things that are back in my hands - writing content, taking a working product and launching it for people to try.

    2. A while back, an entrepreneur-type I know over the net and I did an experiment. We would both work all day and struggle with motivation to complete site-projects during the evening so we decided we'd each complete a small site project in one week. Each morning, we'd check in to show our progress. Failure to show progress meant the other person was to apply guilt trips were appropriate. Monday night as planning, Tuesday was fleshing out content, Wednesday was a skeletal site, Thursday was putting things together, Friday was polishing and making it live. Each night, the pressure of thinking you'd have nothing to show the following morning was enough to force productivity. On nights when I'd normally laze around or procrastinate at the desk, I'd cram 1-2 hours of work around or after midnight. It was enough to get a basic site rolling by the Friday that I would never have otherwise done. It worked for me but unfortunately the other guy didn't get going quite as well. Still, I'd do it again.

  684. Using Game Mechanics To Teach Users MS Office 2010-02-08 01:47:04 jodrellblank
    Funny, the main reason I read HN is to procrastinate and avoid doing other things.

  685. A year without TV 2010-02-10 22:54:13 diN0bot
    i watch a handful of tv shows a week through hulu. it's enormously better than when i watched shows on tv. i watch exactly what i want to see when i want to see it. i feel like my brain is destroyed less by not succumbing to additional crap.

    also, i read books on my computer. i'm far more likely to read at night (or whenever i want to procrastinate) than watch shows (i don't play an appreciable amount of computer games). the nice thing about reading, other than the story arcs, creativity and writing being far superior to tv, is that it's easier to stop when my eyes and brain get tired and fall asleep.

  686. Google Buzz is brilliant, Facebook just lost half its value 2010-02-11 07:56:26 metamemetics
    Most people associate email\gmail with work.

    Most people associate facebook with procrastination\lols.

    More people prefer to procrastinate\lol than to work.

    Therefore more people will prefer to Facebook than to Buzz.

  687. Ask HN: feedback on rescuetime plugin 2010-02-12 09:43:46 diN0bot
    Today I made a small app to test if time management folks, eg users of RescueTime, are interested in a feel good financial incentive: donate to charity for every hour procrastinated.

    Feedback greatly appreciated!

    (We're also looking to expand our summer intern team. Shoot me an email if you interested :-)

  688. Programming is a way to Procrastinate 2010-02-15 02:47:05 angelbob
    I agree -- for software engineers, programming is a popular way to procrastinate. Refactoring doubly so :-)

    Whereas, for somebody comfortable with selling and networking but uncomfortable making or improving products, the networking and selling would be a way to procrastinate.

  689. Programming is a way to Procrastinate 2010-02-15 03:06:56 raganwald
    > for somebody comfortable with selling and networking but uncomfortable making or improving products, the networking and selling would be a way to procrastinate.

    No, no, you did the hard bit, coming up with an idea, and you have the connections and the sales know-how to make the business succeed. Now all you need is a cofounder who will come in and implement it in exchange for some sweat equity, say 1% of a business that will be worth at least one hundred million dollars.

  690. Programming is a way to Procrastinate 2010-02-15 04:43:00 quellhorst
    Writing blog posts is an even easier way to procrastinate than programming.

  691. Ask HN: How many of you look at http://news.ycombinator.com/newest? 2010-02-17 02:43:07 Tichy
    I only check it out sometimes, when I am very desperately in need to procrastinate. At times it will be several times a day, at other times I don't look at it for weeks.

  692. Jessica Hische - Why you should not hire me for web design 2010-02-19 21:48:19 Sukotto
    I like her quote on this page: http://jessicahische.com/spendstoomuchtimeinternetting/?p=15...

      The work you do while you procrastinate is probably
  the work you should be doing for the rest of your life
    The fact that she uses unreadable urls and text-images argues strongly that she's right about NOT hiring her to design web pages.

    She writes well though and, once you print her work, it's beautifully readable.

  693. I need to find out how to finish anything I start. Help me. Please. 2010-02-21 06:00:47 crocowhile
    If I were to finish everything I start I'd know 1/100th of what I do. Most of the times I stop just when I realize that I have enought knowledge to be able to do it "if I just want to". And I move on. Once in a while a finish stuff just because I kind of fall in love with it or just because it's the right thing at the right time.

    Different topic is projects I do for work, or for career. In that case, you must be finishing and in my experience nothing works better than a family to go back to in the evening. I used to procrastinate during the day and I'd have to stay at work till late to finish stuff. I don't do that anymore because I realized my wife deserved much better than that. It helped me a lot finding concentration.

  694. Do You Follow Too Many People On Twitter? Use ManageTwitter. 2010-02-26 06:19:18 dasil003
    Yeah it's kind of like that whole "if you're not following 1000+ people you're not a real Twitter user" article that made the rounds a while back. Maybe if you just want another way to kill time and procrastinate at work (as if we don't have enough already) you should follow thousands of people on Twitter, but if you're actually trying to get some real value out of it then it's insane to follow that many people—unless you're a professional blogger, which is where the self-fulfilling prophecy of Twitter hype comes from.

  695. How Software Engineers and Designers Can Increase Their Focus 2010-03-01 13:52:41 python123
    The key takeaway is the bit about 'inspirational' books. It's very true that people use these types of 'resources' as another means to procrastinate. So many wantrepreneurs think if they just read a little more TechCrunch or Hacker News or watch another Mixergy video, they will have what they need. WRONG.

  696. Weight Lifting for Hackers 2010-03-01 21:49:15 marknutter
    I'm glad to see this article on Hacker News. I started lifting weights way back in High School for the same reason most people start - to get girls. I went through a long cycle of going hard for 3-4 months and not lifting at all for 3-4 months. It took me a long time to realize that it's much more effective (as in it actually works) to go medium for all 12 months out of the year.

    The most important bits of advice I ever got came from an ex-Olympic weight training coach: don't rely on a partner to spot you and motivate you and don't make the workout so hard that it's not enjoyable. The former is important because your motivation is not tied to someone else's. Over the years I've had weightlifting partners come and go, but in the end my success has been tied to my own motivation. The latter is really the key: if you go extremely hard and kill yourself working out, this will be what you remember on the days you don't so much feel like lifting, and ultimately it will cause you to procrastinate.

    Consistency is the most important thing, not intensity. Once weight lifting becomes something routine that you "just do" every day, and not part of some major life changing period of your life, it starts to work.

  697. It’s going to take five years - six words that can save your startup 2010-03-03 06:39:22 fnid2
    I am working on at least 10 different "startups" right now. People think it's too many. It's not focused. But I think the world moves slower than I do, so I work on lots of projects simultaneously. If I hit a wall on one project, I procrastinate with another one.

    A lot of people dedicate themselves to one project, but I liken it to putting all one's eggs in one basket. It doesn't take much to build something quick and see if anyone is interested. If they aren't, move on to something else.

    You never know when someone might come along who is the missing piece in one of your projects.

  698. Overcoming coder's block 2010-03-12 12:38:09 tonystubblebine
    Cory Doctorow has a saying for his writing students: "Surgeons don't get surgeon's block."

    I think the point is that the idea of professional block is just a fancy name for procrastination. However, I don't think he did any actual research with surgeons, so I can't say whether they procrastinate or not.

  699. Ask HN: How do you fight procrastination? 2010-03-14 15:33:45 froo
    In the past I procrastinated a lot. The problem I found was that the sheer number of tasks to be done was immense and I would often be paralysed by the thought of it.

    So what I did was get a simple task management tool (I use RTM) and started off by just setting 2 tasks per day.

    It's only 2 tasks, anyone can accomplish 2 tasks in a day.

    Soon after I got accustomed to it, and I simply ramped it up, first 3 tasks, then 4... very easy.

    After I got used to the idea of accomplishing things often, then I worried about efficiency, but the secret is to just get started.

  700. Ask HN: How do you fight procrastination? 2010-03-14 23:10:36 aufreak3
    Hmmm.. I'll see if I can answer this tomorrow :P

    Heheh .. more seriously sometimes I find my tendency to procrastinate is telling me exactly what I should be putting off. So instead of going "I have this stuff to do and I don't know where to start", I generally pick the easiest and most fun of that list and do it first, even if the "top priority" has to wait. Soon enough, my energy builds up and the pile is gone in a wink.

    I'm not saying I never procrastinate (that'd be a lie), but when I do, I try to pull myself into the above strategy. Usually works for me.

  701. Ask HN: How do you fight procrastination? 2010-03-14 23:48:53 rubinelli
    The most helpful book I've read about procrastination (and I've read many) is The Now Habit. It explains why people procrastinate, what they think when they procrastinate, why even simple tasks stress them out, how they can reduce this stress, why they feel they don't have a life, and specific chapters on how to deal with procrastinators. Just to cite one of its dozens of ideas, advice like "just buckle down" and "tough it out" is part of the problem, because it creates resistance. Your natural response is thinking "that's true, I just have to finish it", which is wrong for two reasons. First, if you "have to" do something, then it means you don't want to, so you fight yourself. You become your most severe taskmaster, you deny yourself guilt-free play time, you resent "having to" do that task even more, and procrastinate even more. Second, when you think about finishing a project, you make it look overwhelming. As others here said, the right approach is choosing a point, starting from it for a few minutes, and see where it takes you.

  702. Ask HN: How do you fight procrastination? 2010-03-15 00:03:01 phugoid
    I find that I procrastinate the most in the early stages of a project.

    First, it takes time to decide what to do first.

    There's also the spoon effect. I just made that up. The first steps you take still leave you so far away from your goal. But as you progress, say to the half-way point, every action has a proportionately higher effect on your progress. That's because I'm always focused on what's left. That last spoonful takes care of 100% of what's left.

  703. Ask HN: How do you fight procrastination? 2010-03-15 02:34:25 tbrownaw
    Just put off the procrastination until tomorrow, it's really not that fun anyhow. :)

    Seriously. Why are distractions enticing? Why is the stuff that needs doing scary/boring? Find a way to cast your work as an interesting problem to solve (like the WoW example upthread) and the distractions as just more of the same old boring stuff you always do. Also if you're really stuck try to procrastinate with an eye towards integrating whatever you learn with what you already know, particularly in areas that are tangentially related to the problem you're stuck on.

    It's like that study with the children not eating the marshmallows, willpower is really about convincing yourself "but why would I even want to do that" rather than purely mental resolve.

  704. The Founder Institute – A Graduate’s Firsthand Account 2010-03-18 00:24:45 awolf
    My background going into the program was purely technology based. I had a very limited view of what it actually took to start a company. When the program started I was so busy with development that the time spent in sessions seemed like a much bigger sacrifice than the $800.00.

    Looking back I can firmly say I was clueless. As a sole founder I was constantly busy, but I wasn't focusing on what mattered. I was working in a vacuum with blinders on. Through direct interaction with dozens of successful CEOs I was able to start to see the forest through the trees. I'm now focusing on 1) the business development and partnership creation that my company needs to get off the ground 2) customer development to ensure that what I have built is a product that user's will buy (better late than never). Coding is how I procrastinate.

    Also, the mentors are very accessible and willing to help. When I had a question about how to handle an investor I was able to shoot a couple emails off and get advice in less than an hour. I'm meeting two of the SD mentors for lunch next week.

    Finally, I think the long term value is camaraderie with fellow founders. It's a great feeling to know a dozen other people you can talk to that are solving the same problems as you. I came out of the program with at least half a dozen super-meaningful connections. You can't put a price tag on that.

    Every rose has its thorns. The institute was invaluable for me but I'd definitely say its not for everyone. Any description of this program and who it's for should contain a very clear statement of one fact that was NOT made perfectly clear at the beginning:

    You must incorporate as a C or S corp during the term or they will ask you to leave the program. The pressure to incorporate starts about half way through, leading up to the "Incorporation" session. About a third of the class dropped out at this point either because they weren't ready or because they objected on philosophical grounds. FI is taking steps to make this clearer to new applicants but since this post didn't mention it I thought I'd tack it on.

    There is a new session starting up in San Diego pretty soon. If you're serious about starting a company then you should definitely consider it.

  705. The End Of 9-To-5: When Work Time Is Anytime 2010-03-19 22:18:45 billybob
    I used to work as a freelance journalist, and did find a couple of downsides to working from home.

    1) It's easy to procrastinate, so it's bad if you're not disciplined. 2) Your 'office' is always a few feet away, so it's bad if you're a workaholic.

    There is something nice about clocking out, going home, and forgetting about work for a while, instead of sitting at dinner thinking "I've really got to do X."

    But if you're disciplined and balanced, yes, it can be great.

  706. The world's only immortal animal 2010-03-20 13:49:18 l0stman
    I wonder if this kind of immortality would be that great. Most of my motivations to do things now come from the time limit factor. If I were immortal with unlimited memory, I think I'd just procrastinate and continue to postpone all the tasks I have to accomplish just because I can.

  707. Ask HN: I'm way too shy, please help 2010-03-22 22:23:40 pbhjpbhj
    I suffer some shyness.

    Where it gets in the way most is telephone calls. Mostly I'm fine on the phone but sometimes I'll procrastinate so much, because I'm anxious about making a phone call, that it will impact my work or social life quite negatively. Unfortunately that stress works against the situation.

    My point however is that there is nothing rational in this it is like an occasional phobia. The fear doesn't come from anywhere, it just appears.

    It's possible that this anxiety is due to being chastised heavily for not taking phone messages well as a child.

  708. Waking up at 5 am 2010-03-24 22:59:46 isleyaardvark
    I've woken up early on a regular basis before. In the morning I could get more stuff done, possibly due to these factors:

    - Fewer distractions. It's generally quieter in the morning.

    - Less chance to procrastinate.

    If I'm awake and it's an hour or two before I have to go to work, what else am I going to do besides something productive? The start of work is a built in deadline.

  709. Ask HN: Can we get a "hide story" button? 2010-04-02 02:08:40 Tichy
    I'm pondering a Countdown Greasemonkey script, that would hide all articles I haven't clicked on within 5 minutes.

    The problem is I keep coming back to procrastinate, and end up reading the irrelevant articles, too. Maybe auto-hiding them would help :-)

  710. Giving up is always harder than doing it 2010-04-06 20:22:50 nickyp
    Excellent article & advice, especially for those who procrastinate all the time but don't even know it.

    On the other hand: knowing that giving up in mid-flight has it own set of consequences will often lead to not starting at all

    aka 'Go Directly To Jail, Do Not Pass Go' ;-)

  711. Taming the lizard brain 2010-04-21 21:59:10 Estragon
    Hahaha, then if I avoid using social media to procrastinate, it gives me a button so I can post about my success on twitter.

  712. A Desk That Allows You to Stand or Sit 2010-04-23 03:11:57 niallsmart
    Can anyone who uses an adjustable height desk comment on the impact it has (if any) on their productivity?

    For some reason, it sounds hard to procrastinate standing up :)

  713. SimCity Player Spends 3 years on optimal city design 2010-04-23 23:21:19 eru
    I want to procrastinate in style.

  714. Ask HN: Are you an information addict? 2010-04-26 23:34:51 kees
    A long time ago I turned from effective use of the Internet into a consuming mood. Consuming information. “Enough is enough” doesn't play any role on the Internet. You will never consume enough information and there's always something new to discover. Most of the time the information you read will not add anything to your knowledge, or your productivity. Don't blame the Internet, understand that it is all your fault. If you are a person who likes to procrastinate, prefer to read than to act, you will easily fell in the traps of the Internets. Personally these are my solutions to handle the problem;

    If you think something is an interesting read, skim it(or in other words, scan it for useful information), bookmark it for later. And probably you will never spent a lot of time on the article . And if a need for this article pops in your head, you can easily find it back.

    Never use on-line documentation for studying or as a reference when doing something productive on the computer. Always download the necessary files (pdfs online) beforehand. Prepare you for your task, collect the information on line but when starting the task: just switch of the Internet, even better don't have any physical connection with the web.

    I love a minimalistic desktop, remove the webbrowsers' icons on your desktop or any menu panel. Just start your browser with a keyboard shortcut. The inviting sweet internet entrances, which you're conditioned to press when you want to avoid a task or need an information kick are gone. Recondition yourself when using the new shortcuts: Think about the purpose you want to use the web and what time you want to spent on that task.

    You never spent time a lot of time consuming useful information, because you will directly apply this information to anything productive. With the Internet, you find the stuff you want in a glance. The problem is information you're consuming, the interesting stuff you want to read, all the stuff what's coming in an endless stream.

    Don't read any opinionated stuff published on an obscure web blog written by an obscure person without any (productive) accomplishments. Probably you won't miss anything useful.

    Just check your favorite websites daily, preferably weekly. Try to optimize the interval between visits. If you follow some interesting people or blogs, which doesn't publish daily, just subscribe to the feed using your email.

    Allow yourself time on the Internet to do and read anything you like,after work and just set yourself a time limit. Because overall for me the internet is a great discovery mechanism, which increases my productivity. But do it consciously.

    Most of the time I don't use the Internet dominantly when I'm sitting beyond my screen. I always need it for something I want to do.

    PS I only use Facebook is an interactive address book, twitter to follow some interesting persons and Gtalk/AOl for colleagues, when working on a project.

  715. The Data-Driven Life 2010-04-29 17:24:13 drats
    The effort of collecting and recording all this data must be huge. And without proper experiment design it's not really worth it (was it going off coffee or his other simultaneous efforts?).

    I already know I procrastinate too much on reddit, I don't need a graph really (or maybe graph it for a week to shock myself, but no more). Reading medical and psychology journals with properly designed tests would be much more beneficial. I know people like to think they are unique snowflakes, but in reality the effect of coffee or fish oil on people is going to be pretty much the same. And journal articles point out if there are groups that are different anyway. This is just OCD channeled into something partially useful.

  716. Google Prediction API 2010-05-20 06:15:45 snippyhollow
    You scratched the itch I procrastinated to scratch. Others (à la Postrank) tried, you just seem you have tried better! 1 Kudo :) EDIT: Ah, you're the guy behind Raphaël Vector lib, have one more Kudo!

  717. Ask HN: Best day/hour to post on HN? 2010-05-30 23:55:44 what
    I hope people don't start holding off on their submissions for the "optimal" time. I'll have to find a different way to procrastinate in the mornings.

  718. A Farewell to Bing Cashback 2010-06-05 11:32:01 MicahWedemeyer
    Thanks for posting this. I was considering integrating BCB into my marketplace, but now I'm glad I procrastinated.

    Guess it's just Google Product Search from now on out. I hate being so dependent on GOOG, but they've been good to me so far.

  719. Ask HN: Why do I always waste time on the weekends? 2010-06-14 22:07:45 getonit
    Fair of failure - welcome to the club.

    All the other alternatives you have covered. It even sounds like you're looking for confirmation, rather than an answer you don't know. I'm with you - I procrastinate, blame other stresses, take breaks, stop working in order to organise what I'm working on, etc. Every now and then, I manage to just shake it all off and do something useful, and then it's blindingly obvious what I've been doing and I swear I'll never do it again. It's about time I got a grip and practiced what I preach more often, but there you go.

    Good luck, wish me the same!

  720. Ask HN: Why do I always waste time on the weekends? 2010-06-14 22:49:10 jarin
    I suffer from the same problem, and I find that the #1 motivator that actually works for me is having someone besides myself holding me accountable to a short deadline. Barring a client or other stakeholder checking in on progress, one trick that I've used is making plans with friends to go out for dinner or drinks and committing to finishing my task before meeting up with them. That way, I'm driven by the thought of being late and having a friend sitting at the bar angrily waiting for me.

    If you don't have any friends available, the 2nd best motivator is to break it up into smaller and smaller tasks until you have something you can take care of quickly and easily enough that there's no way you can procrastinate (Pomodoro method also helps with this approach).

    If you're feeling overwhelmed, it's also important to take Saturday off and actually go outside and do something fun (sitting at home or going to the bar does not count as a useful day off). You'll find that Sunday is a lot more productive.

  721. Ask HN: Why do I always waste time on the weekends? 2010-06-14 23:02:04 eelco
    I'm sure this sounds disappointing, but basically there's nothing you can do other than start. There are several ways to trick yourself into starting, though. Some random ones:

    * Break big tasks into small pieces, make a list.

    * Visualize yourself taking (and completing) the first (physical) step.

    * Take a time based goal instead of task based one, e.g., just spent 5-10-15 minutes on the task.

    * Start with big rewards (for small things) and try to make them smaller as you go.

    * Set deadlines, plan backwards (but don't abuse it to procrastinate ;)

    I think of discipline as a muscle that you have to train. Don't expect to be able to lift a complete weekend of productive work if you usually 'slack off'. I definitely recognize your behavior.

  722. Ask HN: Why do I always waste time on the weekends? 2010-06-14 23:05:13 angrycoder
    I have struggled with this problem for all of my academic and professional career. It was only until this year until I finally started addressing it. After a lot of thought and reading, I've found that I procrastinate for the following reasons:

    1) The task is mundane or repetitive.

    2) I think the task is trivial. "Oh, thats something I can bang out in a few hours, and I've got all week to work on it"

    3) There is a tricky problem within the task that I haven't figured out yet.

    The key to it all was realizing I'm not as smart as I think I am. I needed to make a plan. This is hard, I've never kept an appointment book, I don't make to do lists, those are for dumb people. Not me, I can reason out any problem and keep track of it in my head! Bullshit.

    Sit down with a pencil and a stack of paper. Draw your problem out. Make a list of all the gotchas. Make a list of all the 'easy' things. Quickly you start to realize that even with trivial problems, there is a lot of stuff to do. Yeah, you are smart, so most of those things will only take 2 minutes, but when you see them all laid out on paper, they add up. Oh shit, no time for you tube. I've actually thought about the problem, I've got skin in the game now, I've got some motivation.

    When you started this trivial task of making a plan, you thought it would take 5 minutes because you are so damn smart. Two hours later you are still pushing papers around your kitchen table. Revising, looking for the common connections, refactoring, making a better list, making better software.

  723. Ask HN: Why do I always waste time on the weekends? 2010-06-14 23:11:05 MisterWebz
    That's why i'm more productive when i know there's school the next day.

    A few things that helped me:

    1. Making a list of productive things to do and start doing one of them. If you notice you're starting to procrastinate, choose something else from the list that seems to be more enjoyable to do. This way, you might not finish what you planned to do, but you would still have done something productive and you won't beat yourself up for procrastinating. Then just cycle through the list and eventually you'll end up doing everything on the list.

    2. If there's a very boring task that i need to do, i just tell myself i'll do some work for 5 minutes and then do something else, but once i get started i'll probably work until i get the task done.

    The only thing that really bothers me is when i have very productive days followed by a sequence of very unproductive days. It feels like i have some sort of bi-polar. Does anyone else experience something similar?

  724. Ask HN: Why do I always waste time on the weekends? 2010-06-14 23:39:12 oz
    "Realize now you are statistically unlikely to get it; and, given that, think about what you specifically want rather than broad concepts."

    Funny, I was about to read a chapter on this very topic in Felix Dennis' How to Get Rich' last night. I skipped it, because I didn't want to hear it.

    I read PG's wealth essay in about 2006, when I was in first year at college (I dropped out after first year to work at a telecom startup - anything to avoid school!). I think he said something like wealth is whatever you want; If you're a billionaire but there's no food for sale, your cash is useless. True enough.

    I do know that I want autonomy, and not having to rely on anyone financially (I used to think I didn't need others for anything, but recently realized how stupid I was). It's just that I've seen that almost everything in our lives is related in some way to money. Many marital disagreements are about money. Many lives get ruined by poverty. Not having to worry about money simply makes life easier. Hierarchy of needs, you know? Although I've never been poor (more or less middle class), I've come to realized that I, like most people, are only a few wrong turns from poverty.

    Please post the list! For me I've often thought that I'd like to be rich enough @ 30 to be a music composer. I sometimes procrastinate by researching MIDI, Linux Audio software like Rosegarden, etc.

  725. Ask HN: Why do I always waste time on the weekends? 2010-06-15 00:48:39 oz
    "I have struggled with this problem for all of my academic and professional career. It was only until this year until I finally started addressing it. After a lot of thought and reading, I've found that I procrastinate for the following reasons:

    1) The task is mundane or repetitive.

    2) I think the task is trivial. "Oh, thats something I can bang out in a few hours, and I've got all week to work on it"

    3) There is a tricky problem within the task that I haven't figured out yet."

    You've nailed it, especially number 3. I'll take out my pencil & paper, start sketching out things. The moment something stumps me, I put it down and get up 'for a drink of water.' While I'm up, might as well see what's on USA. Maybe White Collar or Burn Notice...and three hours pass.

    If I may ask, how old are you? And why are you 'angry'

  726. Ask HN: Why do I always waste time on the weekends? 2010-06-15 04:40:32 aristoxenus
    Man, you need to get rid of that TV! There are plenty of ways to procrastinate in the world, but that one must have the lowest "value added to life"-vs-"time utterly wasted" ratio of them all.

  727. The 7 Habits Of Highly Ineffective People 2010-06-15 16:10:07 sev
    #1 should not be procrastination. It should be "Bad Prioritization" instead. This is because, procrastination in itself is not a bad thing; not only that, it's necessary and impossible to get around. We all procrastinate, because at any given moment we have a ton of tasks that we want/need to do and that we could do, but since we can't do them all at once, we have to prioritize. If we are bad at that, then we could become ineffective.

  728. Does MongoDB 1.3.x (dev) silently lose your data? 2010-06-16 03:01:37 henning
    Using MongoDB was a mistake to begin with even if he didn't select the wrong branch to use. His project isn't about databases, it's about machine learning. For his requirements, he just needs a simple datastore and it sounds like SQLite would have worked fine.

    He procrastinated by trying out cool new software (a classic symptom of a project that is not going properly) and lost a lot of time because of the mistaken manner in which he did it.

    He should get back on track by focusing on the real meat of his project and use the simplest bitbucket he can find for it.

  729. Ask HN: I feel my dream slipping away 2010-06-16 04:53:44 thaumaturgy
    Advice is what I look for when I feel like I should know the answer to something, and I don't.

    You have a perfectly viable third option, and it's one that I nearly took while trying to juggle a business and a regular job at the same time. I certainly would have taken it if I felt that it was necessary to keep the regular job.

    That option is, get help. You have a steady, reliable job now, and you might not enjoy it, but you might also be surprised at how much more enjoyable it can be if you have a successful business on the side that's taking care of itself. Also, I'm beginning to think that "getting help" is one of the most challenging steps an entrepreneur eventually has to take; why not handle it right away?

    Take a day or two off from your regular job, if you can. A long weekend would be good. Decompress a little -- but don't procrastinate! -- and then sit down and draft an idea of what you want your business to do, and when you want it to do it. It doesn't need to be fancy; it doesn't need to be a business plan. Just: "in X months my business should be doing Y" kind of stuff.

    Then, once you've got a clear idea of what you want to accomplish, start looking for people that can help you do it. The economy is your friend right now -- you should be able to find some part-time or contract help for pretty cheap. You'll get to learn how to manage them really effectively, since you won't be able to look over their shoulders 40 hours a week.

    Two years from now, you can have your green card, and you can be way ahead of schedule in your business, just because you got help sooner rather than later.

  730. This is Why I'll Never be an Adult 2010-06-20 12:20:04 daten
    I did note the title in my post. And I agree the title is a key part of the author's story. I still appreciate your reply and the others that tried to help me better understand where the author is coming from.

    I'm still left wondering if she would be happier if she spent less time thinking about chores and errands and just did them. I feel like these things aren't a big deal to me because I don't sit around evaluating how "fun" they are or if I can procrastinate. I just do them, usually while thinking about unrelated things that I do actually care about while I'm doing them.

    And thanks to whoever was nice enough to downvote my post. I'm sorry I didn't jump on the "I'm lazy too" bandwagon for easy karma. =(

  731. Posterous and URLs 2010-06-29 13:15:27 fookyong
    This is one of those "mom do I haaaaave to????" pieces of functionality that engineers (I say this as an engineer-type) hate.

    I would procrastinate for weeks before implementing something like this. It's boring, complex, and affects a tiny minority of users.

    However to engineers like me, we have to remember that even though the number of end-users might be small, in this case they are inherently more valuable than the average user. They bring a cache of readers with them and if they like the user experience, can potentially evangelize the product for you more effectively than someone starting a blog from scratch can.

  732. Ask HN: How much do you program? 2010-07-05 04:29:48 chipsy
    Depends on the problem I'm attacking.

    If I'm planning out architecture, I'll write code for an hour or less and then go get coffee and write notes. Basically I "ramp up" to a complete implementation by starting out on something and seeing if it has a major flaw.

    If it's coding up something deep and algorithmic(e.g. recently I started implementing a small scripting language and associated type inference engine), I'm going to be buried in it more-or-less continously for however many days it takes.

    If it's debugging the deep algorithm, I'll work on it off-and-on(the stage I'm in now with the type system project) in blocks of an hour to a few hours at a time. This is the stage where a lot of insight is needed so I don't push myself too much to "force" solutions to appear.

    If it's a "trivial features + fixes" type of thing, I'll procrastinate a ton and then take the hour or two needed to finish. Since this is most of what I do I spent a lot of time procrastinating.

    In the rest of my (working) time I'm mostly focused on game design tasks. I'm working with two others on a Flash/iOS game, and I'm taking the lead design/implementation role. We meet occasionally, several times a week; so I don't own a startup, per-se(one of my partners is in charge of the business aspects), but I'm doing something entrepreneurial just the same.

    Outside of work, I mostly try to relax(walking and some body-weight exercise), clear my mind(some occasional meditation), and learn a little(reading). My social activities are mostly online, these days. When I have time, my friends don't. And when they do, I don't. So I only get to hang out occasionally.

  733. The Procrastination Risk in the Maker's Schedule 2010-07-06 15:28:39 skmurphy
    key graf:

    Bottom Line: The idea of a day totally free of any external commitments or obligations sounds good in theory yet increases the likelihood I procrastinate. On the other hand, a day full of meetings or obligations means I get nothing done. The optimal point is one or two obligations which mark the passing of the day and create a sense of urgency about how I spend the time that's all mine.

  734. Ask HN: What's your most interesting life goal currently? 2010-07-09 00:17:42 XFrequentist
    Interesting, I'm in kind of the opposite situation:

    I recently asked my very excellent girlfriend of 5 years said question. I procrastinated so long at least partially due to residual trauma from an early parental divorce (plus the subsequent decades of court battles and screaming).

    My fiancee's approach was a combination of patience and understanding for 4 years, then basically telling me my time was up. The latter strategy wouldn't have worked without the former.

    One thing I'm certainly glad we did is to talk about it honestly and deeply before taking the plunge. I doubt I would have been able to work up the courage to do it otherwise.

    If marriage is important to you, tell her so, and give you reasons why.

  735. Ask HN: Daily schedule 2010-07-11 04:10:15 gprisament
    My typical day:

    9:30: wake up

    10:30: get to work (now my home office), check email

    10:30-noon: procrastinate

    noon-1:15: lunch then 45 minute walk

    1:15-5:00: procrastinate

    5-7pm: 2 hours of amazing productivity

    7-8:30: Cook & eat dinner

    8:30-midnight: Take rest of night off or perhaps have another couple hours of productivity.

    It's not as bad as it sounds cause usually the "procrastination" is me experimenting with new code or programming languages (or reading HN), just not what I'm "supposed" to be doing.

  736. Ask HN: What's your computer setup? 2010-07-13 04:04:45 nico_h
    A Macbook Air (Gen 2) with the SSD. Sometimes connected to a screen + bluetooth magic mouse & keyboard. I sold my more powerful 15" MacBook Pro because it was too heavy. The Air is powerful enough for what the java dev and iphone + web app tinkering that I do. I really love the freedom afforded by the light weight. It makes it much easier to program and procrastinate away from the desk (in bed, armchair ...). I just wish it didn't overheat so easily, especially in bed, but flashblock and click2flash help a lot.

    I am trying to use a fixed height stand up desk, but I don't feel I have the correct height yet.

  737. Ask HN: anyone ever drop everything and leave software dev behind? 2010-07-16 23:22:29 DirtyAndy
    Any leap into the unknown is very hard, but whatever you do, don't procrastinate on it, the older you get the harder it gets - don't look back in 10 years and wish you'd made the move. Whilst I firmly believe if you really want to do something you can do it at any time, it definitely gets harder as you get older.

    Try telling your wife and kids you are going to leave programming and the money you make and start again on something else, it's possible yes, but generally not so easy. Your "support group" of friends is much harder to leave the longer you have had them around. And "aspirations" are generally slightly harder to fulfil as you get older (trainee hairdresser at 25 OK, at 50 it seems a bit weird).

    Also don't assume that if you leave you wont be able to step back into it. There is always a demand for good people and unless you are in an extremely limited market you quite possibly will be able to step straight back into where you are.

    My wife and I (late 30's) are about to pack up our family and move countries and I'm contemplating what I want to do when I get there so I'm kind of going through the same thing.

  738. Ask HN: Loosing Faith - the startup killer 2010-07-20 20:18:42 NickSmith
    Losing faith is a form of procrastination, and procrastination is a way of not experiencing some feeling that for some reason we are unwilling to experience. As a general rule we procrastinate because we are scared of the results we would get if did not procrastinate.

    In a roundabout way the feelings we are unwilling to experience end up running our life. So maybe it would be a good thing for you to take the quiet time to discover what is beneath the behaviour you abhor.

    One way to do this is to ask yourself what is it that you would lose, or tightly held belief that would be invalidated, if you were incredibly successful. And then rather than try to answer this question with reason or your intellect, just write a page or two without thinking, and see what comes up.

    Good luck!

  739. Ask HN: Loosing Faith - the startup killer 2010-07-20 21:05:12 rmoriz
    I tried once to involve a junion partner (but 50/50) in one project. The idea was to give him a ruby introduction but with the main focus for him to do others things so that I can code e.g. he should checking out support-SaaS, googlemail, terms and conditions.

    I thought that both partners are going to motivate themselves, don't allow one to procrastinatel off the roads.

    In the end it did not work out. He raised more "no go" concerns than even I have when I start failing a project, e.g.:

    A 2 hour discussion about: "when we focus on the US, who does support at night? I'LL NEVER STAY UP READING EMAIL TO 2AM EVERY SECOND DAY. I CAN'T DO THAT."

    That was after approx. three weeks. Nothing worked yet. No customers of course.

    TL;DR

    I try to find cofounders but usually they have less motivation than I have. I probably don't do me a favour.

  740. Ask HN: Loosing Faith - the startup killer 2010-07-20 22:20:18 rmoriz
    Yes. It's a kind of pro/cons.

    The subconscious starts to think of all reasons why this will fail for sure.

    Then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: You work less, waste time and focus, procrastinate.

    Then it's over.

  741. The Top Idea in Your Mind 2010-07-22 05:24:15 shaunxcode
    For me I find if I DONT "steal" back the time to pursue the top idea I will perform poorly on what ever else I am trying to get done (contract work). So it is actually necessary to "procrastinate" and flesh the idea out - more often than not it ends up being something that has far greater worth than the "paying" contract work.

  742. The Top Idea in Your Mind 2010-07-22 05:44:08 BrandonM
    I've recognized this phenomenon in myself in the last several years, but I never articulated it this well. I would just tell people that I had a "one-track mind," and that even though I find myself analyzing things a lot, it tends to gravitate towards whatever I happen to be working on most.

    I have observed this several different times in my life: When I thought I was in (actually out of) love in high school, that was all I could think about, and I put out a ridiculous amount of poetry describing my "anguish". At various times I got caught up with different games: Everquest, Chess, Minesweeper, Battle for Wesnoth, Poker, and Chess again; at each point, I found myself spending all my leisure time on a single game, and all of my idle thoughts considering different opening sequences, or mine layouts, or starting hands: whatever was applicable to current "addiction". When I have been in relationships, I find that I tend to be consumed with not only the small disputes (as pg describes), but with things like "sweet" things I can do or say to make my s.o. happy -- thoughts tend to drift toward planning, anticipation, reconciliation, and any number of other difficult bits that are part of a serious relationship. At various points I have also found myself wrapped up in technical things like math, physics, computer science, and startups in general. And lately my top idea has been the nature of life, human relations, introspection, and psychedelics.

    So for me, it basically seems to be whatever is currently consuming the majority of my consciously-used brain power. Some social problems are hard and require a lot of brain power to try to solve. The same goes for philosophical or cash flow problems. Of course, topics in math or science or engineering are most likely to take up this brain power, but for me at least, those are the things that I tend to procrastinate on the most.

    So even though I find myself inclined to consume my top idea space with relevant technical stuff, I tend to nudge those out of my mind when I'm thinking consciously, instead focusing on more immediate topics (entertainment, socializing, paying bills). The worst part is that I know that if I'd only restructure my free time to actually work on worthwhile things, I would see my productivity increase many-fold due to the "Top Idea Effect". I'm really not sure what's stopping me from doing that.

  743. The Top Idea in Your Mind 2010-07-23 05:25:42 dkersten
    I understand your jest

    I was only partially joking... I actually DO spend more time than I should on HN! You are right though - I do learn a lot from HN, but at the same time, I often browse just for the sake of it, or to procrastinate. So it goes both ways really.

    If you stop finding HN useful, or you start coming here just to burn time or be entertained or to avoid work

    Exactly.

    and you really don't put any of the things you learn here to use

    I hope that I do put the things I learn to good use! There is a lot of really useful information floating around here, I'd hate to spend all this time reading it without applying it. Most of the startup related information has yet to be applied, but I hope to soon. The programming related information does get good use though.

  744. Ask HN: My brain refuses to think, what should I do? 2010-07-26 02:20:48 watty
    I've also suffered from the same problem. I'm very interested in my project and motivated to do it but some days I just can't. I've found one thing that can change my day from zero productivity to 100% is a todo list. I just write down on a piece of paper some tasks I want to get done that day and usually I've crossed them all out by lunch time. Of course then you'll procrastinate from writing todo lists but that's another issue.

    If you try todo lists, exercise, motivational books, etc. and still can't seem to focus on something you should be able to focus on, go talk to your doctor.

  745. Ask HN: My brain refuses to think, what should I do? 2010-07-26 06:22:03 DeusExMachina
    This helps a lot. For lot of things (a walk, nature, relax, vacations) it was really long time ago. My diet is quite good, I think, but the sleep schedule needs a little fix.

    I lacked inspirational media in the recent period and I just talk with friends, but no one is really an authority in this field.

    For the environment I'm looking at the library, and the last time I visited it I managed to do something (but then I needed to look for something on the internet and I did not have a connection, so my mind switched to another mode: find an excuse to procrastinate it).

  746. Ask HN: My brain refuses to think, what should I do? 2010-07-26 06:23:52 DeusExMachina
    You are right, internet is a huge time sink. On the opposite site sometimes I need to look for something and if in that moment I do not have a connection, I use it as an excuse to stop working and procrastinate.

  747. A cure for Hacker News overload 2010-07-27 06:57:28 espinchi
    I prefer http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/: that's the top 10 articles of the previous day. Reading them one day late is not too bad for me, and it helps procrastinate less: it has put an end on my "let's see if there's something new".

    Still this is a very good alternative, which I'll probably end up trying :)

  748. Ask HN: How did you quit smoking? 2010-07-29 16:09:40 pmjoyce
    I can't recommend the Allen Carr strongly enough. It simply changed my mindset on smoking and quitting in such a fundamental way that I couldn't help feeling great about stubbing out my last smoke and actively looked forward to some withdrawal pangs.

    You don't use any nicotine replacement (gum, e-cigs, patches...) and it's not stressful like the willpower method (I tried a plethora of different ways to quit in the past) and the process is quite quick. I procrastinated on reading the book (looking back I was afraid) but eventually decided to bite the bullet and book myself in for a 5hour group clinic session.

    The session took place in December 2008. I walked in at 9am afraid, skeptical and wondering whether I was really in the right frame of mind to quit. I extinguished my last cigarette at 2pm that day and have felt great about it since. I know I sound like an evangelist but this is one product I'll shout about. Colour me a fanboy.

    Ping me if you would like more details.

  749. Is Good Code Impossible? 2010-08-01 16:36:24 jacquesm
    In practice though, given twice the amount of time there will not magically be a twice as good solution. And many times you'd find that the solution would actually be exactly the same.

    Give me 24 hours to do a job and I'll do it, give me two weeks and I'll procrastinate for 13 days and then do it in the last 24 hours. That's exaggerating, but not by much and I'm not sure I like to know myself that much.

  750. What is LaTeX and Why You Should Care 2010-08-04 03:56:38 uggedal
    I procrastinated quite a bit when writing my master thesis by trying to make it as beautiful as possible. Take a look to see what's possible with LaTeX: http://www.duo.uio.no/sok/work.html?WORKID=81971&lang=en. The source is available here: http://bitbucket.org/uggedal/thesis

  751. Valedictorian Speaks Out Against Schooling in Graduation Speech 2010-08-04 17:16:39 ErrantX
    By my observation of the vast majority of people at school I would say... most people would just procrastinate and get nowhere if you just leave them to find something to work towards.

    School sucks; but I think it is a bit of a dirty hack to keep kids minds on something for a few years. It needs a major revamp and broadening of the curriculum (so that those who do want to think independently can do their own thing).

    But otherwise we risk a next-generation of total dropouts with no education and no life skills (it's bad enough anyway).

    Yep; that's what society has come to. The fix is going to take more than just a few years.

  752. Should entrepreneurs take vacations or work 24-7-365 on their startups? 2010-08-06 00:13:47 snitko
    It's an interesting question. Unfortunately it's not always up to us. I found out that I cannot control my ups and downs and that if I could (meaning, that I could have a steady rhythm of work every day) then I would accomplish a lot more. So I was looking for the solution on how to achieve more self control. I asked a friend of mine, who is a medical student and a very passionate person who loves what she's doing. She said something very simple, yet it somehow never occurred to me as clearly. She said that when she feels motivated she works 200% and that way she can afford the unpredictable "downs" without worrying too much.

    Also, there's probably a correct observation that american culture may affect the judgement here. Entrepreneurial culture in US seems to cultivate this workaholic lifestyle, which I always envied. However I don't think that this culture is able to alter human psychology (and probably biology), and so some people who are naturally not inclined to have steady workaholic lifestyle and are trying to adopt it may, in fact, only suffer. For what it's worth, I am sure there are examples of both successful people who worked 7/356 and successful people who worked 200% one day and procrastinated the other day. There are even examples of successful people who worked less than it seems necessary. But I'd love to meet anyone who has ever worked 200% every day for at least a year non-stop and who became successful - that seems very unrealistic to me.

  753. Why do Startups Fear their Idea? 2010-08-18 08:24:58 kranner
    I hesitate to say it after his recent "I will reveal my methods" fiasco but this reminded me of:

    http://maxkle.in/programming-is-a-way-to-procrastinate/

    "Max", if you're reading this, weren't you going to give away your methods in August or something?

  754. Rapid prototyping as burnout antidote 2010-08-24 22:54:56 thibaut_barrere
    I noticed a somewhat similar effect which I named "ProcrastinaBoost" (patent pending, obviously).

    When working on a long/difficult project A, I keep one smaller but equally interesting (ROI-wise) project B on the side, and ensure I procrastinate in a time-boxed fashion on the useful project B only (vs. more classical procrastination).

    The time-boxing ensure this stays at the hobby level, and regularly project B becomes difficult too to kick you back into project A.

    It also gives me some times to relax and think about the issues on the other project.

    To be used with careful time tracking of course :)

    This removes a bit of the burn-out feeling, while still working on something that moves us along.

  755. Time lapse screencap video of a games programmer 2010-08-25 19:23:29 ajuc
    That's what I need to not procrastinate when doing my game - record myself.

  756. Keys to Being Excellent at Anything 2010-08-26 07:15:48 mian2zi3
    I think you might be surprised. I'm not sure where you'd go to find these people, however. Is there something like stackoverflow for code reviews? I just posted a related Ask HN:

    http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1632965

    but sadly got no responses. I just procrastinated half an hour reading HN. I probably would have preferred to review some young, eager programmer's code.

  757. Reddit says, "please stop referring to reddit as 'small'". 2010-09-02 13:43:59 tincholio
    I'm sure many people would disagree on this point. There are some subreddits that are still very good, but the quality of the submissions and ensuing discussions has dropped significantly over the last couple of years, IMO.

    Which is why now I procrastinate mostly here, instead of on reddit ;)

  758. Is "Just Get Started" a Flawed Idea? 2010-09-09 09:22:14 credo
    Getting started is a prerequisite. A lot of people procrastinate and never get started. So from that perspective, getting started should be the most important thing for procrastinators

    However, getting started -in itself- is obviously not sufficient. Getting started on the wrong project is obviously not good (though sometimes, you won't know it is wrong until you do some work on it). Getting started on too many things will result in a lack of focus. Most of this is common-sense. As long as you're aware of all this, I think the "just get started" idea does make a lot of sense.

  759. I procrastinate because I care 2010-09-09 21:41:35 jacquesm
    It's funny how every article about productivity and anti-procrastination is effectively costing productivity and makes people stay away from what they thought they should be doing just a little bit longer.

    If the number of people that changes their minds after reading this multiplied by the time they would procrastinate otherwise is larger than the total amount of time people spent on reading these articles it is a net win.

    Of course I had to go read the article...

    @ryan: typo in the second paragraph, 'live' instead of 'life'.

  760. I procrastinate because I care 2010-09-09 21:49:19 wazoox
    I procrastinate because I read too many blogs posts about getting things done and procrastination avoidance. I procrastinate because I'm procrastinating my way to perfection.

  761. I procrastinate because I care 2010-09-09 22:31:26 kqueue
    I think procrastination is not the problem. It is an effect rather than a cause. I procrastinate waiting until I feel I can focus on the problem. Removing distractions won't help much. When I feel I can focus, nothing can distract me.

    Probably what should be tackled is how to maintain focus, and regain focus quickly.

  762. I procrastinate because I care 2010-09-10 12:09:14 jodrellblank
    Assume there are things you do not procrastinate on (because you enjoy them when doing them, and in advance when looking forward to them).

    Also take from your post that you enjoy this work when you get going on it, but you don't enjoy it in advance, looking forward to it.

    So what's the difference? If you aren't predicting enjoyment for something that you will actually enjoy at the time it happens, then your prediction circuits are badly calibrated.

    If you aren't predicting enjoyment, and you are avoiding doing something (procrastinating), you are probably predicting something bad happening as a result of doing or not doing it, which you force yourself past fighting every time.

    What am I talking about when I say 'predicting'? Feelings. How you feel about it. Do some role playing imagination for:

    - If I don't start this now, how do I feel? - If I never get this done, how do I feel? - If I do work on it now, how do I feel? - If I do finish this, how do I feel?

    (that is, deliberately imagine yourself in each of the situations as if it was really happening, and pay attention to what your brain feeds back to you as you do so by way of noticing how the imagination-model makes you feel).

    Compare between something that you don't procrastinate on, and something that you do. I'm guessing for something you easily do it will go "if I don't do it, no big deal, if I do, pride and happiness", and for something you procrastinate on it will be "if I don't do it, oh no I feel ashamed, and if I do, just another trudging turn of the grindstone".

    Can I justify this from your post? Maybe:

    The things I really care about are things that I want to be perfect, so I put off doing them. Pretty soon, I’ve turned a small, simple task into a huge project and the burden of accomplishing it is just too large, so I put it off. Do I really care about this redesign? Yeah, I care way too much about it.

    Ask yourself what it is that you care about, specifically. It's not really the redesign itself, is it? The "burden". People don't describe things they enjoy doing and look forward to as a burden, they describe onerous miserable/unpleasant but obligatory tasks as burdens.

    You beat yourself up with Fort Knox lockdowns, mental discipline and framing it as something you will have to "fight forever" and then write a blog post about how to change yourself so you stop procrastinating by keeping yourself the same and changing the world around you - as if that actually could work. As if having an egg timer near you is the change that stops you procrastinating. As if changing your watch is the fix for bubblesort being too slow.

    NB, I'm procrastinating by writing this instead of working, but don't dismiss this because of my failings, only dismiss it if it's not useful.

  763. No, you are not "running late", you are rude & selfish 2010-09-15 01:22:55 devmonk
    My wife and I can otherwise plan for ourselves and get to places on time.

    With kids, even when we try to start getting ready an hour earlier, we tend to forget things because of the number of things required and all of the distractions caused by the kids, including them not doing what you tell them to do.

    Do I rush around in the car at times telling the kids that we're running late again? Yes.

    Would some of you that are complaining about those that are late also be late if you had kids that had difficulty getting things done on time and you were more scatterbrained with kids than without? Yes.

    People that procrastinate a bit, aren't type A, and tend to enjoy life rather than planning all the time, sometimes/often are late. It sucks, and it is rude and shows lack of planning and caring enough about being on-time.

    You are on-time. That is great.

  764. Extreme Pair Programming - Guy Steele and Richard Stallman 2010-09-15 05:39:49 mhd
    People are wired rather differently. Yes, you don't procrastinate to HN, Facebook, OKCupid or whatever's your online crack, but on the other hand the programming itself is an order of magnitude worse (and feels twice as bad). Maybe with a few programmers in the world I could "co-flow" enough to get up to speed, but that would still waste the other person's productivity. Considering that nice little XPers should swing a lot, this makes this probably the worst "agile" practice I know of, beyond even TDD.

    Like I said, some people might be wired differently. Although in this case, it's hard to imagine getting a > 200% productivity increase out of two people to make it worth it in the long run.

    For short code golfing sessions, sure. That's been called "could you help me with this code?" for a long time, before that nice alliteration was invented.

  765. Why Not To Do a Startup - Dave McClure 2010-09-26 01:51:30 T-R
    Articles with a negative tone seem to be on the rise lately. Maybe it's just me, but in the past I always got a more positive vibe, more like "If you want to start a startup, don't procrastinate and work hard", rather than "we try not to hire wimps" and "if you procrastinate, don't start a startup". Who is the intended audience? Has there been a recent surge in founders who don't get things done that might be dissuaded by that kind of thing? Is it a feel-good "we're not like that" kind of thing?

  766. How Universities Work, or: What I Wish I’d Known As a Freshman 2010-09-27 13:45:10 psyklic
    It sounds like Bob overloaded his schedule. Or, more likely, he's been partying all night and placed his priorities elsewhere. Most students tend to procrastinate to the last second then whine that they "didn't have time" to get the assignment done, muchless the reading. And that is the sad truth.

    Anyhow, points are a game that even the best students get sucked into playing. We are not passionate about every subject, obviously. So, play the points game for subjects you don't care about, then really try and learn for the subjects you do care about. It will only help your grade, and you might find some friends and supporters along the way too.

  767. AngelGate: Chris Sacca Responds To Ron Conway 2010-09-27 18:08:44 DJN
    IMHO, Arrington misinterpreted the core purpose of the meeting and fanned the flames of damaging rumours across the Internet. Poor form if you ask me.

    It appears that the first meeting was focused on improving the financing options for startups whilst the second meeting appears to have focused on improving the ROI for investors.

    Can someone explain why this is a problem?

    If angel investors don't make a good return after risking their own capital, their funds will be diverted elsewhere (as per the rules of a capitalist system) and that is a huge disadvantage to the startup space because valuations will still decrease anyway.

    Summary - angelgate is a non-story. Move on people. There's nothing to see here apart from another chance to procrastinate instead of working on your startup (which is highly likely to fail anyway)

  768. Ask HN: What do you do when you lose motivation? 2010-10-04 13:27:56 travism
    "The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting on that first one." -- Mark Twain (according to wikiquote)

    At the beginning, if the problem is vague, I open a text editor and start writing all of my thoughts about it. I try to keep the file as free-form as possible (I assume no one else will ever read it) and get down concerns about the problem, design decisions, observations, and anything else that comes to mind. I also write down exactly what the first step(s) will be. I think this technique works for a number of reasons, but especially because putting the project in front of my eyes on the computer screen -- even if it's just in the form of a quick brain-dump in a text editor -- gives me a massive motivation boost and a feeling of momentum.

    Staying motivated after a concrete task list has precipitated is a different problem, which I also try to solve with record-keeping. I obsessively maintain a hierarchy of the tasks I plan to complete, and then check them off as I go. When I can become a machine that just walks the hierarchy and performs the tasks, I find that it sidesteps the emotional mechanism that otherwise makes me procrastinate. I used to store the hierarchy as a text file, but this year I've been writing a tool that provides a) native support for this type of data, and b) a keyboard-driven interface that doesn't make me switch away from the program where I'm actually working. In case anyone would like to try it out, it's at http://projecthedgehog.com (runs on mac and windows).

  769. Verizon iPhone is coming 2010-10-07 05:06:54 thaumaturgy
    What, I'm just supposed to put up with your barbs, and tptacek's, and act like this is all somehow civil and continue wasting time here?

    No, thank you.

    I've procrastinated long enough today, and given that I was taking a day off from dealing with people today, I've just encountered a little more "people" than I wanted to. news.yc is getting redirected to my localhost for the rest of the day.

  770. Amazon AWS Free Usage Tier 2010-10-22 07:45:30 tomjen3
    Great, then I will go back and procrastinate a bit more.

  771. What We Look for in Founders 2010-10-23 03:43:51 BrandonM
    In his article, PG was describing personal qualities, as opposed to external qualities (with something of an exception in the case of the cofounder item). In the case of most personality traits, if you want that trait and actually try your best to exhibit it, then "you believe it, you become it," is pretty accurate.

    If you want to procrastinate less and right away you begin to finish things that you've been putting off, well then you've already won. But if you keep putting off the day when you'll stop procrastinating, well you can see where that's going.

    I think most people underestimate their ability to hack their own personalities.

  772. Need a study break to refresh? Maybe not, say Stanford researchers 2010-10-25 20:26:40 godawful
    I agree.

    Another quotation from the article:

    "They also found that leading up to final exam week, students who bought into the limited resource theory ate junk food 24 percent more often than those who believed they had more control in resisting temptation. The limited resource believers also procrastinated 35 percent more than the other group."

    Perhaps people with poor self-control, who would eat junk food and procrastinate anyway, are more prone to believe that willpower is biologically limited. This saves them from having to take responsibility for their negative behaviour.

    If that were the case, the causality would run in the opposite direction.

  773. Think You Know How To Study? Think Again 2010-10-27 00:55:04 Nemisis7654
    These are nice tips. I employ some of them at times, such as testing yourself and mixing it up, but the other ones I haven't. I tend to study either in my room at my house or the same desk at the library. Maybe I should try to mix it up sometimes. And the spacing it out thing...ha. I procrastinate waaay to much for that. Maybe I should stop that.

  774. Ask HN: PHP vs Rails 2010-10-27 06:03:03 tptacek
    This is practically the archetype of the "question developers ask in order to procrastinate on releasing". Why don't you want to release? Because, you don't.

  775. Is there such a thing as a sustainable todo system? 2010-10-27 11:33:12 ftrain
    Seconding that. If you're an emacs user, the way org-mode (http://orgmode.org/) makes it easy to capture and file information is invaluable, and it allows you to knit together outlines, files, URLs, etc. into tasks in a very transparent way. The manual is thorough and detailed and the community is engaged. After two months using it more and more I feel confident that everything I need is in there, and the agenda view is fantastic. Plus it's basically one big UTF-8 file. I still procrastinate, but I definitely know a lot more about the tasks I'm avoiding. Which is major progress for me.

  776. How to stay focused by eliminating distractions and procrastination 2010-11-01 04:50:33 benohear
    I found the Pomodoro Technique to be a bit like daily pushups. It really does work, but it requires discipline and/or a routine to keep it up. The problem is that once you've missed a few days for any number of reasons, it requires effort to reinstate, and in my experience that inevitably gets procrastinated.

  777. Remind HN: November is Launch an App Month 2010-11-02 02:46:36 jasonlotito
    Aww hell.

    I'm committing to launching DuctDo.com, a companion webapp to DuctMail. DuctDo: Do stuff! (Where as DuctMail was "Remember Stuff").

    DuctDo will be about forming habits, and about setting goals for yourself. For example, let's say you procrastinate a lot, and you want to have some form of public reminder system in place, you tell DuctDo what you want to do. DuctDo then sends you an email every morning telling you to do it, and then at the end of the day, it asks you for an update. Will link into things like Twitter and Facebook and update people with your progress... or lack of progress.

    DuctDo will be the second part of the Ductivity suite of web apps.

  778. Later: What does procrastination tell us about ourselves? 2010-11-07 01:21:02 dragons
    I'm reading it now, so I can procrastinate cleaning up my apartment.

  779. We're moving. Goodbye Rackspace. 2010-11-09 15:10:12 joecode
    Thanks for the reply. There is a connection, of course, but it is not that Amazon knows. Statement B is evidence in the sense that it suggests Amazon does not believe security is sufficiently iron-clad around EC2, which would allow for statement A to be possible in the first place.

    I honestly did not expect my comment to create such angst. I recognize that the wording was a bit confusing, but it seems the main thing people are upset about is that I am spreading FUD. Of course that would be quite inappropriate if it was completely unfounded, but I have stated exactly where my concerns came from, so it seems perfectly legit to me.

    Your reply is very reasonable and polite, but I am disappointed at the bulk of knee-jerk reactions to this post, as well as their passive aggressive/ad-hominen nature.

    Perhaps I am just in a poor mood, but I believe I will be moving on from HN. It was one of the few excuses left for me to procrastinate, so at least I should be more productive. ;)

    EDIT: This, by the way, is an excellent article, though somewhat dated, on some of the security shortcomings of EC2. Note it does not address the "nightmare scenario" that Xen (the virtual machine software) is itself vulnerable.

    http://cloudsecurity.org/blog/2009/04/08/is-amazon-aws-reall...

  780. 25 Best Startup Failure Post-Mortems of All Time 2010-11-10 15:20:36 pontifier
    Ouch... I don't know what to do. I've been going so long it seems normal to me that my startup is ugly and crappy. I'm a single founder, I procrastinate a bunch, and I had to get an outside job to pay my patent lawyers. I regularly go weeks without doing anything at all on my business because of all the other pressures on me. I started in 2004 and I still haven't launched. I keep thinking about how much better my stuff will be than anything that has existed so far, but man I get discouraged.

    I have quit multiple times, but somehow I don't think I could go on without the hope that one of my businesses will someday thrive. I try working on other things, but I always come back to this one business idea that I believe with all my being to be a good idea if I can just get it going.

  781. On Countering Procrastination, Keeping Focused And Ripe, Juicy Tomatoes 2010-11-16 21:45:41 iuguy
    I've found the pomodoro technique and while GTD gets all the headlines I thought HN might want to know a bit more about something different.

    I've definitely found that I procrastinate less using the pomodoro technique (I'm writing this between pomodoros now) - or perhaps it's just that my procrastination is now better organised.

    Has anyone here combined pomodoro and GTD? What were the results like?

    If you use neither, but have a system that works for you, what is it?

  782. Ask HN:Founder Visa query 2010-11-23 14:26:36 anigbrowl
    A lawyer. Get one, now. I can't give you legal advice, but I can observe that you essentially have 90 days to get a job, followed by 60 days to get out of the US if you don't succeed. Self-employment generally does not qualify.

    Don't procrastinate, you can get in real trouble if you do not observe the deadline requirements. Get legal advice, ASAP. Not on the internet, from a real person who specializes in that area of law. A consultation is well worth a few hundred bucks. Start here: http://www.ailalawyer.com/

  783. Ask HN: What advice messed up your life? 2010-12-02 23:47:58 iuguy
    I hate to say me too, but definitely me too. I'm convinced that I procrastinate more because of being told how smart I was as a kid, as opposed to being petrified of not working hard enough.

  784. Knuth and Plass line breaking algorithm in JavaScript 2010-12-06 23:29:55 sjs
    It sounds like a difficult thing to do correctly for any given language. I'd probably procrastinate it too.

  785. On C Linked Lists (Profiling and Optimizing) 2010-12-13 04:02:27 tptacek
    This is a great comment and I guess it's good advice, but doubling vectors have never caused a problem for me, I profile, and I've had them dealing with data sets like "each side of every TCP connection traversing 1/8th of an entire tier 1 ISP backbone".

    I'll steal the Python trick, because it's neat, but I don't think worrying about your resize function is a good reason to procrastinate moving away from linked lists, which are mostly evil.

  786. Ask HN: Would you pay for this? 2010-12-14 03:58:43 jeffmould
    I would not allow some random stranger to be able to remotely view my desktop at any time just to see if I am "procrastinating". What happens if I jump over to view my bank account or am sending a personal email? If I have to block them every time I want to do something that is personal the tool is useless at that point, because now I can block them when I want to procrastinate.

    For it to work properly both parties really need to be in sync and want each other to stop the other from procrastinating. But even then there is a privacy issue that can be difficult to overcome. In my opinion I don't see much of a market for this.

  787. Ask HN: Why is there so little innovation in education? 2010-12-16 23:26:10 eru
    > And if those essays are homework and a student turns it in late, you get to the end of the semester and the student asks why you didnt give them credit; they have to notify you they did the assignment after the due date, otherwise you wont know its completed. The alternative is checking all your assignments online periodically to see if any new submissions are posted from previouse assignments. I know this sounds like its not a big deal, but multiply these frustrations by 120 students, and you start to get an idea that its not as simple as you make it out to be.

    Isn't the right thing, just to mechanically enforce due dates without excuses or exceptions? Students tend to procrastinate enough already.

  788. AskHN: Why hasn't open education worked yet? 2010-12-19 17:49:34 tapiwa
    I think it is a combination of many things.

    a. The curious will always learn. Books have been around for a long time. In the west, the books are cheap/affordable. Still you find many people that cannot be bothered to pick one up and read. Online education material is the same.

    b. Most people need structure in their lives. It is very easy to procrastinate with online learning. Very easy. Without a set syllabus, and deadlines, it is far too easy to park the lessons.

    That said, I still think online education efforts are if not disruptive, democratising. Individuals who were previously interested in a topic, but could not afford to go to college/private lessons, can now do so.

    You still need to get individuals fired up about learning, and learning on their own steam, with no deadlines, and possibly no expectations of certification at the end.

    As the old addage says, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

  789. Tell HN: Writing helps 2010-12-22 23:33:53 theBobMcCormick
    Journaling existed a long time before blogging. And for me at least, the old fashioned journaling, where you just write stream of consciousness stuff that you know will never be seen by anyone else, is a lot more liberating than blogging. Not only because you know that nobody else is going to ever see it, but also because of the writing technique usually recommended (just keep writing, don't edit, don't re-read, don't critique,etc).

    I always found that blogging was just one more thing for my to procrastinate and end up not doing. :-(

  790. Low Skills Cause Procrastination 2010-12-28 09:36:47 angdis
    People react to challenges in different ways. I think the approach taken does depend on skill level as well as personality, motivation and the ability to execute one's will.

    Sometimes it is better to slow down and procrastinate rather than to hammer out something that just barely works. The creative part of the brain keeps working even if you're NOT actively thinking about the problem at hand.

  791. Low Skills Cause Procrastination 2010-12-28 09:39:56 davidu
    Strong disagree. I procrastinate out of boredom, not insecurity.

    When I'm engaged, even if it's new territory, I'm on fire.

    When I'm bored, it's painful to get through certain things, and it makes doing the dishes or laundry look appealing!

    For most people, procrastination is a lack of will power to do that which we do not wish to do even though we know we must.

    As an side, for just about all people, drugs like adderall and friends WILL help you be more productive, though it comes with its own consequences (lack of creativity in some, jitters, easily agitated, loss of apetite, etc.). And I do mean it would help just about anyone who took it, not just those diagnosed with ADD.

  792. Low Skills Cause Procrastination 2010-12-28 09:42:10 jamesbritt
    Was talking with some friends about conferences and preparing a talk. One fried says that JavaOne requires slides in advance, forcing you to get them done by a fixed deadline. "Without that deadline you just procrastinate."

    My other friend replied, "You say that like it's a bad thing."

    Procrastination gets a bad rap. I think of it as "late-binding for ideas". Like late-binding in software there's some overhead and it's not always the best choice, but demonizing it is bullshit Protestant work ethic run amok.

  793. Ask HN: What did you accomplish in 2010? 2010-12-28 22:37:12 abyssknight
    This year:

    * Joined a leadership program to get out of a dead end position

    * Co-coordinated the local DEFCON group

    * Completed the first semester of my Master's degree program

    * Broke into the infosec field through my first "rotation" for my new job

    What I learned:

    * Learned that I can communicate ideas through writing quite a bit better than I thought, and my presentation skills aren't half bad either

    * Everyone could achieve so much more if they stopped reading job descriptions and got to work. This year I did so many things I was unqualified for, and it rocked.

    * People's academic demeanor is often directly linked to their work performance. Cheaters cheat, liars lie, and procrastinators procrastinate. You never know when you're being watched, and I strongly believe school is one place you can't afford to screw up.

    Next year:

    * Stay in infosec, but learn a lot more

    * Build something. Anything.

    * Complete a few more semesters, and do my time while learning more.

    * Patch, patch, and patch. I forget to patch too often. For this I am ashamed.

    * Have a child. Scary, but awesome and probable.

  794. Why Your Employees Are Losing Motivation 2010-12-30 00:00:13 hurt
    I've found #1 absolutely essential for my motivation on both a personal and professional level. When I don't understand where I'm going or what I'm trying to do I just procrastinate (and often get depressed). I've found it a really difficult lesson to learn, how to sit down and break tasks down into parts that I can actually accomplish.

  795. Deadlines keep you ALIVE - a blog post 2010-12-31 19:15:52 plamenv
    I wish it was as easy as that. Real deadlines work because there is some external factor taking place. For example, you get fired by your boss if you don't put that important report on his desk by tomorrow. Or you'll be embarrassed if you don't keep the delivery deadline you've promised to a client.

    When you're setting deadlines that only you know of, there is no possibility of getting "punished" so it's much easier to procrastinate. If it works for you, cool, but I know it doesn't work for me and most likely it doesn't work for the majority of people.

  796. Minimalism: It Works 2011-01-01 04:34:17 _delirium
    > "process of prioritizing your life and working towards concrete goals without giving in to distraction"

    This in itself has tradeoffs I think; sometimes "distractions" are what lead to unexpected connections and pursuits, which wouldn't have happened if you were working towards concrete, prioritized goals all the time. I know some of the stuff I'm most happy I did started out as stuff I was doing to procrastinate. (It may depend on a given person's personality and intellectual style.)

  797. An iPhone Lover’s Take On The Nexus S 2011-01-02 04:38:33 stcredzero
    Sort of a large-scale corporate procrastination.

  798. Working hurts less than procrastinating, we fear the twinge of starting 2011-01-02 12:15:06 te_platt
    And all this time I just thought I was lazy.

    Actually, this article made think about what the relationship is between being lazy and being a procrastinator. Once I get going I enjoy working and it feels so good to get things done. Still, I have the hardest time getting started. So what are the best methods to get going? It seems avoiding HN may be one of them.

  799. Working hurts less than procrastinating, we fear the twinge of starting 2011-01-02 13:10:59 schm00
    I learned a long time ago that I could cure the pain of procrastination by opening an editor and typing

      int main(int argc, char **argv) {
    I still do this... just opening the appropriate program -- emacs, MS Word, whatever -- and typing a line that looks like it might actually be useful is enough to get me started doing real work, even when I have no idea how to complete the project (which was what was stopping me from starting in the first place).

  800. Working hurts less than procrastinating, we fear the twinge of starting 2011-01-02 14:49:35 tom_ilsinszki
    I also fear, that I start working on a problem, give it my best and still fail. It's easier to explain why I failed if I've procrastinated.

    I don't think that the pain of context switching explains procrastination fully...

  801. Working hurts less than procrastinating, we fear the twinge of starting 2011-01-02 15:14:13 Splines
    Isn't there a procrastination option for your login in HN? I'm not sure what it does, though.

    It'd be neat if you could create an account on HN that only allowed you to see the top 20 stories for yesterday and the associated comments, and that's it. If you wanted the normal view, you'd need to log out, and type in your normal account name + password. Thus, you get a small break from work, but the site limitations prevent you from wasting too much time. The pain of logging in/out prevents you from circumventing it (I mean, you could log in/out, but hopefully you don't for your own good).

    IMO, putting sites into your hosts file is too draconian - when the mind starts to wander, it'll want to find a place to roost. If you deny it even a tiny perch (like a hobbled HN), it'll flitter to other, unprotected pastures (like slashdot or reddit).

  802. Working hurts less than procrastinating, we fear the twinge of starting 2011-01-02 15:17:39 csomar
    Success and happiness cause you to regain willpower

    I discovered this a while ago and found a good hack for it. I created a fake index, and within this index, I listed companies. Each company means something: progress in work, proficiency in English, learning, reading, self-improvement...

    The day opens at 10 A.M, when I wake up. The trade begins. If I work or make money, the index rise (one of the company indexes or more). If I procrastinate, I lower the index. This makes me uncomfortable, because I'm looking to grow the index and not actually lower it. So, I get back to work to get the index up or reduce loses.

    Sometimes I'm very productive; I don't even check it out. I don't rise it a lot after that. But other times, I procrastinate a lot, so I return back to the index and drop it dramatically. I feel like I'm obliged to safe the situation, so I work to reduce the loses.

    This also keeps me with all my goals, as I care about the global index and also companies indexes.

    hint: You need to make this index a part of your life. That's necessary if you want that it forces you to work.

  803. Working hurts less than procrastinating, we fear the twinge of starting 2011-01-02 15:44:35 angrycoder
    After a day of procrastinating, you usually feel like shit. You are worried and stressed because now you have even more work to do. So by taking the day to 'relax', you have actually worsened your mental state.

    After a day of working, assuming it was a productive day where you actually solved problems, you usually feel pretty damn good.

  804. Working hurts less than procrastinating, we fear the twinge of starting 2011-01-02 16:09:55 wisty
    Perhaps meditation is a good cure for this type of procrastination? It shouldn't take any effort to close your eyes for a few seconds, and "meditate" to regain your focus. Then, it's easier to decide what to do next.

  805. Working hurts less than procrastinating, we fear the twinge of starting 2011-01-02 17:42:37 ntoshev
    I think there is more than this: e.g. it's easier to procrastinate when you're tired and this theory doesn't account for it.

    I wonder if RescueTime data contain really important insights on productivity. They should try to mine them, probably Netflix-prize style would work well.

  806. Working hurts less than procrastinating, we fear the twinge of starting 2011-01-02 18:22:28 trampsymphony
    This one small idea completely changed my life a few years ago. I always keep a list containing my next actions. If I find myself procrastinating, I don't even have to think, I just glance at the list and do whatever is on top.

  807. Working hurts less than procrastinating, we fear the twinge of starting 2011-01-02 20:43:52 tomerico
    I've just tried it. Even though I was completely conscious that I'm writing this line to break procrastination, it worked! I'm very surprised.

  808. Working hurts less than procrastinating, we fear the twinge of starting 2011-01-02 23:39:07 keeptrying
    I have a feeling that procrastination is very personal thing - ie different for different people. For some reason this method works for some programmers. But only for programming tasks.

    I'd like to believe that this is because it's something we love to do inherently but we fear the "setup costs" involved in actually doing the task.

  809. Working hurts less than procrastinating, we fear the twinge of starting 2011-01-03 00:59:39 te_platt
    Ok, I'll give that a try. But just for one day.

    This seems related to the smart/hard work attitude. If you think you solve problems because you are smart, then come across a problem that seems too difficult you are more likely to give up than if you think you solve problems by working through them. You can't just make yourself smarter but you can work harder.

    Along the same lines, I think I have some control over procrastinating. Not so much over being lazy.

  810. Working hurts less than procrastinating, we fear the twinge of starting 2011-01-03 01:52:03 Jach
    "Action precedes motivation."

    Ludum Dare ( http://www.ludumdare.com ) is a great way to free yourself from some procrastination chains for a weekend. I typically start with a menu screen if I haven't gotten into the mood, since it's easy, it should be necessary, and it lets me digest my planned game some before I start on the main bits.

  811. Working hurts less than procrastinating, we fear the twinge of starting 2011-01-04 11:08:59 mannicken
    I found that having certain rituals, like ingestion of certain substances (caffeine for programming, e.g.) or listening to certain music, or visiting certain forums before doing an activity pretty much removed procrastination from my life. With substances, I found (by accident) that placebo works just as well.

    Of course, now I have to battle different drug addictions but that's a completely different story :)

  812. Ask HN: If you have ADHD, what are your strategies to deal with it? 2011-01-06 12:52:19 Loginid
    First off, don't beat yourself up - 20 min is good. Just make sure that 20 min work periods are punctuated with 5 min break periods.

    I have ADD (not ADHD), but here is what works for me.

    1. Drugs - After much resistance to the idea as well as near exhaustive experimentation with alternative therapies, I tried Concerta and was amazed at the results. On the night of my first dose I had what felt like the best sleep of my life.

    2. Awareness and understanding of the symptoms - If you are like me, you are not procrastinating because you lack focus -- you are procrastinating to achieve focus. You are effectively self-medicating with adrenaline. The resultant constant anxiety about both not working and upsetting your wife keeps you sharp as well. You still are going to need the 'fix', but strive to get them from either drugs, or different behaviors.

    The solution for me was to strategically fill all of my 'free-time'. It sounds like you have a wife and kids, so this should be easy. Lean into being a good husband and father. Block out dedicated family time where you are focusing on them and not stray thoughts about work. It is the 'limbo' state where you are present at home but thinking about something else that is the killer.

    Make sure that this time is centered around an activity - not TV/Computer. Cooking. Washing dishes. Doing Laundry. Playing with the kids (for real). Painting the guest room.

    This does 2 things: it keeps your family happy, and leaves you just enough time to cram in work when it is time to work. Too much time on any one task will put you in 'limbo'. I'm sure that your problem isn't just at work, I'm willing to bet that you are not making a habit of being present in the moment. Off hours practice being present at home will only help things.

    Also, it sounds like you know that boring problems make you procrastinate. It may be worth looking into ways to make boring problems interesting...

    3. Administrative Pre-Planning - I know that trying to work around anything that could derail my attention is not going to work. The solution is really as simple as removing the possibility for those distractions to occur.

    Seriously - Restrict your internet access with site-blocking , headphones to keep co-workers away (even without music - I can't listen to music / TV when I am trying to work). Whatever your triggers for 'limbo' are, acknowledge them and make sure that you have no chance of being exposed. Not ever.

    4. Unwavering Planned Routine - This doesn't work without #2 and #3. I could never stick to routines because I needed the rush that I got from a chaotic lifestyle. When you turn it around, you can get almost the same rush by being optimally effective at any one time. You can race the clock for your fix. If you have to decide at any given time what to be optimally effective at, you will deliberate and go into 'limbo'. Pre-planned routine is a good way of overcoming the impulsivity and reduced long-term executive-cognition that is characteristic of the condition.

  813. Ask HN: If you have ADHD, what are your strategies to deal with it? 2011-01-06 13:36:42 anon_ADD
    Thanks for response. I realize the too much time problem. I will try the strategy of filling in all my free time. I have blocked of all the sites in the hosts file. I do find myself instinctively clicking the browser, but I seeing blank pages snaps me out of the procrastination mode. I idea of preplanned routine makes sense too.

    How long have you used the drugs? Do you suffer any serious effects?

    How long you been on drugs? Do you s

  814. Pizza And Ramen Are Hurting Your Startup 2011-01-06 19:17:47 Andys
    If commitment is important, being able to concentrate on what you're working on must be important.

    Junk foods tend to send me off to sleep or procrastinate... the opposite of coffee.

  815. List of languages that compile to JS 2011-01-07 04:02:41 Scriptor
    Hey, creator of Pharen here. I've been procrastinating on another release for a while but still developing it. If anyone wants to check it out there is a better site over at http://scriptor.github.com/pharen.

  816. Our New Year’s Resolution For Hiring 2011-01-07 06:40:14 j_baker
    > I, in my usually procrastinating ways, put these off for so long that replying to the person at that point would be rude (imagine getting a rejection email months after applying to a job, when you’ve all but forgotten about it)

    It's happened to me before. Yeah, it's a bit rude and bewildering. But once a few months have gone by, it's difficult not to move on. After that point, it was kind of a cute thing I'd mention to my friends ("They finally told me they weren't going to hire me a few months after I applied. Isn't that crazy!")

  817. Stop Being a Pansy and Do Something. 2011-01-07 12:44:37 griffinlacek
    I had this post sitting in draft form for months. I wrote it out of anger at myself, because as much as I am fascinated with technology and programming etc. I haven't managed to hunker down and produce something real. I always diagnosed it as a lack of motivation or procrastination, but in reality I was scared of what might happen If I created something and it was terrible. Which is the precise reason this post was in draft form for so long. It's an abrasive blog post and I thought it could make me look like a fool. It may have, but it has caused discussion. This was a victory in it's self. A victory for me to produce something real. That's why I wrote it.

  818. Facebook hype will fade 2011-01-09 10:20:09 ruedaminute
    I have no real use for facebook anymore. Honestly, I think most people right now just go there for lack of something to procrastinate with. Twitter is much better for that anyway. Trying to get all my fb friends to jump ship with me. http://blog.ruedaminute.com/2011/01/dear-facebook-friends/ Honestly, the more people on Twitter, the better for the internet IMHO.

  819. In Defense Of The PhD 2011-01-10 01:25:58 davi
    As it happens, I'm defending my dissertation tomorrow (neuroscience, U.S.) and this post pretty well sums up my sentiment.

    I particularly agree with the ending:

        Oh you’re saying I’m a dreamer, and that simply never 
    happens? Well what about those thousands of internet 
    start-up companies? They waste their time as well, trying 
    to become another Facebook or another Google. Yet they 
    still do it, because it’s their dream to pursue.

    And so is academic career ours.
    I think there are two modes one can do research in: one is a conservative, do-what-you're-told kind of incrementalism; another is higher risk, swing-for-the-fences, and entrepreneurial. I think there is a similarity between doing research in the latter mode and a technology startup, which is why I got sucked into Hacker News when it was still called Startup News. Nearly everybody on it was a maker, swinging for the fences. I felt a lot of affinity for the attitude if not the methods.

    Anyway, enough HN procrastination, I need to practice my talk!

  820. The Python Paradox 2011-01-10 03:22:43 bigfudge
    I agree. I play with new languages (I won't claim learning just yet) out of curiosity and as a very productive form of procrastination.

  821. Poll: Does the amount of time that you spend on HN hurt your productivity? 2011-01-11 15:44:07 davi
    The only time it's a productivity hit to me is when I'm procrastinating anyway. I wouldn't worry about that. Focus on making the conversation as interesting as you can.

  822. When A Game Designer teaches a College Course: No Grading, just Levelling Up 2011-01-11 16:26:13 Jach
    My high school sociology teacher implemented a point-based system that everyone but a few complainers loved. (And so he was forced for the next year to axe it or quit.) It was simple, clear, harmful to procrastination yet beneficial to laziness at the same time. Everyone starts at 0, an F, you optionally do various assignments throughout the term and gain points, and if at the end you have enough points you can cruise. Oh, and points over 100 rolled over to the next term.

  823. Open question: What's the point of inbox zero? 2011-01-14 22:48:04 JacobAldridge
    My inbox (work - personal is full of 'like to read one day stuff') represents how cluttered my mind is. If it's above 30 messages, then I'm not in control of work. I don't aim for zero on a regular basis, but like it to be below 10.

    Currently at 82 items ... and I'm dual procrastinating on HN and BBC iPlayer. Hmmm...

  824. Tarsnap critical security bug 2011-01-19 06:18:27 djcapelis
    I agree on all of this.

    However, since Colin presumably doesn't want to raise his prices to pay for actual review, it is encouraging that he is at least going with bug bounties. These, at the very least, gives us a good excuse to assign them as fun things to do for graduate students with some hope that one will want to procrastinate so hard that they will actually look at the code.

    Also I think any reviewer who wanted to get paid would not start with Colin's code as an easy place to find bugs.

  825. Is Facebook taking over our lives? Interesting infographic. 2011-01-20 05:21:12 eof
    I deleted my facebook Oct '09 and don't regret it nor have any desire whatsoever to go back.

    I have to admit it is a rare pleasure to facebook stalk someone from a friend's account when I have idle minutes at a friend's computer.

    My social life has been impacted undoubtedly. I sometimes miss parties I otherwise would have gone to, simply because they are only on facebook. For the most part though this isn't the case, as I maintain actual, close friendships with enough people that I generally find out about them anyway.

    I quit due to a terrible case of procrastination on facebook; I stayed quit for the privacy.

  826. Why HN was slow and how Rtm fixed it 2011-01-21 03:23:17 blasdel
    Yes, I clicked the reply link on your comment from there.

    I figured you had to know about this bug, since it happens to me regularly (maybe 10% of eligible comments) when I comment in active threads during standard procrastination hours. The misdirect is usually to the threads page of a user further up the comment tree, though sometimes it's to the permalink of a grandparent comment.

    Seems like you're mixing up the redirects of concurrent users but never across comment hierarchies so it's not omnipresent.

  827. How To Write The Perfect Meta Article 2011-01-21 05:24:13 DanielBMarkham
    I've been meaning for some time to write an article on procrastination.

  828. Ask HN: Do you meditate? How/Why? 2011-01-21 06:50:56 rfugger
    A while ago I was having a lot of trouble being productive in my life, and was considering using some of the anti-akrasia techniques posted on HN to keep myself in line. But I also had a nagging feeling that there was more to my procrastination than just laziness, and that I needed to get more deeply in touch with my own motivations so my work could be harmonious rather than a constant struggle against myself. Honestly I didn't even really know what I wanted.

    So instead of resolving to stick to a schedule for pursuing a particular project, I resolved to meditate every day and let the rest sort itself out. I have meditated sporadically for about 10 years, and always appreciated it, but recently had gotten out of the habit.

    So far it's been pretty good. The productivity is coming more naturally, albeit in somewhat random bursts, but mostly I'm just more at peace with myself, which I think is more what I'm really after than anything.

  829. Ask HN: tips for improving scheduling estimates? 2011-01-23 03:44:48 knowsnothing613
    I remember a lecture where my prof said the multiply by 2 never works out for project management, because studies have shown that workers find ways to prolong the project twice as long.

    For instance if you knew your homework was due 2 weeks from now, instead of a week, you find a way to procrastinate for the extra week.

    Instead try PERT

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_Evaluation_and_Review_T...

    And try this formula:

        * Optimistic time (O): the minimum possible time required to accomplish a task, assuming everything proceeds better than is normally expected
    * Pessimistic time (P): the maximum possible time required to accomplish a task, assuming everything goes wrong (but excluding major catastrophes).
    * Most likely time (M): the best estimate of the time required to accomplish a task, assuming everything proceeds as normal.
    * Expected time (TE): the best estimate of the time required to accomplish a task, assuming everything proceeds as normal (the implication being that the expected time is the average time the task would require if the task were repeated on a number of occasions over an extended period of time).

            TE = (O + 4M + P) ÷ 6

  830. Ask HN: Strongest way to block distracting sites? 2011-01-23 07:48:23 robeastham
    Best by far that I've found is SelfControl by Steve Lambert - thanks Steve!

    http://visitsteve.com/made/selfcontrol/

    It's OSX only though I'm afraid. It blocks at the network driver level and survives a restart. I switch it on for two hours or more, after one check of my email, before starting work in the morning. This initial two hours of inability to visit distracting sites usually gets me in the groove with whatever I'm working on. I then find I'm less likely to get distracted throughout the rest of the day and more able to stay focused on my daily task list.

    I've been developing a system designed to get my procrastination under control. Fifty percent of this procrastination takes the form of reading posts from HN. So I feel your pain! My system is based on a modified version of Bill Westerman's GSD system (http://www.utilware.com/gsd3.html). I've got a draft blog post that describes it and the software I have used recently to help me focus. It's helped me finally get round to building what I think is going to turn into a pretty useful app for managing résumés.

    I'll post a link to the blog article soon so keep an eye out for it here on HN.

  831. Ask HN: What do you do to counteract procrastination? 2011-01-24 09:49:13 brianwillis
    Merlin Mann has written interesting stuff on this topic before: http://www.43folders.com/2005/10/11/procrastination-hack-102...

    What he's suggesting is kind of a mind game, but hey if it helps you then why not right?

  832. Ask HN: What do you do to counteract procrastination? 2011-01-24 10:30:41 Mz
    For tasks at work that I dread, I set aside a certain time of day to deal with it. If I run into something that is that sort of task at another time of day and I don't feel up to coping with it (and it's not urgent/high priority), I set it aside and deal with it during that time slot the following day. Once my pile of dreaded tasks for the day is done, my head is clear to focus and get on with getting on with it. I also group certain tasks for efficiency, like I try to do all my printing around the same time. It helps me with mental flow/workflow.

    At home, it usually is much more about taking a nap, feeding myself, and so on. When my body is properly cared for, then I can be productive. When it is not, I piddle around and "procrastinate". But for me it's really not some mental block or avoidance thing. I have a medical condition and when I am tired and/or under the weather, I just can't be productive. So the piece I focus on is addressing my physical care. Everything else flows from that.

  833. Ask HN: What do you do to counteract procrastination? 2011-01-24 10:45:15 consultutah
    As pithy as that seems, it really is the best way to overcome procrastination. Just do it. Just do something that moves you closer to your goals. Pick just one little thing and get it done. Then pick something else and get it done. Once you've started getting momentum (even just a little bit of momentum), pick the most important thing and get it done, then rinse and repeat.

    It's going to sound like I'm trying to plug my newest app (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/unbroken-chain/id415158247?mt...), and I suppose I am, but that's one of the reasons that I wrote it: to help me make sure that I am moving closer to my goals each and every day.

  834. Ask HN: What do you do to counteract procrastination? 2011-01-24 11:46:28 imkevingao
    To start things off, if it makes you feel better, there has been studies shown that people who have ADD or what they might call ADHD now are more likely to succeed as an entrepreneur than those who don't. This statement is related to the topic because people who are easily distracted are always procrastinating.

    To fight procrastination, discipline is the key word here I believe. I've always been bad at time management, but I've improved a lot lately. Now although I attempt to stay productive as much as possible, I still feel like time is not enough.

    My approach is that I would start sticky notes on the windows screen, I would make tasklist of the most important things I would have to do today, and bold 2 of the most important things. I force myself to get those things down.

    Honestly you can read ALL the books you want. You can use all the productivity apps you want, but when it comes down to it, your own determination is the only factor that will fight this problem. . If you don't discipline yourself and avoid procrastination, don't worry about it because guess what? 95% of the population is just like you. But if you want to become to top 5% of the population, the crim de la crim, then you better start disciplining yourself. That's the self-talk mentality I use nowadays.

  835. Ask HN: What do you do to counteract procrastination? 2011-01-24 12:54:38 petercooper
    Have multiple projects that are reasonably different. You can then procrastinate by working on other projects before coming back to your current project as procrastination from those.. Works for me anyway.

  836. Ask HN: What do you do to counteract procrastination? 2011-01-24 15:33:14 stoney
    I find that one of the most enjoyable procrastination activities is to plan out the thing that I'm supposed to be doing. I have something I know I should do, but I can't make myself do it. So instead, I sit down and break down the big task into a number of little tasks. That keeps my procrastination demons happy because I'm not actually doing the task. Except I am, because at the end I have a list of (hopefully) much easier tasks to do. If necessary I do that recursively - break down my new list of easy tasks. Eventually it gets silly - the next task is so simple I could do it very quickly without thinking. So I do it. And then often I find that once I've done the first thing, it's easy to carry on with the second, third,... that's the momentum thing kicking in. Sometimes things don't start flowing after doing the first task. At that point I put it to one side to do another time.

  837. Ask HN: What do you do to counteract procrastination? 2011-01-24 15:40:30 fjabre
    There are two of you. It's all about compromise between the two. If you don't compromise one becomes weak and the other dominant. If one becomes dominant you, as a whole, become unhealthy and unstable. There are a few hacks here and there and yours sounds interesting but all hacks are useless with out having some fundamental balance.

    A well rested mind is your best weapon against imbalance. Meditate and stop drinking coffee.

    Procrastination I find is a side effect of an discontented and imbalanced mind.

  838. Waking up at 5am, my nearly 1 year review 2011-01-24 22:25:57 jokermatt999
    I used this in high school when I had to write reports. Instead of trying to work on them late and winding up chatting with my friends rather than working, I got up at 4:30. It wasn't fun, but I got those papers written because there was absolutely no way for me to distract myself that early. Procrastinating meant I wouldn't get that sweet, sweet 15 minutes of sleep before school. I handed in every single one of those reports on time.

    That said, I don't recommend this approach for anything requiring creativity. They were mostly fact based, so creativity was less of a concern. My mood suffered because of poor sleep, but that was already an issue due to high school's early start time. Still, it's a good way to get mindless tasks done.

  839. Ask HN: What do you do to counteract procrastination? 2011-01-25 01:40:11 JimboOmega
    I disagree with you.

    Why should you do things you're not motivated to do?

    A lot of procrastination and not making progress on tasks has to do with really not wanting to do the task, or really not seeing the value in it. If it's studying for a course, it's a course you don't care about. If it's working on a project, it's a project you don't care about. Maybe you don't care about cleaning up your room, etc.

    You really need to think about the whys of doing something, and not just assume that work is good. You can trick yourself and push yourself but you need to have a solid sense of the goal before you will really become involved.

    That's the goal, isn't it? To really commit to a task.

  840. Ask HN: What do you do to counteract procrastination? 2011-01-25 02:00:06 komlenic
    The implication in my comment is that you do want to do the thing (or that there is some expectation, either personal or external, that you have to do it ex: studying for a course that you need to graduate).

    Wanting to do something, or realizing you need to do it does not remove your personal barriers that lead to procrastination: maybe it seems too difficult, you don't know where to start, you're afraid of failure, or maybe you're suffering analysis/paralysis. You're still "motivated" in the "I want/expect to do this thing" sense, but you lack the motivation in the "wow I can do this, get to work" sense that you need to push through and get moving.

    This is where "motivation follows action": you start small, identify some easy steps that will begin moving you towards the goal, and do them -- and through this action, motivation often follows.

  841. Anyone else really, really lazy? 2011-01-25 10:06:54 atgm
    Start small and force yourself to do something you want to do for ten minutes every Monday for a month, then try Monday and Wednesday... I don't really know what else to say. I was in your situation in college and when I graduated and moved to Japan, I found that I just wasn't happy with the kind of person/work ethic I'd developed, so I started forcing myself to work on projects.

    It's not easy to kick yourself in the ass, so you just have to keep doing it!

    And I'm not saying I never procrastinate, because I do. I think everyone does to some extent, honestly -- so you should chose a simpler, more attainable goal with a positive effect, like "work on X for Y minutes Z days."

  842. Stop Saying ‘Let me know when works for you’ 2011-01-25 10:08:58 joshfraser
    My goal is usually to get the meeting scheduled in as few emails back and forth as possible. Proposing an initial date, time and location gets us there faster.

    On the receiving side, I also find that I'm a lot less likely to procrastinate on finding a time that works if you offer specific suggestions. I'll usually check my calendar right then and there and respond. Otherwise, I might stick it on my todo list and forget about it.

  843. Anyone else really, really lazy? 2011-01-25 13:26:52 silverlake
    I am the King of Laziness. If I'm given a hard deadline I work hard and get stuff done. On my own I'm useless. I've been looking into cognitive behavioral therapy. If it's effective, then I'll be cured. If it's not, then it serves as a commitment device to Get Stuff Done. Of course, I haven't gotten around to locating a therapist. <insert procrastination joke here>

  844. Fitness for geeks: my annual review of the Stronglifts 5x5 program 2011-01-27 23:29:11 joshklein
    The simple truth is that any (non-crackpot) regimented training program will significantly improve a geek's fitness. Learning the minute details of weight training, nutrition, and other (important!) subjects is for marginal gains on top of a base level of fitness which the majority of the population lacks.

    Learn enough to safely accomplish basic exercises without ego-shattering self-consciousness, do them routinely and with an increasing level of difficulty, and you will become more fit. Great research on procrastination suggests that too many choices for what to do will lead you to not do anything. If you are not already at a base level of "good shape", whether you lift in one program or another, jog, play sports, or walk the stairs at work, you are NOT going to choose "wrong".

    Guaranteed or your money back.

    (Please note that I say this as a diehard HST-devotee who cross trains for soccer and MMA. But none of that stuff mattered when I was gassed after 30 minutes of light exercise.)

  845. Ask HN: When do you exercise? 2011-01-29 02:48:23 ulisesrmzroche
    I've struggled with the same thing, and I found that the best way to handle this is to find a wingman.

    The guilt of flaking on a friend is heavier than that of procrastination, so you're bound to show up to the gym ten minutes late, but hey, at least you showed up.

    And you have someone to work out the details with, so there's that as well.

  846. Ask HN: What's your favorite bookmarked HN thread? 2011-01-31 12:56:08 PankajGhosh
    Not sure if this has been posted already: Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator?

    http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=579979

  847. So Long and Thanks for all the Bits 2011-01-31 22:53:18 justlearning
    Jacquesm, I never written to you before...I have always procrastinated emailing you. Just wanted to say thank you!.

    You have been among the articulate members in here. There are so many 'high' posts from you that not even a * top jacquesm 100 posts * would do justice to your contribution. Thank you for sharing your experiences.

    Would it be private to disclose what you would be doing in your "HN time"? Any thing new on your mind? I was wondering how you would hold it back without letting us know :) Please do write about your 30 day de-addiction experience

    Good luck to you (and hope you (don't) have a relapse!) :)

  848. Meet The People You Follow On Twitter With Conference Directory Lanyrd (YC W11) 2011-02-01 04:53:58 mcdowall
    Wow, thanks so much for the insight. Are you guys from Brighton then? am based in Bournemouth.

    I was looking at n.america / Asia and aus, the application to yc depends on my ability to stop procrastinating and actually get something ready!.

  849. Designing for scalability 2011-02-01 14:17:33 mattetti
    Thanks Julio. I should have written it months ago but you know, procrastination... ;)

  850. Ask HN: If you could recommend only three management books... 2011-02-03 12:14:06 farout
    The books others have suggested are very good. However here are 3 that will challenge you to produce:

    "QBQ! The Question Behind the Question": as the review says:aimed at purging the "blame, complaining, and procrastination" from the workplace

    "The Ant and the Elephant": I read about several hundred nonfiction books mainly marketing or programming annually - this book is profound on motivating yourself. The idea that before you start your journey - imagine the milestones then imagine the ways you fail and NOW imagine what will do you when this happens is stunning. It is rehearsing for the worst so when the worst happens you you feel sad and then immediately move on.

    Finally, I just loved this book "How to Get Rich" especially the section about hiring and keeping talent and negotiating the sale of your business.

  851. Ask HN: Do you consider it a failure Reddit failed its initial mission? 2011-02-04 02:18:37 shortlived
    Being a convert to HN from Reddit, I really like having a single channel of high quality posts. Yes, it's true that I'm not interested in every single story on HN but that's okay as it keeps me procrastinating less. Plus, it's always good to do some reading in areas you are unfamiliar or not interested in, expand your mind as it were.

  852. Ask HN: How to Make Twitter & HN Less like Crack Cocaine? 2011-02-04 03:56:21 Andrew-Dufresne
    HN offers Anti-procrastination feature which is fairly good to make it less like 'crack cocaine'.

    http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html 7 Nov: Anti-procrastination features Like email, social news sites can be dangerously addictive. So the latest version of Hacker News has a feature to let you limit your use of the site. There are three new fields in your profile, noprocrast, maxvisit, and minaway. (You can edit your profile by clicking on your username.) Noprocrast is turned off by default. If you turn it on by setting it to "yes," you'll only be allowed to visit the site for maxvisit minutes at a time, with gaps of minaway minutes in between. The defaults are 20 and 180, which would let you view the site for 20 minutes at a time, and then not allow you back in for 3 hours. You can override noprocrast if you want, in which case your visit clock starts over at zero.

    In any case, I don't think HN addiction is harmful, unless one uses it as an excuse to put off his responsibilities.

  853. Which traits doom an entrepreneur? 2011-02-05 06:42:49 phlux
    Thats cool - I wasnt calling anyone out. I have ADHD tendencies and I procrastinate a lot. I am not "lazy" I get a lot done -- sometimes though, its not what should be high on my priority list.

    Lots of people get called arrogant, but there is a difference between having confidence and being an asshole.

    Good job with your son. Did you work from home to be able to do that for him?

  854. This may be the best resume I have ever seen 2011-02-06 06:15:13 tptacek
    (a) I am definitely being very noisy on this thread. Sorry. I'm procrastinating.

    (b) Instead of simply saying "you're wrong!", why not tell me some things you specifically like about this infographic as an infographic? I am seriously interested in what stories you think this graphic does a good job of telling.

  855. How to Beat Procrastination 2011-02-06 16:51:20 thibaut_barrere
    A comment by antirez here [1] really led me to consider that procrastination is a signal rather than an issue: the best I can do is be aware of that and listen to it.

    Now I often realize that when I feel procrastination coming, it's because:

    - something needs to be clarified (a situation)

    - there is a risk that hasn't been assessed

    - I'm hungry

    - I'm tired (physically or mentally)

    - I'm hurting myself (RSI)

    [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1190700

  856. How to Beat Procrastination 2011-02-06 17:37:18 mnazim
    I am one of the worst cases of procrastination you can ever find. I always find something else to do instead of doing what I am supposed to do.

    Personally, I have experienced that there is only one way to get things done:

    1. I try to minimize distractions(I say try because distractions will always be there; there is not a way around most of the time).

    2. I make a (mental)TODO list, before going to sleep.

    3. And finally nothing beats getting of my butt and actually start working.

    Just my thoughts.

  857. How to Beat Procrastination 2011-02-06 20:53:15 apl
    This article is a significantly less bad than most, but still suffers from the ol' "depressed people should simply try to be happy, then the whole depression-thing isn't actually that bad" fallacy of mental illness.

    If you're hard-wired to be impulsive and have a knack for viewing things in a negative light, it is in fact incredibly hard to get rid of such behavioral tendencies simply by "getting off your butt, man." Similarly, all these hints and tips implicitly require the very quality they try to instill. Works for mild cases, but has little bearing on genuine pathological procrastination. (See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_M%C3%BCnchhausen)

  858. How to Beat Procrastination 2011-02-06 21:41:26 GHFigs
    At the risk of becoming too meta, I'd like to ask anybody who is about to bookmark this "for later" to consider what would happen (viz. procrastination) if you didn't.

  859. How to Beat Procrastination 2011-02-06 22:09:34 siddhant
    Funny. The author wrote a long article on how to avoid procrastination, when the intended audience isn't going to go beyond the first paragraph.

    How to beat procrastination? Set noprocrast to yes.

  860. How to Beat Procrastination 2011-02-06 22:28:42 Alex3917
    "Works for mild cases, but has little bearing on genuine pathological procrastination."

    My guess is that 'clinical' procrastination, like drug addiction, largely stems from Adverse Childhood Experiences and should be treated the same way. Although I haven't actually looked through the research yet.

    As for any attention deficit tendencies, these can be trained via meditation.

  861. How to Beat Procrastination 2011-02-06 23:13:27 mono
    Accept Procrastination as a different way to do something!

    There is a brilliant 4 minute movie about it all:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3...

  862. How to Beat Procrastination 2011-02-06 23:38:50 math
    For me "something needs to be clarified" is often "faith in the idea needs to be clarified via stamp of approval from a third party". Yesterday, I was procrastinating badly. This morning, I talked about my project with someone and they were very positive about it. Today saw a massive burst of energy that will last through the week.

  863. Ask HN: How to start coding my product? 2011-02-07 00:09:35 bfung
    "What's wrong with me?..."

    How to beat procrastination: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2185174

    Perhaps you feel that your idea doesn't help someone else, even if it is interesting to yourself (hence it's easy to do work for others). Convince yourself either the idea/product would help people (ask if people are interested?) or do it for fun/hell of it. Otherwise, cut your losses.

  864. How to Beat Procrastination 2011-02-07 00:12:42 edw519
    edw519 has one form to complete, two database tables to configure, four functions to test and an app to deploy today. But instead of getting started, he minimizes his test environment and Textpad and opens a browser window to Hacker News. He knows he has 6 hours of work and only 7 hours before the Super Bowl and he understands that he'll probably be too drunk to program after the game. But he is too caught up in stories of software development, scientific journeys, industry trends, the pratfalls of rich and famous hackers, and silly articles about procrastination.

    edw519 is lazy. He should close his browser and get back to work.

    (Simple story, but too boring for a scientific study.)

  865. How to Beat Procrastination 2011-02-07 00:20:26 Alex3917
    Not sure why I'm being downmodded, as the same negative life outcomes (e.g. alcoholism or depression) predicted by adverse childhood experiences correlate very strongly with procrastination:

    http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Lu4r0H_wc...

  866. Ask HN: How to start coding my product? 2011-02-07 00:27:06 dolinsky
    This.

    Fear is a multi-faceted and very powerful, yet often times extremely irrational, emotion that can destroy you even before you get started. A few people here have brought up Seth Godin's Lizard Brain concept, but what's missing from it is a deeper dive into fear being a huge blocker to accomplishing something. "Just ship it", or "ship early and ship often" are techniques that are of great help but they're farther down the pipeline than getting started.

    Of immediate and initial importance is needing to understand why you are getting in your own way - what is the cause of the fear that is preventing you from executing your idea? Is it a fear of failure, of success, of being judged once you finish, of making mistakes, of having too much responsibility, of making the wrong decision along the way? It's not a question that you can answer immediately, and unwrapping fear can sometimes lead you down a path where the only thing you have feared is more fear (sounds like a very familiar quote, eh?).

    When it's someone elses idea that you're working on and you're not the one in charge it's much easier to meet and often exceed expectations b/c many of those fears aren't possible outcomes (to the trully paranoid mind they might be, but since you can accomplish tasks at work you don't fit the bill for this).

    It's not easy to understand the 'why' of our psychopathologies. Everybody has their own that they struggle with. Some people create coping mechanisms and live within the pathologies, and some people overcome their pathologies through a combination of technique / drugs.

    Two books that I found of personal help on first helping me understand the 'why' of my personal struggles and then provided helpful techniques to break through them are:

    "Do It!" by Peter McWilliams http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Get-Off-Our-Buts/dp/093158079X (there's a free version @ mcwilliams.com but the website seems to be down)

    "The Procrastinator's Handbook" by Rita Emmett http://www.amazon.com/Procrastinators-Handbook-Mastering-Art...

  867. How to Beat Procrastination 2011-02-07 00:41:40 zachallaun
    The author postulates three character vignettes, each one based upon an identified predictor of procrastination. There exists, however, a forth:

    Zach stares at a blank document in Microsoft Word. His essay assignment on municipal politics, due tomorrow, is mind-numbingly dull. He decides to take a break, texts some friends, watches a show, and finds himself even less motivated to write the paper than before. At 10PM, he finally dives in, but the result is... well, it's great.

    This forth case is strange, because it does not suffer from the generally proposed downfalls of procrastination. This is because the author has ignored an entire segment of procrastinators: Those that operate better under an impending deadline.

    This is how I completed nearly every task in school thus far, and assignment grades less than an A are few and far between despite the fact that I put in, in many cases, a small fraction of the time it took my classmates to complete this assignment. I operate this way because stress is my friend. My output quality/time ratio is never greater than when I'm working with a looming deadline.

    My entire life I was told that procrastination is bad. Procrastination is bad. Procrastination is bad. It's only recently that I've realized that procrastination is actually one of the greatest contributors to my success.

  868. How to Beat Procrastination 2011-02-07 01:52:01 ajays
    I'm a terrible procrastinator too. Unfortunately, sometimes I work best under pressure; so this feeds back into procrastination. But it doesn't always work this way. Sometimes the task is so big that "under pressure" is not possible.

    I've found that chopping up the task into bitesize bits always helps. I'll get the little task done quickly; and then if I feel like it, I can keep going; otherwise, I can get up and do something else, basking in the glow of having accomplished the task I wanted to. After a few days of such repeated positive experiences, I find that I can pick up steam and really accomplish a lot.

  869. How to Beat Procrastination 2011-02-07 02:38:33 apollo
    As your first sentence indicates, in this scenario you have specific, attainable goals. Just getting to that point goes a long way towards beating procrastination.

  870. How to Beat Procrastination 2011-02-07 02:56:14 solipsist
    I have to say that most of us who are taking the time to read this are probably procrastinating in the first place. Therefore it would have been better to publish this article on a weekday when people are most susceptible to procrastinating online. After all, those are the people this article is targeted for.

  871. How to Beat Procrastination 2011-02-07 03:00:16 zachallaun
    This is definitely the case and was actually something I was going to plan on addressing in my initial comment about procrastination before deciding that I could put it off. :)

    While I did not make it clear, the formula presented within the essay remains applicable whether or not someone is motivated by eustress, except that the formula changes slightly:

                       expectancy x value
  motivation  =  -----------------------  +  eustress
                  impulsiveness x delay
    Using this formula, an incredibly low-value task (in my case, school assignments) can still have an acceptable (or greater than) outcome when complimented by a high level of eustress. (In my case, this is often in the form of an impending deadline.)

    Other than school, however, I have been working with a friend, attempting to launch my first startup. This is an incredibly high-value task for me, which leads to greater motivation despite a lack of solid deadlines. In this case, I procrastinate very little.

    That's not, of course, to say that every task related to launching is high-value. In those instances, you are correct, aggressive goal-setting is absolutely necessary. I'd add, though, that it's not simply an attempt to "keep this sort of thing up," but rather a simple acknowledgement of how I function.

  872. How to Beat Procrastination 2011-02-07 03:25:37 ebiester
    I thought the same of myself when I was in school. However, it really isn't better. It just so happens that you have more skill than your classmates in writing essays, and are able to cover up a lack of effort with skill.

    My boyfriend is working on his Ph.D and I read his students' term papers on occasion. 90% of them are mind-bogglingly bad, but the school in general has a low expectation of "excellent." Thus, these people get A's.

    Don't kid yourself; it's still mediocre. Read a graduate school paper in comparison. Ask a graduate school student to honestly grade your paper. ;) Better yet, watch a graduate school student write a paper. They go through ideas, delve into research, and realize they can't adequately prove their idea, so they retreat. And they read, and read. And write. And when they are done, they are fully aware of how limited their paper really is, because they know where they want it to be, but such leaps require original research, and that's what the dissertation is for. :) ___

    Further, many of us (myself included) make decisions on which corners to cut when we only have limited time to work on a task. These are decisions we are less hasty to make when we have more time, thus the task looks bigger and we are more likely to procrastinate. Sometimes, like school essays, the 80% solution is exactly what is warranted. I'd suggest you look up timeboxing.

  873. How to Beat Procrastination 2011-02-07 06:48:48 rue
    > If you're hard-wired to be impulsive and have a knack for viewing things in a negative light, it is in fact incredibly hard to get rid of such behavioral tendencies simply by "getting off your butt, man."

    The “fatalistic” view – in that there might be very little to be called “free will” – would assume that nearly all of a person's behaviour is dictated by genes shaped by life experience (response to which also depends on the same). For procrastination, one could coarsely define some archetypes:

    * Those who don't procrastinate * Those who procrastinate but can overcome the tendency easily or with difficulty * Those who procrastinate and can't overcome it despite trying * Those who procrastinate and won't try to overcome it (either because they don't want to or don't think they'll succeed)

  874. This may be the best resume I have ever seen 2011-02-07 06:52:33 iuguy
    You can hit the same level by procrastinating on HN all day long.

  875. Procrastination: what we know 2011-02-07 19:52:55 RiderOfGiraffes
    How is this not receiving upvotes and getting substantial discussion? It's well written, constructive, and extensively referenced. I've bookmarked it for re-skimming regularly to try to help me overcome my chronic procrastination problem.

    Maybe it's just the novelty, but it's already helped me today.

  876. Ask HN: How do you deal with setbacks / frustrations and self-doubt ? 2011-02-09 12:15:39 fbea
    Try having two things going for you at once. For example, lets say that you have a day job you should also indulge yourself in another hobby. When I procrastinate I like to overindulge myself in my hobbies until I feel sick of doing that hobby. Then I feel compelled to return to whatever work it was that I was doing. But, if you're missing deadlines, then maybe it's a sign that you should move onto something else that you would enjoy (that is unless you're a college student. Then you just have to suck it up).

  877. Ask HN: How do you deal with setbacks / frustrations and self-doubt ? 2011-02-09 23:34:50 petervandijck
    If procrastination is the problem, then http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/ is the answer :)

  878. Bing smacks Google in new usability test 2011-02-11 08:20:51 electromagnetic
    From my experience back in the pre-google days was that I'd have to open up five or more links to ever see anything worthwhile and this was back in the day when page titles had zero relevance too.

    Plus, I haven't seen the google front page to search in months, so that's a definite +10 for usability in my books. If I was smarter (or more pro-procrastination) I'd have a link to google news on my chrome splash screen.

  879. A Lack Of Rigor Leaves Students 'Adrift' In College 2011-02-12 20:11:36 a00021
    Here's a data point (more of a regrets list/rant) from one of those adrift students, regarding the "with college you get what you put in" view:

    I completely agree with that view and I wish there was some way my particular school would teach us how to put more effort into self-development. And let me tell you, motivation and perseverance ARE something that can be taught. I blame:

    * my laziness - learned through earlier education

    * overcompensating for childhood social awkwardness by focusing on parties and social interaction with people who's only common interests are music, alcohol and the opposite sex

    * lack of a clear goal (no alumni visits that show us what we can achieve if we put effort in activities A, B, C and so on),

    * an easy enough study load that I could maintain high grades, in addition to a general lack of competitiveness in the class

    * lack of study groups, which are instrumental in boosting interest in certain less-than-fascinating subjects.

    A few key points for current students, or "if I could go 4 years back in time":

    * balance your social circle. If you're in ICT/CS or related, don't hang out exclusively with the potheads that play PS2 games 24/7. Establish and maintain contacts with people who follow their interests in their spare time - that guy who's learning functional programming on the side, kids that are already freelancing or getting a part-time job in the field you're studying for.

    * actively seek out older or already-graduated students. Don't procrastinate on doing your own case studies on who-went-where, what each skill you're studying will bring you and what are the key tips you can get from people you strive to be. Basically, get some role models and a mentor. It ain't easy, but the gains that you receive are worth the effort.

    * do the research on all the factors that influence your mood and energy levels. Exercise, nutrition, social environment, etc. Optimize those, so you can be the person you want to be - high energy levels, motivation, ability to get things done and so on. That way you can avoid situations like falling into depression because "I'll just minimize social contacts, so I can focus on catching up with that internship" and subsequently fucking up the most crucial part of your education.

    * knowledge is one thing, being able to put it into practice is the real skill. Knowing "something" about FP, embedded programming, security, general startup theory, freelancing and so on will mean nothing, if you can't put in the focus and dedication to actually get that first Django site, Android app, GAE site or whatever, running. Escapist information binging may bring in some useful knowledge, but without execution skills it all boils down to a "Mr. Know-it-all" cynical attitude with no real accomplishments. So start that first tutorial (even if you think you know all the stuff and you're too smart for it), and have something running.

    That rant came out rather long, but being stuck in the final year of my bachelor's, not even having a github account, blog, twitter or reputation, being too low on self-esteem ("I have no marketable skills") to break the anxiety barrier of applying for a mandatory graduation internship, I hope at least one student won't (through inaction) make the same mistakes I did.

    [EDIT] Proofreading, minor tweaks.

  880. Ask HN: Burned out. How can I make the most of a sabbatical leave? 2011-02-14 03:20:56 Tichy
    Maybe you should do one of these things, as it sounds like you have some serious self esteem issues. I bet you you could manage to get a bicycle and even manage to ride it. There are people running marathons without any preparation, after all (not that I'd recommend that, but I don't know).

    I've discussed my problem with a fellow procrastinator recently and we agreed that this feeling of "I won't finish what I start anyway" was a major contributing factor.

    Granted, some things on your list sound easier than others. Namely the bicycle thing. I suppose you need some planning for such a big project. On the other hand, if you just jump into it, you'll probably figure out quickly what you need. If you have some money left, you can always just stop at some bicycle gear shop by the road and get what you need.

    And even if you fail (take a flight home), it doesn't seem like such a catastrophe.

    You could combine the bicycle thing with the grassroots protest by simply claiming that you are "cycling for cause X" (I never understood those, but lot's of people do that and it seems to work). Hm, maybe I could eat chocolate to help save the whales?

    A startup could work, if you chose something else than Java. But it might be more beneficial to do something entirely different than your day job.

  881. Ask HN: Burned out. How can I make the most of a sabbatical leave? 2011-02-14 08:16:28 frevd
    I recently bought this book and it might be of help since it is explaining exactly the causes (and treatment) of negative self-talk.

    Not sure whether I can post recommendations here (I'm not affiliated), but since it was already recommended here at HN and just in case you want to check it out, it's called "The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play" by Neil A. Fiore, and it seems to have helped a lot of people.

  882. Ask HN: Which of your start up mistakes has taught you the most? 2011-02-14 17:39:50 jarin
    * Not having multiple clients lined up (in Round 1 of my company I made this mistake and had to get a "real job" for a while).

    * Not starting early and having to pull all-nighters as deadlines approached.

    * Not communicating with clients on a daily basis (this also helps to keep you from procrastinating).

    * Not starting on your crazy side ideas/weekend projects as soon as possible. The longer they sit on your to-do list, the more they'll bug you but also the less likely they'll get done. If you at least get them to a prototype stage, you won't feel like you missed out even if you decide not to finish them.

  883. Ask HN: Which of your start up mistakes has taught you the most? 2011-02-15 00:25:31 rexf
    > * Not starting early and having to pull all-nighters as deadlines approached.

    It is easy to beat yourself over this point, but procrastination is extremely common. I'm highly guilty of it. In school, work, and life, without hard deadlines approaching, it is too easy to wait until the last minute and be forced to pull all-nighters.

  884. Poll: Number of stories read per day on HN? 2011-02-16 03:32:54 Vivtek
    Depends on how deeply I'm procrastinating. I noticed last night that nearly every link on the top page had been visited - that ain't good.

  885. I'm a designer who learned Django and launched her first webapp in 6 weeks 2011-02-17 03:28:20 slile
    Yeah, I think a lot of it might be to target the areas you're uncomfortable with first to make sure you can get them right, and then end with what you're comfortable with and what you're good at.

    I think doing the reverse might sometimes end up being a subtle form of procrastination where you might be afraid of doing the part you're not as familiar with.

  886. I'm a designer who learned Django and launched her first webapp in 6 weeks 2011-02-17 06:46:36 limedaring
    Ugh, yes. Hitting a problem with my code, I would ignore the site for days until I realized that I was just procrastinating away from the uncomfortable. It sucks when you feel completely out of your element (me, learning design, others, perhaps working on design), especially when I was stuck on a problem and had no idea how to go further.

  887. Do any software development people here work from really remote locations? 2011-02-18 13:38:02 eengstrom
    Meaning remote enough to have at least two methods of connectivity? Yes. Constantly. Even used my early windows smart phone to run performance tests through HP's performance center while on vacation in Paris (no ide, only web controls).

    Being remote can be very hard for most people. It took about a year before I was able to handle discrete paid work and personal life. As a self-employed consultant, I learned some very valuable tricks and techniques for being highly productive.

    Test yourself for a at least half a year if you can before deciding on something like this. As mentioned, stepping out of your normal social life in addition to changing work (where many of us socialize) is a really hard adjustment to make.

    Without changing work habits, preventing procrastination and finding a sense of accomplishment without physical direction and feedback most people will fail miserably.

    For remote and travel related work:

    1. Always have a spare power supply and uninterrupted source 2. Always have at least TWO methods of connection, even if 1 is dial-up, test it frequently - know where your nearest source of reliable internectivity is and how long you need to get there 3. Your customer and employer will only accept internectivity issue problems as an excuse once - after that they won't trust you, which will limit your options and may end your remote work, making it worse for everyone else 4. Create office hours and keep them, regardless of time zone, at first try and match your co-workers when possible - for the first 3 to 6 months, treat your personal life the same as you would in an office - don't stop work to do laundry or go shopping "just because you're home" - especially if partnered with someone who "has a real job"...

    When I got started I found it most useful to spring out of bed, start-up the computers, feed the cats, make coffee, get into sweats and get to work. I stopped for a shower and lunch and shifted gears. Over time my day ended up being over by 2PM wherever I was, getting more work done than I ever had in an office, being more creative and still have time in my day to solve problems, question the universe, garden, learn cooking and French... and excel in life.

  888. How reddit became reddit - the biggest smallest community online 2011-02-19 13:55:03 knowledgesale
    A reddit relevant to the issue of procrastination

    http://www.reddit.com/r/GetMotivated/

    may be of interest to some people here.

    It is a little garish in the reddit sense but, just like with pornography, aesthetic qualities aren't that relevant as long as it serves its purpose.

  889. At Least Half of Americans Diabetic or Pre-Diabetic by 2020 2011-02-21 00:34:18 kiba
    Motivation is far easier said than done. If it was so easy, than everybody would be doing it.

    The market for wacky exercise machine, trainer, gyms, etc, are huge. Yet, we're seeing lot more fat people.

    Maybe people aren't doing the whole motivation right. Lazy? Well, some of them are. A lot of people waste their time and procrastinate. A lot of people waste their money. A lot of people find it difficult to self-educate themselves.

    Clearly, we're living in a world where human beings are not optimizing toward their best.

    I am still trying to figure this out.

  890. Changes to my life as a result of just four weeks of daily meditation 2011-02-22 11:25:49 GrayRoark
    Ever thought of writing a book? You could call it "Stop it!" Stressing? Stop it! Eating too much? Stop it! Procrastinating? Stop it!

    It's 2011, your brain should do everything you command!

  891. Fabric Python with Cleaner API and Parallel Deployment 2011-02-23 08:36:08 tav
    Thank you for the compliment — I was going to write an article a few weeks ago, but ended up spending the evening redesigning the blog instead: http://tav.espians.com/new-site-design-for-2011.html

    Procrastination has its benefits I guess, heh. If you fancy them, the css/templates are in https://github.com/tav/blog and the site is run using yatiblog — https://github.com/tav/ampify/blob/master/src/pyutil/yatiblo... — the source is all public domain, so do with it as you please.

  892. Death by To Do lists 2011-02-23 23:48:55 RiderOfGiraffes
    OK - noted. What I'd really like to see is whether you have any ideas for doing something about it.

    Since I wrote "t-" [1] I've found that I've been paying attention to that list of things I've said I'll do. Probably that will fade and I'll start to ignire it, but then I'll probably spend an hour hacking another novel (to me) tool that gets me back on track.

    Discipline isn't enough- it slides into procrastination. I find that novelty brings me back.

    How 'bout you?

    [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2241491

  893. What I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Startups 4 Years Ago 2011-02-24 07:38:33 sudonim
    I turn to HN when I hit a road block. Sometimes I learn something new, but a lot of times Im just procrastinating.

  894. Why You Aren’t As Successful As You Want To Be 2011-02-25 21:20:21 getonit
    While I agree with the whole article, I take issue with the phrasing of the title - You are exactly as successful as you want to be if by 'you', you mean your procrastinating, excuse-seeking, risk-averse subconscious. You know, the 'real' you, as opposed to the marionette who answers questions like this and naively thinks it's control ;)

    It's a simple change of perspective that, if you can hold on to it, will give the marionette some real power to notice and correct self-harming and/or restricting behaviour.

  895. Jerry Seinfeld's Productivity Secret 2011-02-26 00:17:52 RiderOfGiraffes
    Yup - consistently. I now never bother with hash-bang URLs. It's helping reduce my tendency to procrastinate which, ironically in this case, is helping to improve my productivity.

  896. Photon: high performance PHP/Mongrel2/ZeroMQ micro framework 2011-02-26 00:39:20 LoicProcrast
    Yes, in 30 lines of code: http://tinyurl.com/chat-server-photon

    As Photon is an application server, this means you can do what you do easily with Django/RoR or a Java application server. This breaks the traditional one request, one reply, we forget everything approach of PHP. This is now possible rather nicely as PHP has improved a lot with respect to memory management in the last releases.

    Disclaimer, I am the author of Photon and I am locked out of HackerNews with my normal account because of the great anti procrastination mode :-D

  897. Jerry Seinfeld's Productivity Secret 2011-02-26 02:24:20 JanezStupar
    Its about putting effort into something of worth. The act of putting effort into something and maintaining discipline, even if you stretch the definition a bit, is what counts.

    Even Seinfeld doesn't write a good joke everyday the point is to at least take a shot at writing a good joke everyday. You know how we procrastinate from exercising by saying - I don't feel like doing a full hour workout. Doesn't matter you can go and do it for 30 minutes or even only 5. Not feeling like doing what you "should" be doing is normal. Nobody is on top of their game 24/7. But you should prevent yourself from quitting by putting in some effort while waiting for good wind to return.

    The size of daily goals depend mostly on individual long term strategy and ambition.

  898. Ask HN: Love thy co-founder? 2011-02-27 01:32:54 eengstrom
    Your question is too vague and not really answerable with brevity. So I'll give you a piece of general survival advice that worked for me.

    Reiterate constantly that the other party is doing good work, you respect them, trust them and everything you indicated above. Also be equally clear in what you need from them to do to avoid making you get crazy. Portray the issues you have with them as issues that are your own; "you know I lose attention span if I don't say something every 2 minutes in a meeting." in lieu of "you talk too much and I can't get a word in edgewise".

    If they make you crazy by being flaky, ask them to try and meet basic needs such as contact with you and alternate deadlines. "When do you think it will be ready, best case? Worst?" Most people who are flaky will come in around worst case, because they procrastinate. Just an example.

    You're in a high pressure relationship that will undergo an accelerated and constantly changing rate of romance, passion, honeymoon, frustration, fear and mistrust. This is normal; just keep focused on your trust and empathy for your co-founder and be clear on what you need from them.

    "I really appreciate your enthusiasm when speaking to investors, and I would like to have a few more opportunities to contribute to a point. Could you please try passing part of the answer off to me in pitching or discussion?" - Whatever it takes.

    Manage your co-founder, document your requirements and more than anything, don't stay angry or let an issue lie for more than 15 minutes to cool down.

  899. Redis Sharding at Craigslist 2011-02-27 10:38:56 davidhollander
    >for a database that's primarily in-memory but drops least used data off to disk

    >so although your "working dataset" can be far larger than RAM your actual "active working dataset" can fit in there

    To me that's the exact same pattern as cacheing, merely stated in reverse. If you want full persistence, everything's going to have to hit the disk anyway no matter how you phrase it and how and when you store it. In regards to your user logs problem stated below, that sounds easy to parallelize. I would hash+modulo the username to a data server number, on the selected data server traverse a B+ tree of dates\entries in order, and buffer or stream until 20 entries matching the usernames have been retrieved in response. High performance and fully persistent.

    Waiting for a new memory+disk database pattern that does everything more intelligently and faster than every other disk+memory pattern seems like procrastination of parallelization, which is the unavoidable long term answer to these problems.

  900. Ask HN: Review our startup, TimeCarrot 2011-02-28 03:53:32 sagacity
    Quick question:

    Is the desktop app only for Mac? What about Win; and more importantly, Linux?

    First reaction on Design/UI/UX/Flow : 7/10 :)

    Edit: Added: > we would greatly appreciate your critique ranging from the idea ....

    This is more by way of a suggestion rather than a critique - why restrict the concept to just online procrastination; why not expand it to cover just about any kind of resolve? e.g. to quit smoking, to start workouts, etc.

    HTH

  901. This is what it's like for an innocent man to spend thirty years in jail 2011-02-28 23:46:47 dgabriel
    Not entirely: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/08/26/48hours/main570187... http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/19/60II/main612675.sh... http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Did-thes...

    I'm sure I can find more evidence, but I'm procrastinating and need to get back to work.

  902. Ask HN: How do YOU get done what you know you "should" be doing? 2011-03-01 01:23:57 dabent
    Have you read this? It might help.

    http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

  903. Using prescription stimulants as study aids 2011-03-01 18:12:59 mrleinad
    I'm currently (as in right now) using Modafinil as a brain-booster to keep me awake for an exam this afternoon.

    With regard to this: "If, for example, students use such drugs to mitigate the consequences of procrastination, they may fail to develop mental discipline and time-management skills.", as lots of HN readers may know, procrastination's a bitch. There are infinite methods to counteract it, yet we (I) keep falling through the cracks and not doing what I'm supposed to be doing. Not saying this drug suddenly eliminates that (I've been brain-boosted while procrastinating -hey, isnt' writing on HN hours before an exam procrastination?-), but it buys me time and a little edge in my gray matter to keep me going.

    "Instead of ferreting out and punishing students, universities should focus on restoring a culture of deep engagement in education, rather than just competition for credentials"

    Well, here in Argentina, and this college particularly, although I'm doing it for credentials mostly, the main problem is not "the culture", but how contents are delivered by proffessors in the classroom. My studying plan is from '95, and little has changed since then in it (System's engineering, btw). Some proffesors are like mummies from the 70's, talking about Algol and Ada like it's the next hot technology. On the other hand, education's free, there are lots of jobs, and IT is one of the fastest growing areas of work nowadays (where is it not?). I currently have a job working for a company that develops products for MS and some other clients, using MS tools.

    That said, I'm a bit concerned about my health, and will be taking routine medical checks. Nevertheless, I'm not an addict (no, really). Although I use it now and then, I don't crave for it, nor I need it all the time. It's just an extra help for certain situations, like taking coffee when you're asleep, or ibuprofene when you have a mild headache (that perhaps could be solved by going to bed for a couple hours, but you have to keep working/stuying).

    Prohibition, like on many other things, won't do any good to anyone, except maybe the ones that sell the drugs.

  904. How Thomas Jefferson prepared for meetings 2011-03-04 08:50:39 arctangent
    I've used this approach before in meetings where I suspected I was going to meet resistance to the ideas I wanted us all to form a consensus around.

    I found that this approach is successful but, as sophacles says in a different thread, it can (in theory) lead to you become somewhat blinkered to better ideas. Since I know I'm right when I go to meetings this prepared it isn't an issue, right? ;-)

    However, the main problem I found with this approach is not that it leads to me to reach detailed conclusions without all the input I may need to do so. I'm fortunate that a lot of people I meet with are either smart, experienced, stubborn, or some combination of the three - the information needed to reach a sensible consensus will often emerge.

    Instead, what concerns me is the sheer amount of time it takes to do this much preparation and the opportunity cost I have to pay while I'm busy trying to get an "A" on one particular meeting.

    There's a lot to be said for "winging it" (or, in the recent history of memes, "doing it live"). If you're confident in your ideas and in your ability to persuade people then over-preparing is a waste of time akin to procrastination.

    I can't guarantee that arriving for a meeting without elaborate handouts will always lead to a better result. But in my experience I'd rather get 80% of what I want in 3 meetings than 100% of what I want in only 1 meeting.

    Disclaimer: This advice obviously doesn't apply to the once-in-a-blue-moon meeting, e.g. meeting with a potential investor or asking your boss for a raise. My context here is working for a large bureaucratic organisation where meetings are a frequent and necessary evil in order to get things done.

  905. Procrastination and Perfectionism 2011-03-05 00:31:25 solson
    I've been a procrastinator for as long as I can remember. In elementary school I recall being assigned the the task of writing a report on the composer Rossini. I had no interest and I still haven't done it 30+ years later. But for some reason I still think about it. The explanation in this article doesn't hold true for me. When it comes to things that aren't fun or that may be evaluated for quality and I must get them done of face some dire consequence, maybe... I also procrastinate in buying things, mostly as a way of saving money. But I rarely if ever procrastinate in doing things I love doing. I never put off playing a game of chess with my son or going biking or writing or taking on an interesting software project.

  906. Procrastination and Perfectionism 2011-03-05 01:00:00 pasbesoin
    There were several good HN conversations on this, back when HN was "young", if anyone cares to look for them. (Unfortunately, I've lost the references I saved.)

    (I don't mean to be ironic; I just can't justify the time/effort to dig for them, right now. But I thought they were useful, when I encountered them.)

    EDIT:

    To clarify, I meant procrastination and "structured procrastination" generally, not just -- but also not excluding -- procrastination and perfectionism.

    Also, I'm not comfortable with my vague "go search" suggestion, so here's a least a minimal start:

    https://encrypted.google.com/search?&q=site%3Anews.ycomb...

    which turns up, for just one quickly identified example,

    http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=579979

  907. Procrastination and Perfectionism 2011-03-05 03:04:04 Nervetattoo
    It very nearly describes how I find myself to function as well. As long as there is theoretical possibility of doing an improved job than I am currently at, if i did something and delivered right now — I will most likely procrastinate into related subjects that indeed could help improve my response to the task at hand.

    While at a the start line we have all this potential (we are perfectionist ), we see this perfect solution we will deliver, but deep down we do know that once we actually start — it just does not happen. Its like if we start we know that we will limit our potential because we have to make choices; narrowing down the possible result.

    The reason I/we procrastinate is because not doing so means earlier realizing we will not live up to our own high so-believed standards.

    To simply tell myself "do the non-perfect thing" might work from time to time, but it doesn't really solve all that much, its just a way to get by.

  908. Procrastination and Perfectionism 2011-03-05 05:34:59 georgieporgie
    Observations on procrastination:

    I only do things like cleaning up around the house, vacuuming, etc. when there is something less pleasant that I'm required to get done. Need to call the insurance agent to work out a billing issue? Suddenly this carpet looks positively filthy.

    I'm easily bored and addicted to certain brain chemicals. In interpersonal interaction, I generally lose interest quickly unless it's witty banter. Reddit is obviously a dangerous inhibitor of any productivity for me, then.

    Since I'm easily bored, procrastination provides a handy way to create an interesting, high-pressure situation. I can't count the number of times I pulled all-nighters for the most inane school assignments. Usually, I thought I did terribly, yet yielded an acceptable or high score. This payoff feeds back into the excitement for next time.

    Disappointment is painful. Truly putting one's best into something -- which turns out to require many times the amount of effort that you imagined -- only to find flaw in it (QA, or teacher grading) leaves one feeling devastated. It's much better to have my hand forced by 'external' factors (time restraint) so that I have an excuse for imperfect results.

  909. Procrastination and Perfectionism 2011-03-05 05:41:40 skue
    I don't think Perry was saying that perfectionism is the only explanation for procrastination. I read his essay as a very insightful explanation of his own style of putting things off. Some of us procrastinators may be like him, others may not.

    There's also clearly a distinction between avoiding something you have no interest in doing, and avoiding doing something you enjoy. It sounds like you're talking about the former, when Perry was talking about the latter. When he talked about his initial thoughts when accepting the refereeing assignment, he didn't view it as something menial -- rather, it was something he imagined both enjoying and doing well.

    Some of us do put off doing things that interest us -- for exactly the reasons Perry describes. Of course YMMV.

  910. Procrastination and Perfectionism 2011-03-05 06:38:01 thaumaturgy
    Yes.

    I am more of a pragmatist than a perfectionist, so I don't set out to do everything "perfectly" the first time. (Although I suspect the people that know me best would disagree, but regardless, I don't have the thought pattern that this guy is talking about.)

    Based on some things I've read recently and observing my own behavior, I've decided that there are two things which will cause me to procrastinate on a task: either the "start cost" is too high, or I don't know how to do it (or how I want to do it).

    The first case happens when I know all of how to do a particular thing, but I just don't want to do it. A good recent example of this was spinning up a ground-up web server rebuild and taking notes on the entire thing so that I can automate it later. I know how to do that, I just don't want to. I'd rather go read HN -- or, really, do just about anything else, including the dishes -- so I'll procrastinate indefinitely.

    I now keep an eye out for when I start doing this. I have a very simple, small, white lined notepad on my desk, on the very edge of my workspace. If I procrastinate too long, then I start with a clean page on it, and I break my ominous job down into a series of pathetically simple little tasks: "1. Log in to Linode; 2. Order new server; 3. Name new server; 4. Boot new server; ...", and I fill that out while I'm reading something or doing other things. Sometimes I'll take about a day to write something out that way.

    Then, I'll be staring at the notepad, I'll see the first line, and I'll think ... huh, that's not so bad. I could do that. I should do that. I think I'll do that. ...OK, that was easy. I guess I should do the next thing too. Before I know it, I've immersed myself in the task and I won't come back up for air again until it's done.

    In the other case, where I don't know how to do a particular thing, I've just come to terms with that and I structure my workflow around it. I try not to commit to projects that are too large, or with too many question-marks, or with too tight of a schedule. I'm confident that eventually I'll figure out whatever puzzle it is that I'm stuck on, I just have to give it time, and stressing out and trying to force myself through it won't help.

  911. Corporate Busy vs Creator Busy 2011-03-07 05:18:15 devan
    Beautiful, i'm going to justify the weeks of procrastination with this.

  912. Use your brain to its fullest: Biological Task List 2011-03-07 14:30:06 dasil003
    If this works for you, then more power to you. I ran my life with nothing more than an occasional daily todo list for years. The thing is though, once you get busier, once your startup is growing into the double-digit employees, once you start receiving 100+ significant emails a day, once you have a family, the stuff that has to get done starts to outstrip your mental capacity (at least it did for me). And then that's when the stress starts building.

    I am not a fan of productivity porn. Ironically I think it's often just a way that people procrastinate from what really matters. But eventually I had to give in to the fact that however I used to cope wasn't working anymore. I recently picked up David Allen's Getting Things Done, and I'm applying it using OmniFocus. The thing I like about it is that it acknowledges the mental baggage that information workers carry around, and it provides a practical system to free your mind from remembering tons of tasks (something which we are not evolutionarily set up for). It's hard to overstate what this has done for my stress level and creativity. It's not about maintaining lists, it's about freeing up my RAM.

  913. Ask HN: How do you stay focused on one idea? 2011-03-08 08:48:42 devan
    You have to realise if you're not focused on one project your mind is going to be scattered everywhere and you'll end up with half assed products or incomplete projects. I made this mistake when i was trying to start something like 3 companies at the same time when i was 15/16, i wanted to do it all. You just can't.

    For example if you had a series of essays to do in a certain amount of time, they'd all probably be mediocre or incomplete. Yet, if you had to do one essay in the same amount of time that one essay would be pretty impressive, you'd have time to proof read, spell check, change areas etc...

    Pretty poor example but you get the idea.

    Find one and stay focused on it.

    When the idea becomes no longer fun get some feedback, nothings more motivational than feedback. There's going to periods were you just can't be bothered or were it tires you out and the next task/step is soo complex you procrastinate for weeks, you have to identify this and the fact that it happens and push forward.

    On thing i do, it's pretty weird, start with really small tasks and build up til' you're in a productive state. (do the dishes, reply to emails, make breakfast lol) When it comes to the hard part (opening up the code editor and getting started) what i do is kinda' go consciously unconscious, you phase out everything, the task, every thought in your head (you might even go light headed), complete yet forced zen and just start coding, when you "regain consciousness" you'll have already started the task and it will be less of a mountain.

    And prioritise.

    I'm currently at university, in my first year, working on my new start up. It's more important than university to me, i haven't been a class all term and only about 2/3 lectures this term because i'd rather be designing/programming. My priorities are with my idea not with this degree, i have a load of other ideas and what i'll learn from this start up with help me with the others later on.

    Just shelve the ok ideas and push forward with that one idea you love the most.

    D

  914. Sleep is more important than food 2011-03-09 23:53:11 kscaldef
    No, those schools have cultures that promote such behavior. I was a grad student and TA at Caltech and observed that the undergrads had horrible time management skills. Procrastination and heroic effort at the last minute were the norm.

    (I'm not specifically picking on Caltech undergrads, BTW. I'm fairly sure this is typical at most schools.)

  915. Sleep is more important than food 2011-03-10 00:15:57 Alex3917
    "Procrastination and heroic effort at the last minute were the norm."

    This may be true, but there are also plenty of students who work from the moment they wake up until the moment they go to bed and still don't have enough time to get all of their assignments done. The problem is that functionally there isn't really any difference between having a 3.5 GPA and a 2.0 GPA, so at some point most people figure out that what they're being asked to do is impossible so they might as well just do their own thing.

  916. Sleep is more important than food 2011-03-10 02:10:34 dexen
    Scheduling Algorithms for Procrastinators: http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~bender/pub/JoS07-procrastinate.pdf

    ``We are writing this sentence two days before the deadline. Unfortunately that sentence (and this one) are among the first that we have written. How could we have delayed so much when we have known about this deadline for months? (...)''

  917. Sleep is more important than food 2011-03-10 04:06:43 kscaldef
    Very few Caltech students have jobs.

    The faculty contributed from what I could see, but primarily in indulging procrastination by students. It was quite common for students to hand in the majority of a terms problem sets in the last week, and the professors would accept them even if there was a stated class policy that late assignments would not receive credit. (Of course, I acknowledge that this was particularly onerous to me, because I would be the one who then had to grade a full term worth of assignments in a week.)

  918. Sleep is more important than food 2011-03-10 17:25:20 dexen
    It's ``ha ha only serious'', actually. Whimsical style and solid analysis of algorithms you can actually use to schedule your procrastination & work better.

  919. SocialCam - launching hard and painful 2011-03-10 21:38:29 dabent
    I've encountered something similar to your "invoices" situation many times. I'm actually blocked on something now, but I know my mind is hard at work to get things straight in some background process. Once my block is cleared, I know I'll just dive in and get things done in the same amount of time it would have originally taken, only with better results. I know that, because that's how it's worked for me so many times before. Every once in a while I forget what I was working on, but it's usually in favor of a better project or solution.

    Fortunately, my blocks are usually short and resolved by letting my background processes chew on a problem during a night of sleep.

    I think the real trick is to actually attack problems that cause me to block. If I stick with simple things I can process in real time, I'm not thinking hard enough.

    Of course, this sort of discussion here wouldn't be complete without a reference to good and bad procrastination: http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

  920. Ask HN: why is the user page so cryptic? 2011-03-11 10:21:26 argv_empty
    I think minaway and maxvisit are parameters for noprocrast ("no procrastinating" mode), for setting how long you're allowed to keep browsing here and then how long you have to stay away afterwards.

  921. Why Do Writers Abandon Novels? 2011-03-11 22:25:25 xiaoma
    That's exactly how I feel about drawing a portrait of a friend or family member. I realize that it's a very small task compared to writing a novel, but after getting the initial sketch done, it gets a lot harder. Even after many revisions, I keep finding little things that are off. After a while, I start doubting my own judgement about how light or dark a given area should be. At that point it's very easy to walk away from an 80% finished work, procrastinate indefinitely and then start working on something easier like a plant.

  922. Ask HN: What are your best life hacks? 2011-03-13 15:49:08 danilocampos
    When pulled over by the police:

    Surrender completely, be kind, considerate and honest. Haven't gotten a ticket in nine years. More, if you're curious about the step-by-step:

    http://blog.danilocampos.com/2010/10/23/how-to-get-away-with...

    Having a notebook:

    A notebook large enough to comfortably dump your thoughts into but small enough to be always near your keyboard is awesome. The notebook helps with procrastination, especially when avoiding some gnarly bit of code you don't know how to write. I just start describing the problem and how I might solve it.

    After awhile, I have:

    - An idea of what I need to look up

    - A basic list of tasks

    - A clearer understanding of what I need to do

  923. Ask HN: What are your best life hacks? 2011-03-13 21:00:44 dalys
    I never put a really big task on my todo list. Instead of having "Write 500 page report about XYZ" on your todo, break it down to smaller jobs, but not too small. So instead, write down "look on wikipedia about xyz for 60 minutes", "open up Word, come up with a first draft title, and write down the chapters needed". Makes it A LOT easier to get started on something! If the task is too big I, and many others I suspect, just procrastinate. You end up with half a day gone just thinking about how hard and big the project is, instead of just opening Word and writing down a title, which is better than nothing.

  924. Ask HN: Workload in Uni more than in a CS Job? 2011-03-14 22:31:22 macca321
    It depends how hard you find it, and how well you want to do. I know some people can get through with a good mark doing 3hrs a week 46 weeks of the year, and 80hrs the other 6 weeks (before exams and dissertation hand-ins).

    I wouldn't recommend this though. Slow and steady wins the race, procrastination then working like mad makes you STRESSED

  925. Flickr Burning As Yahoo Fiddles: Head Of Service Walks Away 2011-03-15 09:35:11 mechanical_fish
    It's funny: I managed to put off uploading my photos to Flickr for so long that I out-delayed Flickr itself. Procrastination for the win, I guess.

    Where will my photos end up? Dropbox, perhaps. Dropbox really is a great startup: My local data is backed up online and vice versa. If they vanished tomorrow I'd lose nothing. Would barely even have to think.

    Maybe someone should value-add some more Flickr features to Dropbox.

  926. Ask HN: I don't think I am a good programmer but I keep trying 2011-03-15 19:44:46 RiderOfGiraffes
    Well, you threw out a bunch of random thoughts, so here are some in return.

    Firstly, double-check (no advice as to how!) that you're you're not just suffering from Imposters Syndrome:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome

    You do write some code - are you sure it's not just a matter of insecurity and scale?

    Secondly, do you really need to code? You've had great jobs doing things for which you receive recognition and praise - perhaps those things are your true calling.

    But if you really want to code, find a mentor and get an honest opinion. Write something really, really small, and get advice about style and content from people who can code. Finding them is an interesting challenge, but there are a few here who might help.

    Find something small that you feel will be interesting enough. Perhaps you just mostly suffer from a combination of procrastination and lack of focus. Perhaps you need to learn and work in really small chunks.

    Perhaps you need to learn by doing, not by watching.

    So here's a thought: Pick three languages that you've had contact with and in each, write FizzBuzz and post them here. And to prevent you from having the excuse to look it up on the net and getting clues from what you see:

    Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100, except that if a number is divisible by 3 print "Fizz" instead, if a number is divisible by 5 print "Buzz" instead, and if divisible by both, print "FizzBuzz" instead.

    Just a thought.

  927. How do you focus while depressed? 2011-03-19 07:39:09 foobar502
    Yea, HN and FB are the two great procrastinators :)

    And Thanks!

  928. Phpfog "Down for maintenance" 2011-03-21 02:47:13 acangiano
    I realize that it's harder than it looks. However, it would be trivial to allow people to choose the days they don't want the procrastination setting enabled (based on a standard timezone like PST.)

  929. MIT is a national treasure 2011-03-23 19:21:15 bfe
    I think another way of looking at this is in parallel with Ben Horowitz's dictum, in the context of hiring, to look for strength rather than lack of weakness. I think in school admissions or hiring, there's a trade-off in the end of trying to find the best people in terms of the most impressive lack of weakness in any area versus the most impressive strength in at least one area. The more bureaucratic the process becomes, the more it tends to favor screening for lack of weakness.

    There's a corresponding tension on the candidate side in how to prioritize the record of accomplishment one seeks to develop to prepare for a desired school admission or job, in how much effort to devote to shoring up any potential weaknesses versus how much effort to devote to pursuing capabilities and accomplishments centered on one's core competency. Sometimes that choice might take the form of whether to procrastinate less consequential pursuits to focus all one's effort on the most important thing one knows of to work on at that time, and sometimes that neglect of other pursuits can make a difference not just in degree but in kind, like pg talks about in "Good and Bad Procrastination".

    The danger is that all college admissions processes are becoming homogenized and over-bureaucratized to the point of excessively screening for lack of weakness, to the point of never fairly considering a candidate's record of profound intellectual accomplishment because all the right boxes on their record aren't checked off, and that students are calibrating their intellectual pursuits accordingly. The glory of MIT in this example is that it avoided that over-bureaucracy of the process at least in this instance.

    Obviously you can say well, any really gifted student should devote all necessary effort to a well-rounded education and SAT prep and extra-curricular activities as well as develop clear accomplishments in a core interest, and should be able to do well at it all. There's always a trade-off at some point though; and I think many of the greatest intellectual accomplishments have come from people who didn't consistently devote large chunks of their schedule to a diverse portfolio of widely varying subjects and activities.

  930. The Smart Guide to Beating Procrastination 2011-03-24 13:17:43 stevenp
    I can tell you one way not to beat procrastination: Consuming 24 articles about beating procrastination.

  931. The Smart Guide to Beating Procrastination 2011-03-24 13:21:20 Jebdm
    This is actually a bunch of links to other online guides to procrastination, plus three videos, plus three books, and some commentary. Reading it all seems like a pretty good way to procrastinate.

  932. The Smart Guide to Beating Procrastination 2011-03-24 14:05:11 sliverstorm
    Seriously, it's almost like it's a subtle joke and he's mocking the procrastinators

  933. The Smart Guide to Beating Procrastination 2011-03-24 15:14:12 deadcyclo
    Hmm. Seems to be meta procrastination.

  934. The Smart Guide to Beating Procrastination 2011-03-24 15:38:03 Ratfish
    The great thing about procrastination is that the reward comes now. Don't take that away from me.

  935. The Smart Guide to Beating Procrastination 2011-03-24 21:20:44 acconrad
    I find it ironic this article (which takes time from your work) is about beating procrastination, and his own personal advice is "sometimes you shouldn’t do what others tell you." I'm sensing an incredibly subtle message here...

    Priceless.

  936. Dedicated eReaders 2011-03-24 21:24:38 roblund
    One thing I have noticed about ereaders (and owners of ereaders) is their willingness to purchase books. I have friends who before buying a nook or a kindle would read one or two medium sized books a year. Revenue for Amazon/B&N ~ $20 ($60 if they are both new release hardbacks). With the ereader the same person will have a "stack" of 13 to 14 books to read in their ereader. Revenue for Amazon ~ $130. This is not including the cost of ereader, but we can just skip that. Now, ereaders certainly make reader more accessible (you don't have to carry around a book with you), but changing mediums is not going to increase the amount you read by 700%.

    Please don't misunderstand me on this, I actually really like ereaders. I think if you are a person that used to go on vacation with four heavy books in your luggage then they are great. I also really like a lot of the tech involved. The kindle's battery life is simply amazing.

    The point is that I feel like the barrier to buying a book has been dramatically reduced. IMHO, this is why the bookstores are supporting and promoting them. With a physical book, you have to order it from the site or go to the store. You also have a physical book which can feel like 700 pages of procrastination staring you back in the face everyday that you don't read. Sure the bookworms out there really want you to like books and to actually read more, but bookstores are a business, and their business is _selling_ books.

  937. The Age of Mediocrity: Why Rebecca Black Is Everyone's Fault [OPINION] 2011-03-25 03:47:51 anagnorisis
    Judging between potential problems....I think the most apparent one is the op-ed writer missed a dose of Xanax, or missed a deadline and needed to churn something out.

    He's imbuing way too much meaning in this.

    40M views..The numeric is extraordinary, but that's it. What % of these views carries the face time of 2minutes? 1minutes of someone's life? How about 10seconds of someone's randomized procrastination or ennui schedule?

    Contrast with the % that isn't the 10s Population...and what % are young, pre-adolescent girls (or boys)?

    Putting probable numbers on these figures, and a real problem may be revealing itself in the writer's thinking while trying to harangue society:

    an emotional aversion and resistance to the progressive openness of communication.

    Fwiw, i watched her entire video...but i just liked the beat?

  938. Timeboxing: You Will Work Like Never Before 2011-03-25 23:07:34 chris_j
    I haven't tried this but I really want to. I've noticed that I'm most productive when I'm working on the laptop and I don't have anywhere to plug in. I hover over the battery icon and notice that I only have an hour left... and I work like crazy. Motivation levels are high and there's no procrastination. I usually get my task done, too.

    I wonder if the effect will be the same if the time limit is artificial and planned. I also wonder how much discipline it takes to make it work. Only one way to find out, I suppose.

  939. Timeboxing: You Will Work Like Never Before 2011-03-25 23:56:31 naner
    This may help people who have problems focusing for long periods of time but procrastination is a behavior problem, not a techniques problem.

  940. Domain name valuations 2011-03-26 06:33:10 jtheory
    Hey, if you aren't too paranoid about it, send me an email with some details of what kind of name you need, what niche you're targeting, etc.. I've been pretty good at brainstorming up good domain names for friends' projects over the years that aren't registered yet. No promise I'd come up with something for you, but if I have a few minutes to procrastinate I can give it a shot.

    It's getting harder, certainly, but sometimes you luck out.

  941. Timeboxing: You Will Work Like Never Before 2011-03-26 09:49:24 jules
    Yeah, these kind of things can "trick" you into working, but eventually the part of your brain that procrastinates beats it. I'd like some genuine ways to beat procrastination long term, even if it takes a lot of time and dedication to achieve.

  942. Secret Fears of the Super-Rich 2011-03-26 12:16:32 michaelochurch
    Very, very interesting reply. I think that this "personality decay" is a risk worth concern, but I don't think it's as bad as people think it is. Old people become "set in their ways", I think, because with less life to live there is less risk people wish to take with new modes of thought. (Yes, thinking is risky. See: the link between creativity and mental illness, or the fact that substances LSD, despite its physically innocuous nature, can, if used unwisely and with a bit of bad luck, have devastating psychic consequences.)

    I don't think this personality decay will be a major problem. When people have nearly infinite life left and all physical manifestations of aging can be held back, I think people will retain all advantages of youth, without the disadvantages after 40 years or so (although behaviors of 100-year-olds in post-aging world may be considered "immature").

    Part of why I feel this way is that, as a Buddhist, I don't see much difference between spending (say) 100,000 years in 1200 bodies or in one of them. Impermanence is constant regardless of life span; constantly, thoughts are being born and dying. It's not that different: short lifespans vs. long ones. The current arrangement just shakes us up a lot more. We have 20 years (+/- 15 depending on how terms are defined) of uptime before we are fully formed and spend our last 10 years "unwinding" and not very productive, with this process culminating in a complete loss of physical memory (and complete submission to the force of karma and the will of God-- Buddhism doesn't require belief in God, but I'm a deist) every 80 years or so.

    Most changes humanity has made have been slightly positive, but have only enabled and made easier (not guaranteed or enforced) happiness and spiritual progress. In this regard, their improvements to the human condition have been non-negligible but have only increased what is possible, not so much what is realized. I expect post-aging humanity to be similar. Life may become more comfortable without losing all of one's memories (and facing, since no one knows for sure what happens after death, the possibility of nonexistence) every 80-100 years, but it won't become better unless people make spiritual progress, which can't be imposed upon people or "given" through technology. People have to take it up on their own when they are ready. My concern regarding a post-aging and post-scarcity world is that people will just turn into spiritual procrastinators.

  943. What life lessons are unintuitive or go against common sense or wisdom? 2011-03-27 16:49:45 diN0bot
    "retirement is boring" is only true if the current way you spend your free time is boring. i love my free time and i know from experience that having more of it simply allows me to learn and achieve more of what i want. maybe these hobbies would become professional if they were full time, maybe not. people are different and spend their free time in different ways.

    (wrt free time, i would say: stop procrastinating! i'm lucky, because i naturally prefer to work immediately and then be able to spend my free time exactly as i prefer, rather than wasting time and working under pressure near deadlines. if you can figure out how to trade your procrastination time for real pleasure, then you win both now and later.)

  944. It's Time to Fix HTTPS 2011-03-28 08:56:16 swah
    Mind: "No sire, that right now would be procrastination! Lets just use HTTPS as it is..."

  945. Goal Hacks: How to Achieve Anything 2011-03-29 20:17:40 bemmu
    One of my greatest procrastination sources was doing my books at the end of each month. So I turned it into kind of a game, I wrote down all the steps I need to do for my bookkeeping. Then every month I challenged myself to eliminate a step or make it easier. Since then I've been on time.

  946. Goal Hacks: How to Achieve Anything 2011-03-30 00:25:11 datasink
    I think that's a bit extreme. If you have some fundamental issue with getting things done, articles like these are clearly not going to help you. If you're already productive, and looking for tips to optimize your execution, it makes for interesting reading. There were several ideas I hadn't seen mentioned on other lists, and some cited journal publications. Not too shabby.

    I had a problem with procrastination when I was younger. I wasted a significant amount of time reading a bunch of very poor-quality linkbait blog articles, trying to find something that helped. When I finally bought The Now Habit (print edition and audiobook for my car), I was able to apply a coherent system rather than piecemeal techniques, and this helped to correct what was a fairly big problem for me. Now that I have a system that works for me, small tips are useful. Prior, not so much.

  947. Non-blocking Programmers 2011-03-31 18:10:02 dexen
    The internet itself is neutral, only gives high leverage to your actions. Feeling like procrastinating? It'll get multiplied 100-fold. Searching for something useful? It'll get multiplied as well.

  948. Poll: Are you addicted to HN? 2011-04-01 05:12:03 radu_floricica
    Reddit is enough of a problem that I keep blocking it in the router. But HN is not light enough to be a proper procrastination tool.

  949. Poll: Do you work for "the Man"? 2011-04-01 08:23:33 pacomerh
    HN gives me the impresion of most of the community working on ideas that never get executed. I think its all the articles about procrastination and getting thing done, etc

  950. Ask HN: I'm giving away my startup taketake.com for free - who wants it? 2011-04-01 21:03:31 rmontanaro
    Loved the clickable link. I'm such a procrastinator.

  951. Chrome Lite - Lynx style rendering in chrome :) 2011-04-01 23:43:26 nantes
    Wow, I actually kind of like this.

    I was lucky enough to be around KU when Lynx was released in the early 1990's. I was introduced to the greatest procrastination tool ever invented, the Internet, my freshman year (1992) at KU.

  952. Ask HN: Help me, I fuck around on the Internet too much 2011-04-03 00:33:35 gexla
    Really it's like watching T.V. except it's the internet. Brainless activities which keeps us just enough entertained that we don't go watch T.V. instead. ;)

    It's also procrastination from doing the things you really need to be doing. So, check out the tips on dealing with procrastination.

    I think what works best for me is to realize that I'm aimlessly wandering and just get up from the computer and do something else. Bonus points for getting out of the house. When I come back, if I fall into the same trap, then rinse and repeat.

    Another trick is to simply do something productive on the computer for just 15 minutes. Set a timer and go. Once you get to that first 15 then usually that's all you need to keep going long enough to call it a day so that you can waste your time without feeling guilty that you didn't do anything. ;)

  953. Ask HN: Help me, I fuck around on the Internet too much 2011-04-03 01:09:48 jarin
    I know the feeling, you're browsing around aimlessly, checking feeds, checking forums, etc. At some point you start getting that overwhelming feeling where you know you should be doing something productive, but it's just so easy to click one more link.

    Here is the sequence I follow when I realize I've been up for 4 hours and still haven't gotten anything done yet:

    - Eat something quick to prepare, if I haven't eaten yet. Watch Mixergy or something while I'm cooking/eating. This is the wind-down from "procrastination mode", and watching Mixergy reminds me that there are people out there busting their asses right now and taking all of my future customers or client dollars.

    - Put on some good coding music. This puts my brain into "serious business" mode. I prefer energetic hip-hop or dubstep, something I can bop my head to and feel like a boss.

    - Go through all my tabs, Pinboard and tag the ones I want to keep for later, and close all of the tabs that don't apply to what I should be working on.

    - Take a post-it note and write down the 3 tasks I am going to accomplish today, come hell or high water.

    - Get a coffee or energy drink, have a smoke (not recommended), and use the bathroom. Get my mental game plan together.

    - Open Terminal and MacVim. This sets the stage.

    - Pick a task that isn't on the post-it note (but needs to be done) that takes 10 minutes or less to bust out. Could be anything from a quick design fix to a wireframe or writing up a quick estimate. This is the warm-up.

    - By this point, my brain is in full-on work mode. Jump in and tackle the work.

    - Feel good. Eat dinner.

    - Play Starcraft.

  954. Ask HN: Help me, I fuck around on the Internet too much 2011-04-03 01:25:42 FreshCode
    My biggest weakness is too many tabs. I tend to have 200+ tabs open in Chrome stuffed with my primary procrastination implement: must-read technology news. If I start picking through them to close/mark for later reading, I inevitably start reading and simply reboot the procrastination cycle.

    My best antidote: have your IDE ready to work and close all your browser tabs at once.

    P.S. You know you read too much Hacker News when you wake up from a dream in which PG rejected both your startup ideas for funding.

  955. Ask HN: Help me, I fuck around on the Internet too much 2011-04-03 02:27:38 damaru
    - Try to only create and care. If I am not creating nor caring then it's probably a waste of time (create = code, draw, make music, solder etc... care = do yoga, train, clean the house, repair stuff around the house, garden, water the plants, cook food etc...)

    - klip.me to read page later on my kindle (any page that has a lot of text I send it to my kindle so I can walk away from my computer once in a while to read about other stuff I want to do)

    - 2 screen computer - one for watching stuff (video,web stuff) one for working, creating,producing

    - Being clear and telling myself : It's been 30minutes that you check facebook photo aimlessly anything else you can do ?

    - Do the dishes, clean the house, have so non computer task that needs to be done when too much procrastination happen

    - Not feeling bad or guilty as it ends up making me wanting to do more aimless browsing

    - Have a precise goal and passion in my life ;) If I am confuse about these I make mind map to see where I am at !

  956. Ask HN: Help me, I fuck around on the Internet too much 2011-04-03 02:29:49 aaronf
    This is a classic procrastination story, but also a side effect of the 40-hour work-week. Would you still spend so much time surfing if you could go home when your work was done? Killing time eats into your free time, affects the quality of your work, and makes you feel lazy at the end of the day. The problem is not that you're reading all these articles; it's that you're reading them at the cost of your productivity. You'll enjoy this activity much more if you can do it after you know your day's work is done.

    We're building LazyMeter to help with procrastination and overwhelming to-do lists. LazyMeter filters each user's overwhelming to-do list into a today list, so that they have an achievable goal each day, with an end point, and then tracks their progress so you can see how much they've done. Our users know exactly what they need to focus on, and can recognize when they're killing time. As a result, they know what to do, they know when they're done, and they feel better at the end of the day. We're now in beta and would love to get your feedback. http://www.LazyMeter.com

  957. Ask HN: Help me, I fuck around on the Internet too much 2011-04-03 04:42:07 sqrt17
    When you're actually wasted and don't get anything done because of it, staying up late and trying to get work done will not fix it.

    In those cases, it's pretty much the opposite. Stop procrastinating and get a nap or some real sleep. Of course, most places reward busywork more than napping, but if you can determine it yourself, you should value productivity over looking productive.

    One positive effect of the stay-up-late-until-you-get-it-done part is that it will make you not care and implement the simple solution that you thought wouldn't work. (In many cases, it actually does).

  958. Ask HN: Help me, I fuck around on the Internet too much 2011-04-03 04:42:19 nostrademons
    Most of the posts here focus on not doing the stuff you shouldn't be doing, but I've found it's much more effective on doing the things you should. The biggest help I've found was:

    Break down your productive tasks into smaller ones that can be accomplished in an hour or two of concentrated work.

    The big reason I procrastinate is because my real projects seem unmanageable. They're big, or they're scary, or they'll just take too much time to be worth investing in now. The solution to that is to make them smaller, less scary, and easily completed with the time you have now. That means doing more of them, but at least you'll be able to make forward progress.

    I took on a 20% project at work with the express goal of teaching myself how to break down a large, self-motivated project into one that I can actually motivate myself to complete. It's a library that'll probably be 10-15k lines of code when completed, based on similar projects. Most commits are no larger than 200 lines of code. I can bang out 200 lines of code in an afternoon; that makes each individual piece seem quite reasonable.

  959. Ask HN: Help me, I fuck around on the Internet too much 2011-04-03 05:46:25 paulitex
    Just to be a contrarian... don't feel so bad. You're in good company.

    "Perhaps fifteen of his [Leonardo da Vinci's] paintings survive, the small number due to his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination.(" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci (emphasis mine)

    "One of the problems I've faced throughout life is that I'm kind of lazy, or maybe I lack will power or discipline or something."

    - Paul Bucheit (http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2011/02/two-paths-to-succes...)

    (I've quoted that before, but it seems appropriate again here)

  960. Ask HN: Help me, I fuck around on the Internet too much 2011-04-03 07:08:08 blue1
    I second the pomodoro technique, but advise against lengthening the time block. I find the original 25-minutes block to be non-threatening, which is very useful in fighting procrastination. After all you can dive into a problem for 25 minutes, it will not compromise too much your reassuring flow of junk fun. (then, once you have started working, it's much easier to keep it going).

  961. Ask HN: Help me, I fuck around on the Internet too much 2011-04-03 10:33:52 Psyonic
    It's probably a combination. Mood (mental state) is critical for me. Lists and timers can work well in the right state. Otherwise they just add more layers to procrastinate with.

  962. Ask HN: Help me, I fuck around on the Internet too much 2011-04-04 01:22:08 adambyrtek
    Not to forget about pg himself:

    http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

    http://www.paulgraham.com/distraction.html

  963. Ask HN: What are the most important problems in Information Security today? 2011-04-05 04:53:58 rakkhi
    Links:

    [1] http://linkd.in/eF6glj

    [2] http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

    [3] http://www.rakkhis.com/2010/08/making-drm-practical.html

    [4] http://www.rakkhis.com/2010/07/practical-lessons-learned-fro...

  964. From reddit to Hipmunk: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. 2011-04-06 05:02:15 spez
    If anything, it's the opposite. The first time around I felt I had nothing to lose, but this time there is a lot more pressure.

    The main difference is I don't feel I have to force myself to work as much. If I'm going to be sitting in front of a computer but not actually getting much done, I may as well do something else. It's really just an acknowledgment that motivation comes and goes and there's not much to be gained by fighting it.

    Of course, there is a big difference between procrastinating and being burned out for the day.

    Everyone is different, of course, that's just me.

  965. Stop Panhandling your Ideas 2011-04-06 06:55:56 Goladus
    When I see a panhandler, I don't really think anything, unles they are funny in which case I might laugh. Usually I merely suppress the urge to engage entirely and think about it as little as possible. I certainly don't waste any of my time judging the person.

    Apart from the barely-applicable analogy, it's a decent motivational blog for someone who is actually suffering from the particular problem of procrastination with regards to shipping a product. Not everyone who hasn't shipped has that problem, however, and to them this is just a confusing rant. Other common problems are lack of focus, lack of discipline, lack of ability, lack of organization, and lack of knowledge. Being told to "stop panhandling your ideas" doesn't help at all in those cases.

  966. Ask HN: What hours would you work on a side business? 2011-04-07 09:45:01 wmboy
    It gets complicated the more things you want to be involved in. If you have no girlfriend/wife, no responsibilities, don't care what your few friends think of you and have no ambitions to add value to the world (other than through your startup) you can go hard, day or night.

    For those of us who are married, have kids, do community work, go to Church (Sundays and weeknights) etc... we have a lot more to juggle and finding quality time is very difficult. You really need to put in at least 20 hours a week to have traction so it's a case of making time (and learning to live with less sleep). There's little to no room for procrastination for people in this boat.

    Of course I'm not complaining - having a wife, family, helping the community and participating in a local church are great ways to add value with your life. It's all about priorities I guess...

    I guess that's one of the reasons why successful startups are an anomaly.

  967. My WakeMate: 1 year, 4 months, 12 days in the making. 2011-04-08 01:59:03 donall
    I am based in Ireland. I pre-ordered my Wakemate ages ago and when they finally became available, I had mine shipped to my sister in the USA, who then forwarded it to me. It worked out quite well (despite an additional 2 weeks of my sister's procrastination!) and I'm very happy with it.

  968. Review my startup: sanetax.com - A real Tax Professional prepares your taxes 2011-04-08 06:36:49 ABrandt
    The value proposition is extremely compelling (especially for someone like me who is still procrastinating filing...). Take a picture and have a professional do the work?! Yes, please.

    That being said, I need to know more before committing. Who are these professionals? How much will it cost me? Am I guaranteed the max allowable refund? I applaud you for bringing simplicity to a field as complicated as taxes, but the devil is still in the details.

    Overall looks great though! Let me know if I can help test at all, emails in my profile.

  969. Review my startup: sanetax.com - A real Tax Professional prepares your taxes 2011-04-08 08:32:31 PidGin128
    Is anybody aware of a similar service for finding (traffic) lawyers? Searching for such is unpleasant (especially in a different locality).

    Edit: I've now signed up to the service, as I've procrastinated equally with my taxes, however- I still don't know what to do. I appreciate the goal is to match taxed/preparer, but I'm not sure what forms are appropriate, which makes uploading them difficult.

    I see there is a progress indicator to communicate how far along the preparer is with the submitted paperwork, maybe a similar guide for what to submit, and what might be missing? (Also possibly augmented by the preparer if the site doesn't want to become a guide?)

  970. Ask HN: Procrastination tools for sites/apps other than HN 2011-04-09 12:37:54 russjhammond
    Do you tend to use it everyday or only on the days you are having a hard time concentrating?

    And while we are at it, any other great anti-procrastination/focus apps or tricks you have found lately that work really well?

  971. I *heart* Technical Debt 2011-04-10 03:35:13 Tekahera
    The number of times I got hired to pick up after you because your technical debt technically bankrupted the company and you got fired. My only hope is that innocent new coders reading your piece will not feel "inspired" by your little bracelet waving, but instead learn how to get good at her craft. That's the real reason it takes you 5 days of "procrastination". What you need is not to "just get it done", is to learn and gain experience before you tackle something out of your league, so that you don't leave other people picking up the pieces. Please.

  972. I *heart* Technical Debt 2011-04-10 08:49:21 zdw
    The point of Technical Debt isn't procrastinating about perfection - the point is when you get into a situation where you've dug yourself in so far that you end up screwed.

    For example, I consider the entirety of the Virtualization industry to be primarily caused by technical debt surrounding legacy Windows programs. Simpler to convert an old physical server into a VM than to redo the application.

    The fact that you actually have the code and can change the codebase = you're far from incurring any insurmountable technical debt.

  973. Ask HN: About To Finish High School, What Next? 2011-04-10 12:48:49 shantanubala
    I'm also in my senior year of high school, and I'll say this: don't skip on school. You'll have free time, and you can put that time into starting a company. But first, you have to just play around with stuff, and you'll always meet people in any school. Find people who share your passion, because they'll help you continue forward. And keep doing stuff like FIRST -- it's fun, but it also helps you tackle problems well. If you start building stuff for fun that seems like it'll make money, you've found an alternative to school. But unlimited free time sounds fun, but I guarantee you'll be getting the same amount of work done if you go to school and work on stuff in your free time. You may even produce better work because you won't "have the time" to procrastinate.

    But it's all a matter of preference. I'm not really any wiser than you. But one question: does the idea of school sound appealing to you on its own?

  974. Khan Academy: the bad 2011-04-11 00:06:21 Jd
    Lecture/test allows people to only demonstrate competency in subject at the time of the test, meaning that even if they have a vague understanding when attending (or skipping!) the lecture, they will use the period of time just before the test to cram and acquire the necessary knowledge to pass the test.

    In fact, I did this a couple weeks ago myself for a course in which I had no particular interest and yet was forced to take as a graduate student, doing the minimum amount of studying necessary to be reasonably certain I would get an A (spending my nights and weekends hacking instead of studying archeology).

    The wider problem then, I suspect, is people studying things they aren't all that interested in, which encourages procrastination and cramming. This may be a necessary feature of any sort of broad curriculum -- people should show competency in areas even if they don't have a particular interest in them. If so, then this does indicate "a flaw in the idea," insofar as the presumed idea will not work across a large spectrum of people and thus may not be implementable at the collegiate level.

    That said, you could theoretically modify it to have more frequent gradable quizzes on the lectures that people are supposed to watching at home, forcing them to watch them at the assigned times instead of attempting to assimilate the information at the last minute before the test.

  975. "Diff for HN": Update and highlight changes 2011-04-11 21:27:39 swah
    I only I could Shift+A HN, Twitter and Quora, I would beat procrastination!

  976. Someone Invent This - The Death Clock 2011-04-12 00:01:47 Killah911
    knowing me, if I didn't think today may be my last day on earth, I might just end up procrastinating :-P So, death clock based on life expectancy would probably have a negative effect on others like myself :)

  977. "Diff for HN": Update and highlight changes 2011-04-12 01:53:09 ssn
    If you need a tool like this, I would recommend turning on the anti-procrastination HN filter.

  978. Ask HN: What do you dislike most about HackerNews? 2011-04-12 10:22:18 russjhammond
    I agree. I have gained back some very productive hours be enabling the procrastination setting in my profile.

  979. Ask HN: how to kill it in university? 2011-04-14 04:19:17 movingtohawaii
    Have you ever heard the phrase "garbage in garbage out"? You can't expect your brain to function at full capacity if you've been eating mostly junk food. Protein is great for providing energy for both the muscles and brain, but of course you want lots of fruits and vegetables and some carbs as well. I've found personally that consuming candy or other things high in sugar lead to myself behaving more impulsively, usually leading to blowing off schoolwork/procrastinating. I recommend that you experiment with slight tweaks in your diet and really pay attention to how your mind and body feel and function as a result.

  980. Ask HN: Am I an accredited investor? 2011-04-14 13:13:48 rms
    Thanks! Bank loan is a good idea, also considering that we should really get one and have been procrastinating about actually do so.

  981. Joel Spolsky on allocating ownership in your startup 2011-04-14 17:21:16 petenixey
    That would be true if the employee is a bad employee who needs to be fired and in that case the sooner the better - leaving it to day 364 is just procrastination.

    If an employee is good there is no way you would want to fire them, disrupt and demotivate the other employees plus have to go out and look for a replacement. The disruption hit would be far greater than the equity gain.

  982. Living in the zone 2011-04-16 09:21:39 frankus
    I use a variation on pg's laptop-across-the-room-plus-no internet-on-dev-machine trick.

    I need internet for what I do, but I keep all of my bookmarks (especially RSS feeds) on my laptop in the next room. The laptop is also at bar height, with only a hard plastic stool in front of it. So procrastinating for too long is uncomfortable.

    I can still go to various distracting sites (I'm doing it now), but it's a decent speedbump (and noprocrast is your friend).

  983. Ask HN: I have a startup idea! What do I do next? 2011-04-16 11:14:33 jcr
    Leslie, you are procrastinating by posting this. There are countless posts similar to yours on HN, and if you dig them up, you'll find the same consistent and good advice in all of them; just do it.

    Your "great idea" may or may not be as great as you imagine, but the only way to find out is to try, and if you do try, you'll learn something. I might be a home run, but then again, you might just get in some batting practice. Both are good outcomes.

  984. Fooling myself to work 2011-04-18 01:46:37 dasil003
    A pretty good list of tips, however I've gotten more mileage over the years by digging deeper into my procrastination to understand its roots. Most often than not there is some fear or dissatisfaction tied to the procrastination that needs to be heard. Checking in with myself and becoming aware of these deeper feelings forms the foundation on which long term productivity is possible.

  985. Fooling myself to work 2011-04-18 02:13:01 jirinovotny
    Yes, you are right. These tips are mainly for short-term productivity.

    I've also summarized "The Now Habit", which is probably the best book on procrastination that I'm aware of: \nhttp://www.dextronet.com/blog/2011/03/the-now-habit-summary/

  986. Procrastination 2011-04-18 02:17:04 nextparadigms
    This is the best article on procrastination I've ever read.

  987. Fooling myself to work 2011-04-18 07:22:45 csomar
    I tell myself that I will merely write down the steps needed to complete the task. Just a rough draft, at first, and that’s it. Maybe just 3 steps. I then add more steps, breaking the 3 steps into smaller sub-tasks. I then add some details, and thoughts, notes of things that I shouldn’t forget when doing this task. I just think the task through and write everything down. After a little while, I will be a proud author of “The Complete Guide To Finishing Task X for Dummies”.

    I have exactly the same problem, but I don't think it's laziness. I think it's the fear of failure, or more precisely the fear and uncertainty of being able to do a task. Breaking the task down into smaller steps, make you able to overcome that fear but not procrastination.

  988. Ask HN: Honestly, why are there so many "how to learn to program" asks? 2011-04-19 00:41:07 tnorthcutt
    I think you see this for the same reason you see people endlessly debating/discussing version control systems, GTD, IDEs, OSes, keyboards, mice, browsers, etc. etc. etc. They're all just tools, and yet we (myself included) spend far too much time talking about them, and not nearly enough time using them. True, some of the discussion is merited and is rooted in useful thought about real differences between tools, but much of it is over analyzing.

    I think much of this could actually be rooted in fear, which drives procrastination in lots of people - more than most of us realize, I think. Merlin Mann's gave a great talk on fear: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk0hSeQ5s_k

    The key is to understand that fear isn't going to go away completely, and to still keep doing, even though you're scared.

    Enough talk. I'm going to go build something now.

  989. Rate my project, ReminderApp 2011-04-19 20:28:21 bromley
    I have an idea for a slight variation: a way for people to remind themselves about things they need to do.

    Let people specify a message, and a datetime that that message should be sent to them. Or let them specify recurring tasks like on day x of each month/quarter/year etc. Let people specify that the message should be sent again every day or week until the app receives notification that whatever needs to be done has been done. Such notification of completion could be achieved by the person replying to the SMS. Perhaps that way you could earn a couple of cents for each reminder reply, maybe enough to make it a free service at that level.

    I, for example, have a load of boring tasks that I have to do once a month, once a quarter, or once a year. Like taxes. A reminder that told me each time something was due, and then pestered me once a day until I'd done it (because I inevitably procrastinate on boring tasks), would be great.

  990. 5 days before our YC interview we've changed our idea. Help us prove the market. 2011-04-20 02:03:02 wittjeff
    I don't know how you intend to do your data analysis, but...

    I have had an idea for a smartphone app on my Big List for years. This app would implement lag-sequential analysis (see for example http://www2.gsu.edu/~psyrab/references.pdf). I haven't actually used it (which is part of why I have procrastinated this one), but my understanding is that LSA is basically a chi-squared analysis with a time function. Chi-squared compares expected vs. actual incidence of something. So LSA would look at expected vs. actual incidence of X happening following Y. The prototypical test would be to prove/disprove that chocolate milk makes kindergarten kids more violent. But you could (as I envisioned it) generalize it to sniff out all kinds of factors that might systematically precede migraines or whatever.

    You'll also need to explain to people that a negative result might not be a reliable one unless you get a lot of data and record all variables reliably.

    I'm not sure how much my app idea overlaps with yours, but I will cheer you on in any case.

  991. Social anxiety is crippling my life, what can I do to stop it? 2011-04-20 04:15:56 GFischer
    Several introverted coworkers swear by theater acting classes (and/or improv nowadays).

    Seems to have done wonders for a few of them.

    I've always meant to take some, but never got around to doing it (you can guess I'm prone to procrastinate :P ).

    I did do some Tango classes, and I think they helped (though I'm still clumsy).

  992. Working Best at Coffee Shops 2011-04-20 04:48:15 Goladus
    I am just noticing this. I currently work in a semi-cramped office with two other guys, but it's connected to a modern steel/glass high-rise building designed for academic research. It has a gorgeous, large cafeteria on the second floor. It's pleasant enough and there's enough activity during the morning and afternoon that it's a perfect place to work. Usually there are about 5-10 people using the cafeteria to work at any given time, plus there are lounge chairs situated at various points in the nearby hallways that can work as well.

    I am less likely to get distracted with stupid internet crap when I'm in the public space. I find it relaxing, and I don't have the nagging feeling that by sitting at my office desk chair I'm wasting my life. Often those feelings are worth it all by themselves, even if there's no productivity change.

    However, there are definitely distractions, and I find that I'm usually unable to get fully focused in a public space. I am often drawn to someone walking by or annoyed by a random smell. For difficult technical work, silence and peace are usually more conducive, as well as my multi-monitor setup and fast, wired ethernet connections.

    But for stuff like reading email, and correspondence, knocking minor items off your todo list, and defeating a procrastination block, being in a public space seems to help a lot.

  993. Create 2011-04-20 04:56:48 b_emery
    Reminds me of a quote I'm fond of: "Procrastination is our substitute for immortality". - B. Kunkle

  994. Create 2011-04-20 11:05:27 jayzee
    The philosopher Mark Kingwell puts it in existential terms: Procrastination most often arises from a sense that there is too much to do, and hence no single aspect of the to-do worth doing. . . . Underneath this rather antic form of action-as-inaction is the much more unsettling question whether anything is worth doing at all.

    In that sense, it might be useful to think about two kinds of procrastination: the kind that is genuinely akratic and the kind thats telling you that what youre supposed to be doing has, deep down, no real point.

    From: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/10/11/10101...

  995. Ask HN: I hate the code in my popular open source app; do I put it on my resume? 2011-04-20 18:24:04 nakkiel
    Procrastination, anyone? :) I sometimes have to force myself to write it down at all.

  996. Social anxiety is crippling my life, what can I do to stop it? 2011-04-20 22:11:26 toblender
    Life is all about practice. No one is born knowing. As for procrastination, I find identifying the very next step that can be done in 5 minutes can push a project forward. For example, acting classes, a possible first step is, spend 5 minutes on craigslist and see if there are any classes nearby. Call them up and inquire.

  997. Small areas of the brain go to sleep when we're up too late 2011-04-28 23:39:11 allwein
    I find that my procrastination disappears from lack-of-sleep as well. My most productive days at work are the ones where I get less than 4 hours of sleep.

  998. The 2 Minute Trick 2011-04-29 10:45:13 petercooper
    When I read Getting Things Done several years ago, this was one of the main things I took from it. I can't remember all the "systems" and organizational structures it suggests, but I took the (and I'm paraphrasing it) "do it, schedule it, or delegate it" core to heart. I extend that 2 minutes to about 10 minutes but it has worked surprisingly well for beating procrastination.

  999. LSD: The Geek's Wonder Drug 2011-04-30 05:12:11 bliss
    My tuppence: I was an average student, perhaps an underachiever - I was the youngest in my class... Anyway around about the closing years of high school I discovered the recreational joy of LSD, which I took despite superman comics warning me of the dangers. For a while I dropped out (3 years) and enjoyed a life that was devoid of computers (until that point I had spent all my time on 8bit then 16bit computers, leading up to an 8086 pc). I lived in a bedsit and had no outlook or any desire to "get a life". At some point during an acid trip, I found myself alone and spent a long time in introspection about where I was and where I would like to be. Long story short, fast forward 20 years, I'm married with a beautiful daughter, a great senior technical job with a very public FTSE 100 media company, a couple of irons in the fire with personal software projects I'm writing (in fact, I'm actually procrastinating here, I should be coding!) and a generally great life. If I had continued on my "wastrel" route those years ago, my life wouldn't have been as rosy (though perhaps less stressful). I attribute my conversion from waster to nerd entirely to my experiences with LSD. I thoroughly recommend it to others (though I will caution that I have seen downsides in some of my comrades, not deaths you understand, but longer lead-times to achieving their goals). This article (though lacking in specifics) does resonate very strongly with my life experience. Final question (to myself) would I use LSD again? Answer... not sure, I've done a whole lot of living in the last 20 years, not sure I want to reprogram the grey matter at this stage - maybe again in 10 years...

  1000. Ask PG: Disconnecting Distraction progress? 2011-05-01 00:40:36 hollerith
    Exactly: even when there was no X windowing system installed on my Linux and the only browser I have access to was Lynx, I found myself using Lynx to procrastinate.

    ADDED. Actually, the proper way to think about anti-procrastination is "willpower conservation", and not having a graphical browser installed or not having software on the computer that allows the watching of videos does conserve significant willpower when one is trying to get work done.

  1001. Most Obvious Yet Ignored Concept About Programmer's Concentration 2011-05-01 10:18:17 forensic
    His comments are provably false. There are countless scientific studies showing the benefits of various strategies for increasing productivity as well as increasing your enjoyment of your work. (e.g. how to make masturbation feel better, how to make programming more addictive, how to enjoy yourself while doing the dishes, etc etc)

    He even suggests time-boxing, a very popular strategy for countering procrastination.

    Suffice to say, he is yet another unqualified non-expert giving opinions on stuff he doesn't know anything about.

  1002. 12 No-Frill Steps To Get Things Done 2011-05-03 16:39:44 erikb
    I must tell you that I just read your post, because I wanted to be able to say this: 12 steps??? I give you 3 steps to successful x-step posts:

    1. Don't overthink things! Make x<=5.

    2. Be the first to listen to your own advice!

    3. Help others not to procrastinate with writing only things who have value and where not written trillion times before!

    Thanks!

  1003. Hacker Pwns Police Cruiser and Lives to Tell the Tale 2011-05-04 04:22:39 drdaeman
    So it would give us another month or two until some LIR would exhaust their IPv4 pool?

    All this "save the scarce IPv4" thing is just a procrastination to delay the inevitable. While the transition is painful, we just can't keep IPv4 forever. Numbers are cruel sometimes.

  1004. Why I still dont contribute to open source 2011-05-04 06:49:16 rayboyd
    I adore Python and the general ethos of the community. I can be a bit of a sideliner and I usually don't have a lot of spare time - when I do I fritter it away playing with code and general programmer style procrastination. On a number of occasions I've thought it would be nice to contribute to Python in some way. I just didn't know how, if I could, or what the barrier for entry was.

    This is one of the most encouraging things I've read in regards to getting my finger out and starting to give something back. You've sparked my interest and I will definitely be looking at this and seeing how I can contribute and get involved.

  1005. Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks? 2011-05-04 21:51:16 silentbicycle
    Take time spent reading about "productivity hacks", apply towards projects. Diminishing returns, people.

    Just one suggestion: Write things down. Whether on paper or on a computer. Don't get too caught up in "having a system", though - it's WAY too easy to procrastinate by tinkering with your system.

  1006. Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks? 2011-05-04 22:18:21 crocowhile
    When you realize you are wasting time call it a day off or go for a walk. Sitting in front of the computer trying to find the strength does not help.

    Follow habits: e.g: if I a work from home I still get dressed as if I was going to work.

    If you are a procrastinator, don't fight your inner instincts, you are going to lose the battle. Instead, try to use it in your favor. See http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/ by Stanford professor John Perry. When you read that the first time you have an epiphany.

  1007. Get-shit-done - Easy way to stop distractions 2011-05-04 22:34:31 skid
    Isn't the point of this approach to be _difficult_ to switch back and forth? Next thing you know there will be a chrome extension that swaps your hosts file and you will be separated from procrastination by a single click.

  1008. Get-shit-done - Easy way to stop distractions 2011-05-04 23:50:59 adnam
    I once wrote a similar script which was configurable and it installed as a service. It would periodically scan /etc/hosts to check I wasn't cheating.

      $ sudo /etc/inid.d/procrastination-ctl start
  OK.
  $ sudo /etc/inid.d/procrastination-ctl stop
  You need to wait 59 minutes before you can stop.
    Managed to waste a whole day on that one.

  1009. Ask HN: What are your productivity hacks? 2011-05-05 00:30:02 lukifer
    My biggest hack: accepting that this battle will never be won. If I rely on a "system", I stop fighting the demons of fear, procrastination, and perfectionism. I adapt my methods, stay in the moment, break tasks into small digestible chunks, and calmly move forward.

    Also, I'm not above cutting myself off from time-wasting sites in /etc/hosts when I really need to. :P

  1010. Structured Procrastination 2011-05-05 03:45:16 i-blis
    This is a pretty well known text, almost a classical on procrastination. Posted on HN at least once in 6 months.

  1011. Get-shit-done - Easy way to stop distractions 2011-05-05 04:18:45 chriswoodford
    i'm actually surprised at the amount of time people spend procrastinating on something to help them stop procrastinating...

    or even more surprising might be the amount of time i've spent procrastinating by reading about people who've procrastinated by making tools to aid their procrastination...

    ...I'm going to get back to work :)

  1012. Get-shit-done - Easy way to stop distractions 2011-05-05 05:36:11 adnam
    I always wanted to rename the script to "/etc/init.d/procrastination" whereby the command "stop" would start the service and vice-versa.

  1013. The Last Post 2011-05-05 09:31:05 pyre
    I think a lot of the people that feel that their 'priorities are wrong' are people that think that X is important but keep procrastinating X because "I'll have time later." Things like this point out to them that maybe they won't have time later.

    Also, all regrets are not created equal. You may regret that you didn't go for some hot girl you had a crush on in HS, but you probably wouldn't regret that as much as ignoring people that you care about because you had tunnel-vision on a task that doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things.

  1014. 16-year-old earns WSU degree without stepping on campus 2011-05-08 05:48:12 biffandchet
    As another anecdote:

    I started college at 15 while being dual-enrolled both at a high school and college 2 years ago. Unlike anonymoushn's experience, I went to a commuter community college, so I didn't live on campus or really participate in any campus events, as sparse as they were.

    I do feel that I've missed the high school and college experience to a degree, since I've spent my last two years at high school attending classes with older people of relatively mediocre talent with little interaction with others. I lost touch with most of my friends from high school that I kept up with since middle school, since we really only saw each other in school.

    I will echo anonymoushn's experience that it was a pretty stressful time for me, being pretty isolated and alone and forced to do a lot of things alone. There were some periods where I got the lowest I have ever have into the pits and depths of depression, mainly from being so alone and feeling a little hopeless. It didn't help that I was working insane hours during my only free time during the summer between my junior and senior years of high school and had no time for any fun or relaxation at all.

    I do appreciate the fact that I had 2 years of college paid for by the state fully, and that I got a leg up in life that way. I also spent a lot of that 2 years listening to a lot of music and learning a lot about myself. There was definitely a lot of wasted time and things I regret from that period. I almost failed out my first semester at the community college from procrastinating so much and being thrown into such a new and strange environment with no support. My academic record went on a big nose-dive during this period and I really regret that, it hasn't helped me any during my college admission period.

    It was pretty bittersweet, and I feel the effect that it has had on my life since I'll have to continue at the same college for another year to finish an associates degree in computer science (another downside to starting college alone with no support and as the first in your family to go to college -- a lot of __really__ important things like planning out your classes and academic roadmap don't really occur to you until it's a little late), and have little choice but to attend another cheap state commuter college for the last 2 years of the Bachelor degree.

    Another upside is that I was exposed to the concept of taking responsibility for my own personal growth and development mentally, physically, and emotionally/socially in my own hands. I realized around the 3rd semester of my time here, I got into panic mode realizing I had 1 semester left of high school. I felt like it went much too fast and that I missed too much, but refused to just wallow in despair like before. I've gone ahead and taken the initiative to try to learn about things that interest me and skills that I both enjoy and can market, take care of my body by learning how to eat better, exercise regularly, sleep on a sane schedule (a problem that slaughtered my productivity and academic record), and to be more bold and confident amongst groups of people, especially to girls.

    It's been a bitter pill to take, but I think I've grown a lot as well.

  1015. Ask HN: What's the best advice you've ever read on killing Procrastination? 2011-05-10 05:12:33 thetrumanshow
    For me, procrastination often comes from overestimating the pain involved in performing a task (fear). To overcome it, I promise myself I'll just "take a look at the problem", then I convince myself that I'll just do this quick small task (ex: change a label, do a lookup query) and stop, but pretty soon, I see that this isn't scary at all... and I JDI.

  1016. I Spent 42 Hours Last Month on the Activity Most Critical to My Success 2011-05-11 12:24:07 syllogism
    Seems like a worse version of the Paul Graham essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

  1017. Mailgun (YC W11) Raises $1.1 Million For Its "Twilio For Email" 2011-05-14 06:47:56 taphangum
    Wow, this will save me hours in development time. Guess procrastinating on HN is useful after all ;). Great service guys, congrats!

  1018. Ridiculously easy world times and meetings across time zones 2011-05-17 01:21:24 dspillett
    To be anal: technically GMT is closer to UT1. UTC is never "known" until after the time you are referring to as it is the reading from an atomic clock with some leap-seconds. The exact adjustment is not decided (though can generally be predicted) until IERS publishes DU1 for the time.

    Though if you are not needing long period times more accurate than +/- 0.9s you can consider GMT, UT1 and UTC to be equivalent, and for sub-second measures you need to reference a local timer. This is essentially how NTPd works too - it keeps a local timer with reference to hardware events like timer interrupts plus some skew values and this is what your OS ends up using to track small amounts of time, and readings from external clocks are used to tweak the skew values so that this local timer doesn't fall too far out of sync. The skew relationship between UT1 and UTC is called DUT1.

    See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time for more than you care to know about UTC (and, if you do care that much or simply have some serious procrastinating to work on, other references are listed too for further reading).

    On London time not being GMT for half of the year, this can be a hassle. We are UK based as are our current clients for the most part. One of the larger ones (a major bank, but for contractual reasons I should probably refrain from mentioning their name) have their email and calendaring system set to GMT, which means that any time they invite us to a meeting or teleconference in this half of the year we have to adjust the time (as our mail+calendar arrangement are correctly set for UK time with daylight saving accounted for, as are the systems of our other clients) or turn up an hour late. Most irritating.

  1019. How I solve those tricky technical issues 2011-05-17 05:47:27 JoeAltmaier
    I do something else while my subconscious works. Careful: 15 minutes on HN is good; an hour is procrastination.

  1020. The art of endless upgrading 2011-05-17 17:28:01 sivers
    There's a wonderful Linux distribution called Arch Linux - http://www.archlinux.org/

    The best thing about it is its "rolling release" release cycle - constantly updating - every day. See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ArchLinux:About#Release...

    Part of my daily boot-up of my laptop is to run `pacman -Syu`, which updates anything that updated in the world. It's so easy! Only tiny changes. Never a big new release. Just constant little updates. Feels like nothing. You don't procrastinate because there's nothing to it.

    There's gotta be a good metaphor for the real world, there.

  1021. The Cult of Done -- are you in it? 2011-05-18 00:20:25 wadetandy
    The very fact that I found this on HN while procrastinating my project for today means I probably shouldn't be allowed in the Cult.

  1022. The Cult of Done -- are you in it? 2011-05-18 03:40:56 powertower
    > 1.There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.

    To me it would sound better this way:

    There are three forms of doing: not doing (procrastinating), doing (specific action), and done (moving on).

    "Being" is not a "doing". Being is existing in the "now", without a past, without a future, with no desires, without action. It is a state that is achieved by only a handful of people.

  1023. The Cult of Done -- are you in it? 2011-05-18 17:53:43 vegai
    That's kind of good, but my procrastination doesn't seem to fall to such a category.

    When I procrastinate, I'm not doing anything sensible, which includes trying to apply any anti-procrastination technique.

  1024. Why F1 Steering Wheels Have Over 20 Buttons - And What They All Do 2011-05-20 01:32:39 lloeki
    > "There is a lot less grip at the beginning of a race weekend"

    It can also be the opposite during a race, as tyre residue accumulates on the track, lessening grip in the most critical areas, often requiring drivers to change their line.

    (To be clear, my question was a rhetorical one. I began to write a paragraph about that, and then another one... and then work brought me back from procrastination, so I deleted the incomplete stuff)

  1025. Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what? 2011-05-21 01:18:31 netchaos
    I have a blog on environment and green living (http://www.connect-green.com) which brings in around $20 a month from adsense, have a tutorial aggregating service (http://tutmash.com) which is pretty new and haven't started to make any thing considerable.

    I do freelance web development. Even though not consistent, it's my main revenue source.

    I believe there are very good opportunities to make a good income from online businesses but in my case, my acute procrastination issue is preventing me from making anything considerable.

  1026. Ask HN: In your career, what are you most embarrassed about? 2011-05-21 08:24:46 abbasmehdi
    Not starting soon enough - but then again would have missed out on a helluva ride. Embraced, enjoyed, and lived each phase to the fullest. Feel a little behind now but if I didn't then I'd probably procrastinate, so it's a nice fire-under-my-ass. :) All in all despite not getting straight there, no regrets because the journey itself has been great!

  1027. Ask HN: Leaving Personal Problems at Home 2011-05-23 23:37:14 gexla
    I think the same sorts of tricks for dealing with procrastination apply here. The problem is that everyone has their own things which work.

    For me, set the timer to concentrate on work for 10 minutes. After banging out that first 10 then I'm off to the races. If not, then do another 10. If I absolutely can't concentrate then I need to get away from the computer and other distractions for a while and then try again later (rinse, repeat as needed,) otherwise I just spin my wheels.

  1028. Are you a technical person? 2011-05-24 12:18:53 dkarl
    The amount of skill that you have in a certain area is proportional to the amount of work that you put into it.... This realization changed my life.

    Heh, this realization does change your life... very, very slowly. Catching up on all those hours invested is hard. Making them pass pleasantly is also a challenge. Spending all day and half the night doing something is easy when it's a source of pride and your refuge from all the stuff you aren't good at.

    I spent years aspiring to be good at music. I took piano lessons for years as a kid, even after my parents told me I could stop. I played saxophone in junior high orchestra band and junior high jazz band. I wised up in high school, but then in college I wasted a few hundred bucks on a guitar. I sold it after a month, but then later I started going to the music building several times a week to play the Hanon piano exercises. I actually kept it up for several months before I stopped. No real music, just Hanon.

    Music was a waste of time for me because I absolutely hated it. There was the generic pleasure of improving at a skill, but that was the sum total of the pleasure I derived from it. My entire goal in learning music, from the time I was a child until I wasted that fifty or so hours in college, was to play music that I liked hearing and that other people would like hearing. Of course, I was so far from that.... I remember as a child being conscious that my older sister's playing bugged the crap out of me. The mistakes, the awkward tempos. And she was much better than me, five years ahead and also better for her age than I was. The entire payoff for playing music was always years away, even assuming I suddenly became extremely dedicated. Every hour between me and my goal would be me enduring the misery of producing noises that I disliked and was ashamed of. I thought that was just the way it was. I flagellated myself for not being disciplined and far-sighted enough to pursue that distant dream like so many other people did. I knew some kids just enjoyed making bad music, but I didn't think they were the ones who would be good at music someday. I just thought they had horrible taste. The ones who were actually good had clearly been tougher than me; they had fought through all the shame and humiliation of playing badly. They were fierce and ruthless with themselves, and finally, after thousands of hours of hardship, they were able to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

    Nowadays I know that's not how it works. I'm more realistic with myself. I could be a great dancer before I'm forty, except that I don't really like dancing. I could be decent at drawing, except that I don't really like to draw. Every couple of weeks I get a great idea for a cartoon and wish I could draw it, but I really don't want to sketch crummy cartoons every day so I'll be ready when I get a good idea. Programming, though.... Fire up gdb and look at a core dump? Why the heck not? Install a new library and play around with it? Fun! Read through some code, figure out how it works, and be on the lookout for a memory leak? Ooh, kind of exciting, I might be the one who finds it.

    Those aren't especially stimulating activities, and there's no glamor in them. They're nothing I could brag about to my friends or show off to a cute girl. (I'm working on HTML and CSS now to fix that :-P) They're just something I usually don't mind doing and often find pleasurable. I never chose to be good at programming, and I actually took a pretty snobbish and dismissive attitude towards it until I found myself making a living at it. (Looking down on it was probably what enabled me to believe I could be good at it. Pfft, I can do this, any idiot can do this, especially if he's half-autistic like me.)

    I still get off on stupid tangents, though. I took a vacation several years ago and was extremely frustrated with the performance of my point-and-click digital camera. I ended up buying a DSLR, and suddenly I felt the pressure. I had to become a good photographer. My friends were taking pictures and putting them on Flickr (now on Facebook) and I had to keep up. I couldn't suck at taking pictures. Especially not after I bought the DSLR. I bought a crapload of books and read at least a third of the ones I bought. I read on the web. I took classes. I took my camera with me to places and took pictures instead of having fun. The fact that I was taking shitty photos became a huge monkey on my back. Still is, kind of. Last fall, I took an amazing trip to a place I'd been wanting to go to for years, and I obsessed over the quality of the pictures. When I got back I immediately looked through them and couldn't find a single one I liked. For weeks I procrastinated processing them. Finally I did. They sucked. It was awful. Now I don't even know if I should take my camera with me on the next vacation I take.

    So please, let me indulge in the misconception that I am just a "technical type." That way I can take pictures in peace, without knowing that it is really my fault and my shame if they suck, and that I should be putting in the hard work so that one day I will be competent and my friends will not have to endure my shitty photos. No, my shitty photos are not my fault. I am just not a creative type. I am a techie. Leave me alone and stop reminding me that all my artistic deficiencies are just one big character flaw!

  1029. Many don't have $2,000 for a rainy day 2011-05-25 06:05:29 hugh3
    I gotta agree with this. There's no darn way that "polishing up" your resume can possibly take a full week. That sounds way too much like procrastinating.

  1030. The Only Way to Get Important Things Done 2011-05-25 15:55:14 radu_floricica
    They are different things. There is lots of research in self regulation and it boils down to (unsurprisingly): the most efficient and elegant way to self-regulate is to avoid continuous self-regulation, i.e. create habits. There is also lots of research on how to create habits :)

    A good summary of current state of research is "A handbook of self-regulation", edited by Roy Baumeister, but it's definitely not an easy read. It's amazing though to find out exactly how far we've come in understanding these things - and it's also pretty exciting how recent most of it is.

    There are more practical books out there, drawing from the same research. "The Procrastination Equation" by Piers Steel is the best I've found so far.

  1031. Inspired by XKCD:903, Wikipedia steps to philosophy 2011-05-26 20:53:16 dspillett
    Excellent. Saved me some clicking resulting in more efficient use of procrastination time!

    I hit loops a few times - you could drop to the second link in those cases instead of stopping completely.

  1032. Work is Fascinating: The Metagame 2011-05-26 21:53:05 gbog
    For those who have a longer procrastination time ahead, you might prefer (re)reading http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html than elaborating on definition loops. It strikes me how simple and yet deep are PG insights on topics that seem to be outside his usual field. Here he just proposes to take Aristotle in one hand, Wittgenstein in another, wrap all philosophy in between and throw the thing over board. Then rebuild from scratch, changing the partially wrong premisses from metaphysics (general useless ideas) to science (general useful ideas).

    Someone knows if this article had some echoes in the philosophy field? Or was it completely ignored?

  1033. The Only Way to Get Important Things Done 2011-05-27 21:38:36 FrojoS
    Good article. Funny, earlier this evening I stumbled over an interview with Tony Schwartz (the author of the parent article) and David Allen, from 'Getting Things Done', in the print version of HBR.

    I follow many of the advices, they make, already and they work great but many others I keep struggling to make a ritual.

    1) Morning Workout: Takes time, especially on days where I have to commute a lot. Sure, I can make a good 5 minute workout but if I have to leave a lot earlier than my usual sleep cycle I don't even want to take that time. I might even decide to only shower the night before and hence can't afford a real work out before jumping in my clothes. Also, I found that I'm often significantly more tired over the whole day when I do a hard morning workout. I have plenty of experience of this from my time in the military. Sure, I should probably do a lighter workout. But I rather have a real workout later than wasting time on some wishi-washi with Homeopathic weights. And real, strenght workout requires full concentration and an awake mind.

    2) Sleep Cycle: In winter, I usually succeed on this and I love the benefits. But now that the days are long its hard to enjoy a social life and still get up early. So I do get up early only when I have to and stay up late when its worth it. Not very healthy but a lot more fun.

    3) Planing the day ahead: I would love to make it a ritual to decide the night before what is going to be the most important task tomorrow. Sometimes, I do, but tonight for instance I fail. I worked in "the zone" for hours, stopped at midnight. Now, instead of making that decision, write it down and then go to sleep, I'm procrastinating here for more than an hour. I guess, I'm afraid to take the step back to look at the whole task - which is huge for me - and get mentally destroyed by the weight of that challenge. Whereas, if just keep writing tomorrow where I stopped, I might not work on the most important thing, but at least I get something done.

    Any thoughts or suggestions?

  1034. What Really Keeps Poor People Poor 2011-05-28 02:49:03 izendejas
    Too late, but I'm too self-conscious not to apologize for not proofreading. By the time I noticed the mistakes, I was caught in HN's anti-procrastination mode.

  1035. Productivity tips for the easily distracted 2011-06-01 08:46:27 jdietrich
    I've recently realised that large monitors make me less productive for most tasks, as they just tempt me to procrastinate through multitasking. Screen real-estate set aside for documentation ends up being used for Twitter, HN and the deadly random Wikipedia pages. Victorian schools had high windows so the pupils couldn't gaze out of the window. A big monitor just invites me to gaze at something interesting but easy, when I should be staring into the abyss of a thorny problem.

    I intend to sell my current setup and buy a little ultraportable and a Kindle DX. The ultraportable will have only enough screen real-estate for actual work, but I'll still have plenty of display room for documentation.

  1036. Productivity tips for the easily distracted 2011-06-01 14:30:50 rodh257
    Having too many screens doesn't make you get distracted, there is a root cause as to why you are procrastinating or not enthralled in your work, and it's not having too much screen real estate.

    You should try to address the root cause of your issues because it's only a matter of time before the 1 screen you have left ends up being covered by a browser window full of off topic tabs.

  1037. Productivity tips for the easily distracted 2011-06-01 14:39:48 angusgr
    I don't mean to be rude, but I'm surprised noone has yet asked how much this itself is an epic case of productive procrastination.

    As in: "The job I have [refactor] is grinding, but the shiny awesome distraction project idea I have [caravan workspace] is shiny and awesome and clearly very important, so I'll focus and work really hard on it"

    I'm prone to see this pattern because I'm prone to falling into it myself. Not that it's exclusively a bad pattern, you can get a lot done that way.

    jaquesm, if you don't mind I'd be interested to know two things:

    * How long the whole setup took, and how long you've had the caravan for? (I saw you've been using it at least 10 days from the post, which seems a very good sign - obviously you got some work done recently apart from finding/installing/blogging your new caravan workplace.)

    * As a favour, could you please follow up in 2-3 months and tell us honestly how it is working out?

    :)

  1038. Former Threadless CTO Harper Reed to Work for Obama 2012 2011-06-03 03:35:21 raldi
    You're painting this as a "Obama eats a ham sandwich" story, but I think there's a big-picture trend that you're missing.

    The news is of interest to HN because it's a sign of how the Internet and social media continues to have an ever-rising impact on major world politics. To put it another way, are Twitter and Facebook and Reddit just procrastination engines, or might they be important, world-changing tools? Stories like this help answer that question.

  1039. Working Hard With No Regrets 2011-06-03 16:17:36 yason
    There are roughly two kinds of people based on their working habits.

    One kind is the steady craftsman kind who gets up at 6, works three hours, takes a coffee break, works more, and continues in this fashion until he has reached his limit for one day. The other one is the crazy artist kind who mulls over a task for days until he suddenly gets inspired and taps right into the zone and works for hours or days nonstop and gets amazing things done.

    Both kinds generally get the same amount of work done on the final page, they just divide the effort differently.

    I've always observed that hacking, for me, is just like that artist's work: I gotta do my work when I'm in the flow. All I can do is give myself enough rest afterwards when it's over.

    I've observed that when I'm rested and theoretically focused I might not get nothing done. I can pretend to be working but I just don't get it, get anything, or get anything done. I might consider myself a lazy ass of a procrastinator but luckily I know that is only one half of the truth. Sometimes it happens that I just code for 12 hours or 24 hours straight while hunger and consciousness of time gradually slip away, and that means I get lots, lots, and lots doneeven when I'm technically tired as a sloth but still in the zone.

    A day-to-day work of a programmer is, thus, to work out a routine that splits your work in two halves. The boring tasks that require not much creativity are best done while not in the zone (and still you'll waste hours and hours and hours on nothing). The creative process of making is best reserved for when you've got the flow and then it means business, baby, and working like hell as long as it lasts.

    Phew!

  1040. Working Hard With No Regrets 2011-06-03 16:28:52 timr
    I think you're creating a false dichotomy. I used to believe that I was the "artist" type, but I was mainly just a procrastinator who didn't have good work habits. I became the "steady progress" type as I took on bigger, harder projects. And honestly, passion is a lot harder to come by when you're working on an intractable bug six years into a long-term project. If you rely on the muses to guide you, you rarely get things done, because that last 1% is rarely ever fun.

    Also, you might be surprised by how many artists have a strict routine, and dedicate themselves to a regular pattern of practice. Twyla Tharp wrote an entire book on the subject:

    http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Habit-Learn-Use-Life/dp/07432...

  1041. Help Me HN: Can't think of new ideas I am interested on working on 2011-06-06 03:09:59 Vivtek
    It's probably projection on my part, then. Ha.

    I've gone through this type of phase in the past. It's usually stress or lack of sleep, when it happens to me. In times when I'm happy and well-rested, I always have a background idea I dearly want to pursue.

    Maybe you need to engage in creative procrastination. Find something boring you need to do for a while, then sneak time to have and work on your ideas!

    Then, too, if I don't have a flagship project (so to speak, by which I mean a specific project I want to achieve) then I usually work on support structures that it would have been nice to have the last time around. Kind of a sharpening of my tools for the next job, I guess.

  1042. Failed entrepreneur, broke, unemployed, now taking care of aging parents. Help. 2011-06-09 08:45:33 jayliew
    Along the same lines, mental health professionals usually draw a hard line between thoughts & feelings. Specifically, thought X cause feeling Y. Part of solving feeling Y is to correct thought X (which could be a "twisted thought" [1], I've been guilty of all of them), and it's amazing how you can change your feeling if you change your thought. I've been a solo entrepreneur and it's been very difficult to handle my own emotions, and these are hacks I've found to work.

    I would also highly recommend seeing a counselor/therapist (there are sliding-scale prices), they are of tremendous value, but if you're broke like I am, I highly recommend The Feeling Good Handbook by David D. Burns [2]. I can't say enough good things about it; it has helped me tremendously when I've felt stuck and helpless.

    If you're very hard on yourself, very goal-oriented and driven, and you're beating yourself up - well, I'm like that too and I've learned from reading that book that it is a vicious cycle that you need to break. There's a whole chapter to procrastination (I know you didn't say procrastination), but it applies to the general feeling of being "stuck" and therefore being really stuck, and it talks about the root causes that you can change. When I read the book, it was a dead on diagnosis for me and I thought the author wrote the book for me!

    I sincerely wish you all the best.

    [1] http://www.ptsd.org.uk/twisted_thinking.htm

    [2] http://t.co/2FvSKFr

  1043. Writing a blog platform in Go 2011-06-09 18:20:21 thomas11
    I'd be interested in that code. There's lots of static site generators out there already--and like so many procrastinating nerds I wrote my own--but it'd be a nice real-world example of Go and its Template package.

  1044. Put a thousand books from the British Library on your iPad for free 2011-06-12 22:04:16 oscardelben
    Now, that's a lot of books. I'm sure it'll be great to procrastinate on those.

    Just today Sebastian Marshall sent his weekly newsletter[1] about targeted procrastination. Here's how it could be adapted for reading some of these books:

    - Write down two or three topics that you're interested in.

    - Do a search for books that match those subjects, and write them down.

    - When you feel like taking a break, pick one book from the list, and start reading.

    I like this approach because I easily get tired from reading a book for a long time, but it's easy to do it in 10-15 minute chunks.

    I'm not the type that reads lots of books anymore, but I prefer that over lurking on Facebook or Twitter.

    [1] http://getsomevictory.com/

  1045. Ask HN: Advice for a young, self-taught programmer 2011-06-13 13:45:39 astrofinch
    Your personality seems similar to the one I had at 15. Here's what I wish I had told myself.

    All of your problems stem from your internal ape perceiving itself to be at the bottom of the social hierarchy. For example, right after sharing that you made $21K in a programming contest at age 15, you immediately downplay your accomplishment.

    You are part of the "careful, pessimistic thinker" class of nerd--the kind of nerd who could write space shuttle software for NASA. Most people are overconfident in their beliefs and overrate themselves, but not you. (It's a pretty good sign that my diagnosis is accurate if you find yourself instinctively denying its truth. Overconfident people rarely think they might be overconfident.)

    Being a careful, pessimistic thinker has pros and cons. Your model of the world will be better than average, and you'll have a good idea of where its holes are. On the other hand, your psychological health will be below average since you instinctively scrutinize everything looking for flaws--including yourself.

    There's a lot to say about how to fix this problem. Fortunately, I've managed to fix it in myself, and I now have really good psychological health (procrastinating very rarely) while still being able to scrutinize everything I do and figure out how I can do it better. (In fact, my scrutinizing instinct was actually pretty useful for improving my psychological health once I learned to apply it properly.)

    I read a good quote by a psychologist the other day: "Several times a day, notice that you're basically alright." http://dirtsimple.org/ is probably a good blog to read. It's by the same guy who wrote Python's easy_install, who had this problem and largely solved it. I'd also love to give anyone who thinks they have this problem advice and coaching--feel free to contact me at [my username] at gmail dot com. (I'd probably blog about this if I knew I had one loyal reader, so exchanging email with other folks who have this problem would be great.)

  1046. WTH is happening to Rails? I'll tell you. 2011-06-14 22:56:35 jarin
    I think most of the arguments people have any time Rails does a major change can really be re-interpreted as:

    "I have a moderately complex Rails app that I want to upgrade, but I don't have much confidence in my tests, I maybe don't have proper separation of concerns, and I just know that one hacky thing I did a while back is going to bite me in the ass."

    It's just something that happens over time in any moderately complex app. I see Rails point release candidates as a good reminder to bust out rcov and spend a few days plugging up the gaps in test coverage before the stable release comes out.

    If you've been procrastinating upgrading your Rails 2.3.x app to 3.0.x, you're really gonna have fun going straight from 2.3.x to 3.1. Sometimes you just gotta rip off the band-aid.

  1047. FeedHint.com: Make your own personalized Hacker News feed 2011-06-16 21:19:36 ColinWright
    Long story. Older hardware, doesn't do flashy stuff, helps stop me procrastinating, runs lots of low priority, background tasks that will get broken by upgrading, and so on.

    The fast, whizzy machines with new OSs and up-to-date browsers get used for serious, work-related stuff. Not for HN.

  1048. The end of Facebook 2011-06-17 02:17:41 sebastianconcpt
    Yes, some people it's committing facebookcide but is pretty much irrelevant for you!

    Go make a good damn startup yourself and stop procrastinating wasting your attention on overdramatized utterly irrelevant headlines.

  1049. Ask HN: What do you do to get into "work mode"? 2011-06-17 03:08:59 freshhawk
    Funny, I've had the Tron OST on a loop at work for the last few weeks as well. I definitely find that instrumental music is the way to go, especially if it is upbeat or energetic.

    Lately I also pull up my org-mode work journal file, create a new entry for the day and find my next actions for the project i'm working on. Then I start my 25 minute time-boxing timer, the only anti-procrastination thing that's ever worked for me.

  1050. Ask HN: What do you do to get into "work mode"? 2011-06-17 03:37:13 vbrenny
    I worked for some time as self-employed.. The hardest part was to maintain discipline. And I've got to the same conclusion: routine. What makes your life seem boring when you're an employee, is what keeps you from procrastinating all day when you are self-employed.

  1051. How can we get willpower back once it has been depleted? 2011-06-17 04:53:08 saturdaysaint
    Willpower and the problem of the lack thereof are pretty hazily defined here. Poor personal performance is a complicated issue that "Get sleep and exercise" is a poor prescription to. Poor organization, personality conflicts, attitude issues, perfectionism, and poor self image will make even the most well-rested and healthy person underperform at work.

    I highly recommend "Procrastination: Why You Do It, What To Do About It" by Jane B. Burka and Lenora M. Yuen and "Getting Things Done" by David Allen for a deeper examination of these issues and some solutions.

  1052. Ask HN: I have an idea that solves a problem, I hope someone does it 2011-06-19 00:18:31 mgl
    I'm just afraid they will forget to press your button just as they forget to call you back with RSVP confirmation. I don't think the problem is with "RSVP transmission mechanism" but with procrastination and bad memory which is part of us - our human nature.

    Your problem, as a host, is that it's PITA to call all these people just to confirm their presence. I would think of an automated service that will somehow force final confirmation - you are uploading list of your guests along with their e-mails and phone numbers, and the service will track their confirmations and follow-up the rest with automated phone calls and customized voice message intro from you with simple tone-based choice: 0 - can't make it, 1 - I'll be there!, or it will just send out reminding text messages. This could work.

  1053. Announcing my first e-book "Awk One-Liners Explained" 2011-06-21 04:51:24 laughinghan
    There are a lot of hacker types, myself and many friends included, for which "why not" is the reason we learn most of the things we do.

    It's partly linked to intellectual curiosity, and on the other hand partly linked to how we procrastinate/stave off boredom: learning random things.

  1054. Michael Abrash on Quake: "Finish the product and youll be a hero." 2011-06-22 20:33:08 hebejebelus
    As a computer games development student, this feels very relevant to me (as, I'm sure, it does to other software developers). Even a project I'd like to do, on my own, for a week, is very hard to finish. There never really seems like there's a point to polish after I've learned what I wanted to learn. I'm battling this literally as I write this comment - this is only another way to procrastinate. I find keeping rigid office hours helps, as does keeping in mind that this project or that will look good in a portfolio, or might bring in some cash.

    Really, though, it's just damned tough to continue something that you view as finished. The next games project I start will be rather boring to code, but hopefully fun aesthetically. That way, I'll concentrate more on the second 90%, but getting past the first 90% might be harder than usual.

    If you've got any tips for surviving the second 90% of a project, I'd love to hear them. My short attention span coupled with my low focus really makes it difficult to finish anything, and it's getting me down.

  1055. Are VCs really *that* busy? 2011-06-22 22:17:56 tilt
    They're just people after all... they engage whatever way of communication they like the most. I wouldn't be surprised if they'd procrastinate their mails.

    Email isn't really the most loved form of communication and they get tons of pitches on daily basis.

    I don't know if this is "ethical" in VC business but try to engage them where they're active (PM, DM, Reply, etc).

  1056. Michael Abrash on Quake: "Finish the product and youll be a hero." 2011-06-22 22:20:29 JabavuAdams
    As a computer games development teacher ... :)

    There are ups and downs, and one gets used to dealing with them. It's just practice.

    One of the most motivating things is to get positive feedback -- both from shipping features, and from human contact.

    I always have times where I'm in a rut ... I don't want to work on the project ... but someone sees it and they think it's cool. Or maybe I get away from it for a few days, then look at it with fresh eyes and get re-motivated to fix just one more thing...

    Also, you can use procrastination to your advantage. Don't play games or surf to procrastinate. Instead if you're burnt out on project A, switch to project B, or set up a server, or write a script, or exercise, or play music, or read a math book (I'm giving away my preferences).

    Anything to recharge or to make progress on something else that needs to be done.

  1057. How to become a great finisher 2011-06-22 23:22:02 wccrawford
    "To-go thinking" actually causes me to procrastinate... Because I have plenty of time left.

    Instead, I find that getting it 'working' with the minimum features, then adding more and more provides that sense of accomplishment while motivating me to continue making it better.

    A lot of people will say 'Of course!' but once upon a time I didn't work like that. I would plan it all from the start and you couldn't do ANYTHING with it until it was almost completely done.

    Now, I just plan broadly enough to make sure I'm not preventing any needed feature, and then work on making it work as quickly as possible.

  1058. How to become a great finisher 2011-06-22 23:45:57 sudhirc
    Totally agree\n"Koo and Fishbach's studies consistently show that when we are pursuing a goal and consider how far we've already come, we feel a premature sense of accomplishment and begin to slack off."\nSo Advise is to look at what is left to be done.\nThis advise will surely turn procrastinator into an expert procrastinator :)

  1059. How to become a great finisher 2011-06-23 00:38:13 huherto
    > "To-go thinking" actually causes me to procrastinate... Because I have plenty of time left.

    You are focusing on the time left. IMHO, This is not what the article recommends. You should focus on the tasks left.

  1060. Kickstarter: Shorter project durations lead to higher funding rates 2011-06-23 05:31:05 ISeemToBeAVerb
    I've had a lot of friends try Kickstarter for various projects, most have chosen to start longer campaigns under the assumption that more time will increase the chance of funding the project.

    Personally, I agree with Kickstarter's assessment that longer campaigns create less urgency. This seems to make sense. Often times, If I see a friend has a longer running campaign, I'll procrastinate and put off donating until later in the game. I'm sure other people do this too, and not all of them remember.

    In the campaigns my friends have run, it's usually that first push out to their social network that gets the biggest response, after that the donations start slowing down. A few more people will kick in some extra dough at the end (like me), but by that time most people have moved on.

  1061. Top 20 Motivation Hacks 2011-06-23 14:40:46 aaronblohowiak
    "productive procrastination"

  1062. How to become a great finisher 2011-06-23 16:48:44 avk
    Agreed but for me, the uncertainty helps fight the procrastination. Not knowing how much is left keeps me humble and working.

  1063. Harvard Business Review: What Makes a Team Smarter? More Women. 2011-06-23 16:57:54 marquis
    I don't think this is about whether men are capable or not, that was never brought into question. It's about whether a team can work more efficiently if there is more of a mix of capabilities and interests.

    The last paragraph of yours I'm going to pretend I didn't read, as I've probably met my gender-allocated quota of how hard I can work for the day, my sense of innovation is too limited to imagine that increased efficiency is possible and my technical knowledge means I really should be spending my time reading "How to pretend you know C, for Dummies", again, rather than procrastinating on the internet reading HN, most of which flies over my head.

  1064. Ask HN: I want to learn how to code. Can anyone tell me how to start learning? 2011-06-27 16:06:25 ignifero
    Dude, coding is alot easier than physics. Stop procrastinating on HN, get a Linux machine and start your first project. If you want to do web stuff, learn PHP, otherwise use python. For your project you would need a library to extract text from word documents and something like curl to query google.

  1065. Revisiting 'Zork': What We Lost in the Transition to Visual Games 2011-06-29 22:16:42 loevborg
    Thanks. I just spent 3 hours playing a game about procrastinating while working on your PhD thesis, procrastinating while working on my PhD thesis.

  1066. Ask HN: What do you do to get into "work mode"? 2011-06-29 23:43:27 sdfjkl
    Music that puts your brain into flow[1] - I have a special playlist for that. The Tron soundtrack fits well if you omit the parts of Jeff Bridges talking - background talk is extremely distracting.

    Exit email - I check it mornings, lunch and half an hour before stopping work. Omit mornings if you're already motivated to get right into your actual work.

    Get a quiet, distraction-free environment. If you don't have an office with a door, claim a meeting room. Put a "don't disturb or I'll cut you" sign on the door. Be prepared to cut invaders until they learn. Tell them to email you and expect to wait half a day for a response. Tell your manager how important it is not to be disturbed and get them on your side (assuming they want you to get stuff done, that shouldn't be too hard), so they protect you from invaders instead of being one. Working from home can work, if you don't have family or other distractions around.

    Staying late works, but your brain is probably not at it's best performance near the end of a working day.

    Keep a to-do list[2] and go over it once a day, prioritising important tasks and breaking items that are too complex ("write LDAP authentication plugin") down into simpler steps ("find python module for LDAP support", "figure out our LDAp server's hostname", ...).

    Take breaks. If you're stumped on something, go take a quick break (I make myself a cup of tea), but keep the problem in mind and don't interact with others during your break if possible. You will sometimes find that a great solution comes to you without thinking about it (because the non-dominant part of your brain will submit solutions).[3]

    If you're really stumped, worked on another part of the problem and come back later. You might come up with a good solution while sleeping on it or working on the other part.

    Phones are an evil relic of the past, when people thought they had a right to intrude on other peoples time whenever they pleased. Turn it off. If you're writing code for a living, only your boss and your SO should have your phone number and they should damn well know to not use it unless there's a real emergency that requires your immediate attention.

    And last but not least: Make sure you're working on something you WANT to work on. Otherwise you will procrastinate, no matter the consequences. If you are working on something you don't give a shit about, or worse, you actively hate your work, think about why and go fix it.

    [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

    [2] http://culturedcode.com/things/ (Mac) or http://www.rememberthemilk.com/ (Web) are nice

    [3] can't find this article: How the classic concept of brain hemispheres is wrong, but we still have dominant and subordinate "halves" and how most techies are logical dominated and the non-dominant "half" will only get a word in if the dominant part shuts up for a moment (which is why you have good ideas whilst going for a walk, taking a shower or making a cup of tea)

  1067. Please stop asking how to find a technical co-founder. 2011-07-01 01:37:34 mcdowall
    I'm torn either way on this post, on one hand I agree that you should go tell them to find their own resources but on the other hand and from experience as a 'non tech' founder myself even getting some of these items done isn't enough to get a co founder, you need a good network too.

    For clarification, I worked previously at startups where development was outsourced and I was working as a project manager. This time round with my own idea I knew I didn't have that luxury and would need to contribute a he'll of a lot more if I could be lucky enough to tempt a co founder to take on the bulk of the technical development.

    So what did I do, after a few months of procrastinating over the idea I finally decided what better way to get going than to learn a new language and code (I already know HTML / CSS / asp.net back in the day). I looked at languages that seemed to have a good following and active support forums that if I got stuck I could ask for help in, I chose Ruby on Rails and ordered two books on Amazon.

    It was really difficult at the start but after a while I found things were clicking into place, albeit using a lot of trial and error. I installed irc and became active on the rails channel and found the guys really helpful on there.

    So after a month or so I got through the books and figure I was ready to start planning and applying my ideas to what I had learnt, this was the hardest part of all and still is. Simple things like image uploading using AWS or Paperclip I found took me days to get my head around as a lot of this was alien to me and outside the comfort zone of the tutorials. I progressed and thought it was about time I start developing the front end UI so started getting to work on photoshop creating templates and designs, I found some great resources like designmoo and iconfinder which helped me in this process. After the designs were done I reached out to a previous contractor who had experience in rails and HTML/CSS and paid him to cut and code it to fit the view, I setup a Heroku hosting account, configured the DNS and hosted the code on Github for collaboration.

    I suppose the site was now at 75% ready, I had feedback from a few angel investors that it was a good idea and that to get in touch when I had a working prototype, this is where the delays set in, I just couldn't find a co founder to help with that all important final backend work.

    See in your post you state a co founder should bring some of the qualities you point out such as do the front end or learn to code or business networking, I've done all of them and more yet I am no nearer to finding someone local who I can get onboard. I know the first part of being a successful co founder is being able to sell yourself and your product but I think it's sometimes forgotten how difficult and time consuming development and design is to get to grips with. Whilst I know this may come across as a rather random reply I thought it at least fruitful to show that some non tech founders are willing to get their hands dirty with some code and in fact the other half, the finding a co founder is equally a struggle as learning to code

    That being said if anyone is interested please feel free to get in contact ;)

  1068. The One Google Plus Feature Facebook Should Fear 2011-07-01 06:05:19 dilap
    This is actually a misfeature -- it's hard enough to avoid procrastinating without having to summon the super-human willpower necessary to avoid clicking your notifications every time you do a simple search.

  1069. The One Google Plus Feature Facebook Should Fear 2011-07-01 06:40:26 esrauch
    It's a misfeature if you are trying to actually get work done, but in my experience people aren't exactly going to use a different search engine so that they can avoid seeing something that they want to see. They are going to use the same one and complain "why do I have friends!" while reading their messages and procrastinating on their work.

  1070. ASK HN: Python framework for someone new to language 2011-07-01 17:15:56 saurabh
    Yes, much much easier than Django. I don't know how teams cope with web2py but for a lone wolf, web2py beats everything out there. I don't know if its just me but Django makes me procrastinate whereas web2py helps me just start. db.define_table rocks.

  1071. Hacking Haskell 2011-07-03 07:20:18 alanthonyc
    I've been going through the "Learn You a Haskell..." book for the past week or so (mainly to procrastinate on my main project). After the first few chapters which basically just show the syntax for things you might do in other languages (e.g. lambdas, maps, recursion, etc.), I've gotten to stuff that's new to me (mainly type classes, though I'm sure there's more) and I'm sort of getting blown away by the possibilities.

  1072. Ask HN: Quit my job and learn to code in Thailand for a year? 2011-07-03 07:20:35 petercooper
    Only you can analyze yourself and determine whether a "year out" could turn into a procrastination-ridden year of hedonism. At 25, though, you're not too old to have a "gap year." If you can realistically make it work with your resources, what's the worst that could happen? You come back with your tail between your legs in a few months?

    The key thing you mention is not having any family to support.. once you go down that road, you're highly unlikely to be pulling off stunts like these unless you have an extremely liberal significant other and the derring-do to stay strong with a family in tow. I'm married and have a daughter now and even getting out to California for my once-regular vacation is now a project with logistics on the scale of invading a small country.. :-)

    Hopefully someone else can come along and give you the specifics on how easy this is to do in Thailand, but in terms of actually doing it, if you see no significant downsides, go for it.

  1073. Ask HN: Quit my job and learn to code in Thailand for a year? 2011-07-03 10:39:38 gexla
    I have been doing something of the same. I started out learning web development while going to college. The first big plus was that I was able to quite my part time job and do web development working from home. I then quit college to do freelancing full time (I hated college and my grades were crap, so this wasn't as bad of a decision as it sounds.) I then decided that I could take this a step further and not just work from home, but work from anywhere in the world. I then moved to the Philippines and two years later I'm still there.

    Peter Cooper mentioned that your year out could turn into a "procrastination-ridden year of hedonism" and I would agree with that. It's really easy to get caught into a "vacation" mindset. My first year here ended up being more of a case of "let's see how little work I can do and still get by" rather than building my business. The beer here is really cheap and there are a lot of expats who don't work. Every day is Friday, and if I'm not careful I can slip into their same routine.

    That said, I'm not sure I would take the path you are looking at. I think you need to define your goals more clearly. What is the reason for learning to code? I learned how to code during my free time after work and on the weekends. Most important for me wasn't to have a lot of full days to learn how to code, but rather practicing every day if even for an hour a day. So, you don't have to go on a year sabbatical from your job just to learn how to code. Also, if you are practicing every day, you can get pretty good relatively quick.

    After you learn how to code, what are your plans? This is where you are very vague. Though I'm a freelance web developer, I wouldn't suggest this for most people. This is a real business and takes real commitment. It takes a lot of time and effort to really figure out the business side. It's stressful and I don't have much time or energy left over to work on my own projects. I would love to be working on some sort of start-up idea which would allow me to switch, but I can't afford to break my business cycle (quit accepting work, build my own application with no money coming in, perhaps have to start taking in new work if my idea doesn't work out and having to rebuild the cash-flow cycle.)

    If you want to build something, you can take the time to learn the code just as you are doing now. As you said, progress is slow but you are still making progress. If you were to be competent in 3 months, then that's not really very long. Maybe another few months and you would be surprised with what you could accomplish. Even if you aren't a guru yet, you might just be good enough that you can tackle just about any problem that you run into. At this point, you are "good enough" though you will continue to hone your craft.

    So, the moral of the story is that the year away isn't something you need to do. You can learn what you need to learn doing what you are doing. Keep building up that savings (something you will lose when you leave,) keep building on the side and be patient. Eventually you may even be able to build something that makes a bit of money. If you could build an application which could bring in $1000 / month in profit then you would have enough to live on without having to dip into your savings. That's the point where I would be considering moving abroad.

    I'm not saying don't do this. I'm saying that you should be honest with yourself and define your plans more clearly. What is it that you really want to do? If it's simply to get away for a year in Thailand then go for it. If it's to learn to be a better coder, then stay on your present path, it's working! If it's to quit your job because you are simple "done" with it, then go ahead and take a sabbatical to find yourself again (though I'm not sure I would want to burn through my savings to do this, it would be better if you could support yourself while there so that you don't have to touch your savings.)

    On a side note, the Philippines is also a great place. It's about the same cost of living. English is an official language. The visa allows for tourists to stay up to 16 months without having to do a visa run outside the country. I live in Dumaguete and I work out of an office (working from home just isn't effective for me anymore.) The biggest downside is the infrastructure in general is probably worse than in Thailand.

  1074. Why I read Hacker News even though I understand very little of it 2011-07-06 18:08:23 capnbuzzword
    Would you guys be interested in setting up a "study group", sort of a Procrastinators Anonymous for wanna-be developers?

    I can't begin to count the books I've skimmed over and not completed a single exercise. LPTHW was really nice in the way it gave you nothing else to do but exercises. Perhaps something as simple as a small, tight-knit forum (plenty of free forum providers) & IRC channel (something like freenode #python-studygrp) can be useful to bust the barrier of "I'll just start on that exercise/project/book when I'm a bit less tired." Somebody shoots an idea of something they've been meaning to do and others can jump in with brainstorming, ideas, pair programming and general "let's just do it" attitude.

    Hell, I know I've been meaning to write a python script to draw a daily histogram of the creation times of Opera bookmarks, but I never got around to it. If I had a twin, I'd prod myself to hunker down and just write those <1KLoC.

    So if anyone's interested in the group thing, just drop me a line so I can set it up tonight (CEST timezone here).

  1075. Why I read Hacker News even though I understand very little of it 2011-07-06 18:27:23 capnbuzzword
    I just had to register to comment on this one.

    Wow, that struck a chord. Pretty much every sentence rings true, especially the peer encouragement one. For me it's the availability of easier entertainment - why write that python bookmark creation date histogram plotter, when I'm tired and can just waste the evening reading Reddit? Oh, and there's the procrastination habit I've been nursing for over a decade.

    On the other hand, having someone as a sounding board to bounce ideas off, and additionally to guard me from going off tangents and getting distracted - that helps make some progress.

    Have you scouted around for a local hackerspace (http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces)? I did, but I'm using the language barrier (expat) and some leftover social anxiety as excuses to not pursue that road.

    All else aside, would you be interested in starting a sort of a study group - just a place one can post their ideas and have others provide brainstorming, feedback and motivation?

    I think that may work - I remember my most productive streaks were when a friend had an issue to solve and I would swoop in on the opportunity to help. When faced with a similar issue of my own, I would endlessly procrastinate and often fail. If others have also experienced similar situations, creating such a space to facilitate pair programming could increase everyone's productivity.

  1076. Ask HN: Where did you learn Web Development? 2011-07-09 17:36:18 rickr
    As someone who taught himself programming at a young age, perhaps my experiences may be helpful.

    My first two "languages" were HTML and qbasic, both of which were learned loosely from books. HTML was "HTML for dummies", and basic from whatever was available at the library at the time. While HTML is not a programming language it was a way for me to type in "cryptic" text and see meaningful output, which as a youngin' was enough to give me the bug.

    I say loosely learned from books because with each language I had a project in mind while learning it. I was gifted with a domain and webhost which I was determined to put to use, animated gifs, frames and all. It also provided me with something to brag about to friends, which again was enticing at a young age.

    As for basic, I still distinctly remember procrastinating my real homework and studies to write simple programs that I figured would benefit me in the long run. Things like random math problems, vocabulary tests, practice history tests etc.

    While this may not be directly related to web dev, it may be useful for those younger folks itching to get into programming. Try to point them in a direction of a problem in their lives that can be automated, simplified or enhanced through the learning of a language. I understand that things are a bit different today but if someone truly wants to learn I think that may be a good road to travel down.

  1077. 30kloc and $0 revenue. Lessons from my failed startup (& code release) 2011-07-10 03:29:24 jdietrich
    Essentially none of those 30kloc were part of the actual product, just set dressing. You could easily launch the same basic product without writing a single line of code, just handling everything through e-mail attachments and a paypal button. I don't believe that the user experience would be significantly worse for it.

    In the middle of the article, the OP lists various mistakes he made, but I think he's basically wrong on all counts. His essential mistake IMO was launching too late. In six months of work, he gained no insight whatsoever into the market. He could have learned just as much with a handwritten flier on the college notice board - "Your mock exam reviewed by a postgrad, 10. Email foo@bar.com".

    For the technically-inclined, coding is the perfect form of procrastination. It can absorb a near-infinite amount of time and feels quite productive, but it's usually a distraction. Steve Blank's most important message is that in an early stage startup, your job is to learn about the market. Anything which doesn't connect you with your customers is wasted effort.

  1078. Government grants 2011-07-11 02:55:43 sc68cal
    From my limited experience on this site, I know that I have hesitated/procrastinated from doing a "Show HN" thread about a grant that I recently received. It just doesn't have the sex appeal that VC has.

  1079. The Procrastinating Caveman: Human Evolution and Procrastination 2011-07-11 08:56:05 skarayan
    I think calling it evolutionary is a guess, however, I do see a link between procrastination and being uncertain how to proceed. In my case, I am very determined when I have a sound plan and tend to procrastinate when parts of my plan are questionable. Good read.

  1080. The Procrastinating Caveman: Human Evolution and Procrastination 2011-07-11 09:05:58 jayzee
    I said this before in another post, but this article that I read in the New Yorker really hit home for me:

    The philosopher Mark Kingwell puts it in existential terms: Procrastination most often arises from a sense that there is too much to do, and hence no single aspect of the to-do worth doing. . . . Underneath this rather antic form of action-as-inaction is the much more unsettling question whether anything is worth doing at all.

    In that sense, it might be useful to think about two kinds of procrastination: the kind that is genuinely akratic and the kind thats telling you that what youre supposed to be doing has, deep down, no real point.

    And when you are in school often you are given tasks which seem to have no discernible purpose or meaning other than perhaps to take you off your parent's hands while they go make a living.

    From: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/10/11/10101....

  1081. None 2011-07-11 09:09:59 Stormbringer
    Try writing a To Do list. In addition to being a proto-plan, there is also the feeling of accomplishment that comes from ticking thigns off the list.

    I think that with procrastination, one of the other elements to it is how far away the "pay-off" is. Take my client-server writing friend here. The finished product is a long way in the future, so his brain sees a lot of hard work with no 'reward', hence procrastination. Whereas if he spices it up with some short term pay-offs, then the brain may perceive a better cost/benefit scenario.

  1082. The Procrastinating Caveman: Human Evolution and Procrastination 2011-07-11 09:30:54 BoppreH
    I'm sorry, but I'm unconvinced. It's just too easy to use "human evolution" to explain all sort of behaviors. I think the problem is that you don't have to validate anything, you just tell a convincing story.

    The nearest the author got to validating it was:

    "[...] only a small minority of the fifty hyper-organized students I interviewed reported procrastination as a serious problem"

    I don't know how this study was carried down, but it seems as self selecting as it could possibly get.

    The author went from "early humans' advantage was complex planning" to "procrastination is your brain silently rejecting your ideas" in little more than a handwave. Here's what I think was lacking:

    a) Why does the idea selection characteristic had to be an unconscious process?

    b) If it had evolved to save lives, how can we be sure it would still kick off when lives aren't at risk?

    c) Why would it manifest itself as a lack of motivation instead of more efficient alternatives such as fear, or simply losing interest?

    d) If the brain is rejecting the idea, how do people cling to them for so long? Are we consciously overriding our brain?

  1083. The Procrastinating Caveman: Human Evolution and Procrastination 2011-07-11 09:33:28 markbao
    Are you rejecting an option just because it's simply bad, or also because there's a better option available? So in essence, you'd reject the idea of charging the mammoth, because you could throw the spear. Likewise, you'd reject the idea of sitting down in the library with a quadruple-tall mocha (and probably your study materials), because it doesn't seem viable. So, you procrastinate. But what's the better option, in this case?

    The alternative route (procrastination) is also not a better option. Everyone that procrastinates (so that means everyone) knows when they're procrastinating, and have that 10% of their status quo thinking about the fact that they're procrastinating and shouldn't be procrastinating. I don't buy itthat means your brain thinks procrastination is better than just trying to do the work, because in the long run, we know procrastination is worse than just doing the work.

    My argument only holds if you believe the brain is functionally logical, which... probably isn't true.

  1084. The Procrastinating Caveman: Human Evolution and Procrastination 2011-07-11 09:39:20 sehugg
    You say procrastination, I say lazy evaluation.

  1085. The Procrastinating Caveman: Human Evolution and Procrastination 2011-07-11 09:54:28 darnton
    The best thing I've read on this topic is The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel (http://www.amazon.com/Procrastination-Equation-Putting-Thing...).

    He concludes that different people procrastinate for different reasons and that those reasons boil down to:

    - learned helplessness (you have a low expectation of success)

    - boredom (you don't value the task), and

    - poor impulse control.

    He then gives specific advice for working out which applies to you and then for dealing with each of these, which is far more useful than either saying, "Just do it," or telling an impossible-to-apply just-so story about mammoths and frontal lobes.

  1086. The Procrastinating Caveman: Human Evolution and Procrastination 2011-07-11 10:43:10 goblin89
    Here's a quick summary of scientific research on procrastination by the same author: http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Ste.... No specific advices for fighting it, but interesting nevertheless.

  1087. The Procrastinating Caveman: Human Evolution and Procrastination 2011-07-11 11:49:08 astrofinch
    "Everyone that procrastinates (so that means everyone)"

    When I find myself unable to work, I generally make a conscious choice to take a break so that I can be rejuvenated by my down time to the greatest extent possible. Does that count as not procrastinating?

    "My argument only holds if you believe the brain is functionally logical, which... probably isn't true."

    Yes, of course it isn't true. The best example of this is the fact that people sometimes give up (succumb to learned helplessness). If people were purely rational agents, having their plan fail would be an indicator that they need try something new. But in real life, they tend to do things like feel depressed and watch more TV.

  1088. The Procrastinating Caveman: Human Evolution and Procrastination 2011-07-11 13:10:44 Shenglong
    a) Why doesn't it? Unconscious is simple, and procrastination by nature avoids conscious reasoning, no?

    b) Can you clarify? I'm not sure I understand this question, and how it pertains to natural selection.

    c) I don't see a reason for fear. I don't want to edit my friend's grade 11 paper, not because I'm afraid I can't do it, but because it's probably boring... or I feel I have better things to do. If you pick extreme examples, you might be able to reason in favor of fear, but I feel that's very selective criteria.

    d) There's a subconscious and conscious element to a lot of things we do. When my friend tried to teach my hypnosis, he stressed that hypnotists act on the subconscious by breaking down preconceived resistances to ideas. This isn't as much an overriding as it is symbiosis, with one force pushing just a little harder.

  1089. The Procrastinating Caveman: Human Evolution and Procrastination 2011-07-11 13:36:58 bluekeybox
    The arguments in this article are indeed poor, but just because someone uses poor arguments to support X doesn't imply that X is wrong. I found the main point raised in the article to be very interesting because it supports a view that I arrived to independently, by thinking about why I myself was procrastinating in college (I was a pre-med student and of course I had a heavy course load -- but I never deep down wanted to be a doctor -- my real love was math, technology, computers, and believe it or not philosophy).

    a) The entire consciousness/unconscious separation is somewhat bogus (our "unconscious" is simply the part of our brain that evades introspection, but degree of introspection is hard to measure for obvious reasons). The main point to gather is that there is a process of self-criticism that manifests itself as lack of motivation, at least as stated by the article.

    b) Our lives are always at risk -- being outcompeted by others of our kind is equivalent to being trampled upon by a mammoth.

    c) I don't see how lack of motivation to do X is a less efficient alternative to fear. Fear is rarely an efficient mechanism (except in very time-constrained situations) -- it forces us to focus all our energy on a single task, it prevents us from thinking broadly and seeing new opportunities, and finally it forces us to make decisions towards increase of security instead of increase of opportunity. And the "loss of interest" you mention is technically the same as lack of motivation.

    d) It makes perfect sense that we are conflicted about complex decisions for a long time. If we made up our minds quickly instead, it would prevent us from gathering enough information to make the aforementioned complex decision correctly. Complex decisions are complex for a reason.

  1090. The Procrastinating Caveman: Human Evolution and Procrastination 2011-07-11 16:34:53 TeMPOraL
    b) Unless it's subconscious, I disagree. I procrastinated my way through the high school and at this age I had zero fear for my life or competition with anybody. Things do change when one gets older, but at that point I didn't cared about being outcompeted by others (actually, right now, I don't really care that much either).

    c) Sometimes forcing us to focus on a single task is beneficial. Multitasking is usually bad for productivity, at least from what I've seen so far both in my life and on discussions at HN.

  1091. The Procrastinating Caveman: Human Evolution and Procrastination 2011-07-11 16:41:52 TeMPOraL
    > the kind that’s telling you that what you’re supposed to be doing has, deep down, no real point.

    I feel this description feels much closer to my problems with procrastination than the idea from the article.

  1092. The Procrastinating Caveman: Human Evolution and Procrastination 2011-07-11 18:18:06 convulsive
    This is not the 'evolutionary perspective' as you claim it is. This is just your perspective dressed in evolutionary terminology so that the reader will believe that if you accept human evolution, you MUST accept this conclusion. But the fact that you came up with a possible evolutionary past and thought of a constraint that could've pushed us to develop the adaptive behavior of procrastination doesn't in any way imply that this is actually the way things happened. Procrastination might've been a fitness-maximizing adaptation (or even just a spandrel [1]) for so many other equally convincing reasons.

    It's really strange that while for molecular & morphological phenotypes we use rigorous methods to measure evolutionary relatedness so we can determine possible sequences of evolutionary adaptations that led to them, when it comes to behavioral phenotypes people think that conceivability arguments coupled with very inconclusive evidence are sufficient to demonstrate that some evolutionary story is true.

    [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_(biology)

  1093. The Procrastinating Caveman: Human Evolution and Procrastination 2011-07-11 18:56:27 extension
    b) Consider that perhaps the part of your mind that makes you procrastinate uses a vestigial model of success: just stay alive. Its strategy is very simple. If you're in mortal danger, do something. If you're not in mortal danger, do nothing. From its perspective, any kind of change in your daily routine risks a trampling.

  1094. The Procrastinating Caveman: Human Evolution and Procrastination 2011-07-11 20:38:44 sanj
    Procrastination is the basis of one of only two optimizations that exist:

    1. Do it late (because you may not need to do it at all).

    vs.

    2. Do it early (because you know it'll need to get done, over and over, and you've got the data onhand right now).

  1095. The Procrastinating Caveman: Human Evolution and Procrastination 2011-07-11 22:03:02 AlexCP
    Damn, I am procrastinating right now

  1096. The Luna Programming Language 2011-07-13 09:06:38 d0m
    This is the kind I do on my whiteboard when I feel like procrastinating a new language.. but I find it terribly cool that you've been forward with this and started implementing it :)

    Also, I didn't get how you would make the difference between a closure and a simple boolean?

    For instance:

      users map(age > 20)
    and

      users show_age(age < 40) # Because for some reasons, people > 40 don't like to say their ages ;)
    Also, I don't know if you know the Arc language, but I'd suggest reading the tutorial written by pg. I particularly like how all functions are shortened.

    I.e. keep instead of filter/select, etc.

    Also, something cool is that if a literal instead of a lambda is given to keep, it will use the identity function.. (keep 'a '(a b a c)) = '(a a)

    Good luck with that :) (And forget about the "Do we need another language crap"; they say that on about any new languages. (Hint: We'd still be using C++))

  1097. How to Cure Deep Procrastination 2011-07-16 00:47:18 wccrawford
    Had me at "procrastination, in my experience, is not a character flaw, but instead evidence that you dont have a believable plan for succeeding at what youre trying to do" but lost me again at "ancient brain" and not putting out unnecessary energy.

    While I've experienced procrastination that had nothing to do with not having a good plan, I've also had the kind that does. And it's far worse.

    Some procrastination occurs because we know we have time, and other things seem more important or fun.

    Lack-of-plan procrastination is worse, though. You delay until you have a plan, but without a plan, you can't know if you have time to finish. That -should- push you into making a plan immediately, but the whole enormity of the situation causes a panic reaction that prevents you from thinking rationally about the plan to start with. In the end, you put it aside until you can deal with it. It doesn't matter what reason (tired, no time, need something/someone, etc) you give, it all ends up the same.

    The only way out of that kind (that I've found) is to seek help. Complain to random people about it, ask people with specific knowledge, etc etc. Just find help somewhere. Sometimes you just need a direction to start heading in.

  1098. How to Cure Deep Procrastination 2011-07-16 00:57:19 ForrestN
    This strikes me as a somewhat naive understanding of human motivation. While these kinds of reframing techniques might have some impact, most people procrastinate because of subconscious motives they have rather than conscious ones. If you procrastinate to the point that it negatively impacts your ability to function effectively, by definition you have a psychological disorder (of whatever severity) and would do well to tackle that in some form of therapy.

    Cognitive psychology might offer a more sophisticated version of this article's strategy, where psychodynamic would try to identify and work through the underlying cause of your motives not to work (e.g. part of you wants to experience the sense of crisis that comes from being incredibly behind on a deadline, so let's try to understand that part of you).

  1099. How to Cure Deep Procrastination 2011-07-16 01:06:52 MaxGabriel
    If you read Cal's article, and especially his other DP articles, he is quite clear that this type of procrastination is NOT what he's talking about. Deep procrastination is about feeling completely unable to start a task, and has symptoms like getting extensions and still not meeting them.

  1100. How to Cure Deep Procrastination 2011-07-16 01:13:36 snorkel
    I found that tackling a project is easier if you just do one fast and simple setup task without obligating yourself to do anything more than that.

    The fast simple setup task could be something that takes less than one minute of your time, such as open an application, create a new document, type a few notes, save the file.

    Procrastination is friction. Doing the first simple task without any direction or commitment gives you that initial push force needed to get the project moving.

  1101. How to Cure Deep Procrastination 2011-07-16 01:26:24 keeptrying
    This is for "regular" procrastination. Thi "deep procrastination" is a different animal.

    I can actually give an example from my own life. And this is totally legit. Imagine having todo a parallel Masters in Physics so that you'd have the opportunity to do a Bachelors in EEE so that you could get a job working with computers!! I literally was "deep procrastination" for 4 years!

    One good thing that came out of this is that I can handle really intense situations which others cannot psychologically handle for long periods of time. But on the flip side Im really bad at Prioritizing my own immediate happiness but I'm making progress in that regard.

    Great post!!

  1102. How to Cure Deep Procrastination 2011-07-16 01:29:12 gfunk911
    BODY OF THE ARTICLE (currently 503):

    The Deep Procrastination Crisis

    Above is a snapshot of my blog e-mail inbox, filtered to only show e-mails from students struggling with deep procrastination. Notice that there are close to 60 such messages. If I include blog comments in the search, the number jumps into the hundreds.

    Deep procrastination is a distressing affliction. Students who suffer from it lose the ability to start school work. Deadlines pass and they hand nothing in. Professors provide special extensions, but the students still cant bring themselves to do the work. And so on.

    As evidenced by my inbox, this issue is surprisingly common, especially at elite colleges. Yet its also almost entirely off the radar of traditional student counseling, which is why I dedicate time to it here.

    In my previous post, I introduced a dubious evolutionary explanation for an otherwise very real phenomenon: procrastination, in my experience, is not a character flaw, but instead evidence that you dont have a believable plan for succeeding at what youre trying to do. In this post, as promised, I want to apply this evolutionary perspective to help better understand, and therefore better combat, the deep variety of this common issue.

    The Question of Why

    Deep procrastination usually strikes students later in their college career, when the difficulty of their courses ratchets up. At this stage, their work load gets harder and harder, and at some point some powerful part of their brain says no more!

    An evolutionary perspective on procrastination helps explain this reaction. The student is asking his or her brain to expend lots of energy (from a biological perspective, studying for an orgo exam is an expensive thing to do). One way to see this process is that theres an ancient part of our brain that has evolved to evaluate any such plans a filter, of sorts, to prevent the wasting of precious energy.

    Why are we going to expend so much precious energy?, it asks.

    The more modern, abstract-reasoning, rational part of the students brain is quick to respond: Because we need to expend this energy to pass the test which we need to earn our degree!

    What the hell is a degree and why do we need one?, the ancient brain counters.

    Because thats what youre supposed to do, the rational brain responds.

    And this is where the problem occurs.

    The rational part of the brain is promoting an abstract societal value. It knows that for a middle class American, earning a college degree is an expected milestone on your path to integration into the middle class economy

    But the ancient brain doesnt do well with abstract societal values, which are a recent addition to humankind on the scale of evolutionary time. One way to understand deep procrastination, therefore, is as a rejection of an ambiguous, abstract answer to the key question of why youre going through the mental strain required by the college experience.

    (As in my previous post, Im using an evolutionary explanation metaphorically as a way to help explain a concrete phenomenon Ive observed in my research and writing on this topic. Whether the evolutionary explanation for the phenomenon is strictly true is somewhat beside the point and beyond my expertise.)

    The good news is that this understanding provides a clear strategy for combating this scourge: form a more concrete and personal answer to the question of why.

    Combating Deep Procrastination

    From my experience, an effective answer to this question of why youre at college can be constructed through the following process:

    First, devise a (tentative) answer to the following question: What makes a good life good? This is the foundation on which everything else in your life will be built. Your goal is not the identify the right answer, but to instead identify a working hypothesis. This answer will evolve along with your life experience, so this is not a time for perfectionism. If youre religious, your starting point for finding this answer is obvious. If youre not religious, you could jump into philosophy as this question has been at the core of human thinking since the time of the Greeks but Ive found its more approachable to start with biographies of people whose life you admire, looking for evidence of their own responses to this prompt. Second, decide how your experience at college can best be leveraged to support this vision of a good life. If, for example, you decide the key to a good life is to master something useful to the world, this might lead to you to see college as an opportunity to master a hard skill while exposing yourself to examples of people applying this skill in useful ways. Third, identify the set of specific student tactics that will help you succeed in this leveraging. In our above example, this thinking might lead you to the concrete strategies I espoused in my romantic scholar series. This process provides a more personal and concrete answer to the fundamental question being posed by your ancient brain.

    Why should I expend all this difficult energy?, it asks once again.

    Because its part of a well-thought through plan for leading a good life, you now respond.

    Sounds good, it agrees while you head to the library.

    As I noted in an earlier post on this subject, this self-reflection is not an easy process. But college really is a fantastic time to face these basic questions. Deep procrastination, once you understand its source, doesnt have to a Jobian affliction. It can instead be seen as the prompt you need to get your internal shop in order.

    If youve had success combating deep procrastination with answers to these basic questions, please share your experience. Concrete examples help deep procrastinators commit to a way out.

  1103. How to Cure Deep Procrastination 2011-07-16 01:30:34 rauljara
    >lost me again at "ancient brain" and not putting out unnecessary energy.

    A lot of evolutionary science talks about energy expenditure. For an animal to survive it needs to take in at least as many calories as it expends, so evolutionary scientists often explain behavior in terms of expending calories and preserving calories. E.g, Predators tend to sleep a lot because hunting takes up a lot of calories. It's better to preserve the calories they gained hunting by sleeping a lot, rather then spend them on another hunt that may or may not be successful. As opposed to large herbivores that don't gain that many calories from grass, but don't spend so many eating it, either. They sleep very little because foraging those extra hours turns out to be a caloric win.

    Our "ancient" brain (which is a crappy term, I know) refers to the set of behaviors we evolved to survive in a society pre civilization. In that environment, effort == calories spent. What the author is saying is that for evolutionary reasons, we evolved to not want to waste calories (put forth effort) if there isn't a good chance of getting them back. But, because our food sources no longer in jeopardy, that evolutionary urge which led to our survival in the wild now leads to the vice known as procrastination.

  1104. How to Cure Deep Procrastination 2011-07-16 02:05:07 lincolnwebs
    Conversely, sometimes you decide it isn't worth it. My senior year of high school, I was being pushed to take 3 AP courses. I thought about what I wanted out of my senior year, and decided I already had what I needed to get into college and wanted to enjoy it. I took 1 AP course instead - and procrastinated in it horribly, but at least my GPA didn't suffer horribly from 1 course.

    Sometimes you don't need to convince yourself of anything, you need to change course.

  1105. How to Cure Deep Procrastination 2011-07-16 02:07:49 squasher
    If you liked/needed this post, you'll LOVE The Now Habit: http://www.amazon.com/Now-Habit-Overcoming-Procrastination-G...

  1106. How to Cure Deep Procrastination 2011-07-16 02:23:42 yakto
    > But, because our food sources no longer in jeopardy, that evolutionary urge which led to our survival in the wild now leads to the vice known as procrastination.

    and to obesity.

  1107. How to Cure Deep Procrastination 2011-07-16 03:03:40 btcoal
    "Deep procrastination usually strikes students later in their college career, when the difficulty of their courses ratchets up. At this stage, their work load gets harder and harder, and at some point some powerful part of their brain says no more!"

    My mileage definitely varied. I found that after my second (Sophomore in the US) year in college I rarely procrastinated. It was getting through the required classes the first two years, where the why at the end of a long chain of questions was "because you have to to graduate from MIT." That's not as motivating as it sounds.

    Eventually I was taking only classes I wanted to be in. And if I didnt want to do an assignment and wasnt going to destroy my GPA I just didnt do it.

    Fast-forward to the real world and it returns. Deadlines from bosses help to avoid procrastination but if the work isn't too challenging and expectations are low enough you can still do some deep procrastinating.

    But then again, maybe the reasoning my work isn't challenging enough is because I didn't get the most amazing job in the world because I didn't just push through those assignments in college that I really didn't want to do. Hmmm...that's some meta-circular evaluation right there[1].

    [1] No it isnt.

  1108. How to Cure Deep Procrastination 2011-07-16 03:19:38 anigbrowl
    I'm not sure that I buy his evolutionary biology argument, but he's right that it's more difficult to get to grips with long-term abstract tasks than it is with immediate needs, whether those originate internally or externally. This is particularly challenging for self-study and other non-conventional forms of education; the face-to-face interactions with instructors and other students, the framework of a rigid class schedule, and the learning-specific setting of a classroom all contribute to the learning process by providing tangible environmental cues for the brain which are associated with the subject(s) of study. This might also explain why some recent graduates struggle to adjust to the new and different demands of the workplace :-)

    One method I've found helpful for overcoming my own tendency to procrastinate is to create my own environmental cues instead of wishing I had an academic institution to provide them. Having specific clothes, music and similar things that you associate with your study or project can be very effective. If you had a long-term goal of being a doctor, for example, it might be helpful to put on a lab coat even if you are currently studying something you don't like in order to get into medical school later. If you're doing a lot of work or study on the computer, create a new user with a different wallpaper, color scheme, and desktop for work on the long term project. Keep your leisure browsing/gaming/whatever in a different environment from your task-oriented one. If you're an entrepeneur, photoshop yourself onto the cover of Fortune as a joke and hang it on your wall. The sub-headings can be little reminders about staying ahead of the competition, or keeping your edge, or whatever cues you effectively. Go to professional conferences and chat to the sort of people that you wish to have in your peer group. Sign up for magazines or other marketing materials so that you get random reminders of your future falling into your mailbox (most of which will be junk mail, but it will be a better class of junk mail than you had been getting).

    In short, surround yourself with things that help you stay emotionally connected to your goal. 'Fake it till you make it,' not to deceive others about the progress or success you have achieved so far, but to bypass the analytical part of your brain and give the more instinctual/emotional part the feeling of what achieving your goal will be like.

  1109. How to Cure Deep Procrastination 2011-07-16 03:45:38 Produce
    As an alternative explanation for why we procrastinate, I'd like to introduce the idea that modern society is fundamentally broken. If we have social structures (software) in place which go so deeply against the grain (wetware) then the problem is not the grain but the direction that we are sanding in. In essence, modern society is trying to run ARM instructions on an x86 CPU. It's a testament to how broken it is that someone would suggest that the effect is the thing to be cured, as opposed to the cause.

    The fact of the matter is that we have orders of magnitude more knowledge about how we work and what makes us happy than even 50 years ago. Yet we do not apply it. It's the same as the issue in software development where we have accepted industry standards for producing quality work yet relatively few teams use them, and hardly any use all of them.

    Ofcourse, the reason for these inefficiencies at processing new information is the same as the one which causes procrastination - the wetware simply isn't built for it. And so we have a vicious circle. There is, however, light at the end of the tunnel. Whatever we are aware of at a given point in time will shape the next moment. Yes, our wetware is at odds with the environment it has created, but our wetware is capable of self-modification, hence the author's suggestion being a perfectly good one until we can reach the tipping point as a collective. But I still argue that curing procrastination is putting a bandage on a rotting limb which desperately needs to be amputated and replaced with a tentacle.

  1110. How to Cure Deep Procrastination 2011-07-16 04:20:40 Wilduck
    Which fits in perfectly with his argument that "your brain doesn't buy your plan." Once you break it up, the plan is more concrete and workable.

    However, this only works if you aren't suffering from Deep Procrastination. Like you mentioned, if you don't have the deep meaning already covered, small steps won't help.

  1111. How to Cure Deep Procrastination 2011-07-16 04:25:15 thaumaturgy
    o-f'r-cryinoutloud.

    I can't believe everyone's actually discussing this as though it were insightful.

    Look, you're sitting at home, you're a student, and you have, let's say, three things you can choose to do right now:

    1. You can study for your class tomorrow, working towards a degree. Effort required: high. Reward: far future.

    2. You can go out with friends. Effort required: medium to low. Reward: near future.

    3. You can play a video game. Effort required: low. Reward: immediate.

    So which one do you really want to do?

    Before you answer that, let's add one more little piece to our hypothetical: let's imagine that you have all the time in the world. You're immortal. There is absolutely no rush to get your degree. Whether you do it this year or in thirty years will make absolutely no difference.

    So which one do you do?

    This is procrastination. I should know. I'm an expert procrastinator. There are about eleventy-seven things I should be doing right now -- and they are all things which require a lot of effort right now, and won't pay off today. What am I doing instead? I'm wasting time on HN: low effort, immediate reward. If I couldn't be on HN, I'd probably be in my garden. Again: low effort, quick reward.

    This guy's a book author. He wants to sell more books. He probably wants to make a little extra money doing speaking engagements. So he has to set himself up as an expert, and to do that, he's put together this notion about "ancient brains" and evolutionary psychology (which is mostly bunkem) and the "wasting" of energy.

    And it sounds sort of OK, except that it skirts around the basic notion that we're largely reward driven, and all of these distractions that we have today are really good at pushing our little reward button, and we'll keep triggering our reward button for as long as we can -- until we become that little mouse that starved itself to death pushing its feel-good button.

    Short-circuiting this requires two forms of self discipline: one, you have to tear yourself away from pushing the reward button occasionally (and no amount of telling yourself why you're trying to get a degree will do that). You have to have enough self-awareness to realize that you've just blown your entire afternoon on a game or online and you have nothing to show for it, and maybe you should try to squeeze in some actual work before the day's over.

    Two, you have to have the discipline to recognize the things that make you procrastinate, and engineer around them. For me, it's barriers. Once I get working on something, I'll plow through it like a bullet through jelly. But, if I'm not yet working on it, and there's the merest little speed-bump of a barrier to overcome before I can work on it ... then I don't want to start.

    So, for that reason, I put a lot of extra effort into making it really convenient to get things done. I write scripts that do things for me with a single command. I keep things organized so that I don't have to find things (which is a barrier) before I can get started. I try to keep things simple.

    But that's just me. Maybe it's different for you.

    But I seriously doubt that the approach in this guy's article will actually help anybody.

  1112. How to Cure Deep Procrastination 2011-07-16 04:37:15 qaexl
    The general doctrine sounds great. The specific solution outlined sucks. My hypothesis: easier to get in touch with primal survival instincts and twiddling that directly. The author is still answering those self-reflection questions with abstract thoughts that has nothing to do with survival instincts.

    Meaning: Interrupt yourself every time you feel procrastination -- that heavy, draining, depressing, oppressing feeling -- that sudden drop in energy when thinking about taking the next step -- or even planning and deciding the course of action to take you to your goal. Catch yourself feeling this. Then directly manipulate that.

  1113. How to Cure Deep Procrastination 2011-07-16 05:39:58 gwern
    > In my previous post, I introduced a dubious evolutionary explanation for an otherwise very real phenomenon: procrastination, in my experience, is not a character flaw, but instead evidence that you dont have a believable plan for succeeding at what youre trying to do. In this post, as promised, I want to apply this evolutionary perspective to help better understand, and therefore better combat, the deep variety of this common issue.

    Instead of fumbling with folk intuitions and deeply dodgy evolutionary psychology (hard for even the experts to not embarrass themselves doing), why not look at what the psychologists have actually found?

    http://lesswrong.com/lw/3w3/how_to_beat_procrastination/ covers the literature. (You will notice that the equation includes 'expectancy' as only one of the related variables. This is a simplified form; the full equation with the details can be found in all the linked PDFs. http://lesswrong.com/tag/procrastination/ also has a lot of interesting reading which are much better than this guy.)

    And heck, while I'm at it, the overview of research on how to be happy: http://lesswrong.com/lw/4su/how_to_be_happy/

  1114. How to Cure Deep Procrastination 2011-07-16 06:24:11 sardonicbryan
    How to stop procrastinating:

    1) Stop reading articles about procrastination. 2) Start doing what you're supposed to be doing, you lazy asshole.

  1115. How to Cure Deep Procrastination 2011-07-16 07:21:32 Periodic
    But here's where his idea helps you combat the desire for immediate rewards without "willpower".

    Let's look at the impact on what sort of respect others will give you with your three options:

    1. Studying for a degree: high - hard worker, smart 2. Going out: medium - friends like you, but you're a party-person and don't really do anything respectable. 3. Video games: low - lazy bum.

    I think the argument is that the part of your brain that is trying to procrastinate understands enough about society to realize that making yourself a better and more respectable person is a worthy goal and will help you work towards it. The trick is having that goal in mind. With the goal in mind, not making progress is an immediate negative reinforcement.

    I used to play video games all day instead of working. Now I feel almost dirty if I do that. I know that the person I want to be is not someone who sits around and reads HN and gets no work done in a day.

    Of course, there's a balance. If I'm ahead on a deadline, good luck getting me to finish it early.

  1116. How to Cure Deep Procrastination 2011-07-16 07:46:14 thaumaturgy
    Absolutely. Yeah, the "I'll will myself into doing this" approach doesn't work for long. There have been a handful of psychology articles on attention and self-control being limited mental resources (e.g., http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc281e.pdf -- [PDF]).

    I was just saying that even with all kinds of tricks and fooling yourself and convincing yourself and whatnot, you still have to make yourself stop pushing that reward button and do some work. The key, for me, is to make it easier and easier to switch from procrastinating to getting work done.

  1117. How to Cure Deep Procrastination 2011-07-16 09:34:41 sbaqai
    I agree with your view of procrastination. I think there's a good portion of it that is due to the points you make.

    However, there's something else to be added to the discussion about procrastination that has to do with people's temperament and unhealthy ideas they have of work (and themselves).

    For example, one problem people might have is they tie their self-worth to the outcome of their goals. You can see why that could cause a lot of anxiety and stress. Using your examples, if you needed to win every time you played video games, and it was a source of great confidence and self-esteem for you - the moment you're in a situation where you know there's a chance you might loose, it will become a lot harder to get the energy to practice/play. It has nothing to do with enjoying video games in and of itself - it has to do with connecting your worth to the outcome. Even hanging out with friends can become a hassle if people think they need to control the outcome somehow.

    This happens in school (in college,where for the first time people may not be getting the top grades and in highschool grades were the source of great pride and acceptance and popularity), and at work (if you screw something up you think you'll be considered an idiot and possibly be fired). A lot of people, somehow and at some point, develop some sort of inner drill sergeant who tells them they are no good until they get X done - and this works well enough when you're young and use to being forced to do things by other people anyway and are looking for approval from adults and peers. But as people grow independent they realize they really don't like the way they talk to themselves or at the least, they start not to care about what the drill-sergeant in them wants.

    To people who do not have these cognitive traps, these problems are invisible. They are likely to think procrastinators are inherently lazy/undisciplined because that is what they can visually conclude (and it also reinforces the idea they are not lazy and are disciplined).

    Another trap is not viewing work in the correct context. People feel they are being 'forced' to do something. That reinforces the idea that the work isn't very pleasant, and they would be doing something else if they could. Well, thats the wrong way to frame the problem. It focuses on your feelings, transient and often miscalculated. A healthier way to frame work is to consider cost vs reward. We tend to highlight the cost of work and compare it to the rewards of procrastination.

    Also, people who procrastinate may also not take breaks when working, or set aside time to enjoy their life - they are stuck in a perpetual grind where they feel like crap/imposters if they take their attention off work. That very pressure is what renders them unproductive.

    Anyway, if this stuff seems interesting to anyone, I recommend checking out "The Now Habit" by Neil Fiore. I found it to be one of the few books that frames procrastination as a symptom rather than a cause. It has a lot of interesting insights if you don't feel the you lack discipline or are lazy, but may not be framing things (or talking to yourself) in the healthiest way.

  1118. How to Cure Deep Procrastination 2011-07-16 10:50:41 mannicken
    Define procrastination. Perhaps I'm working on research for procrastination articles, or studying design of that web-page.

    I understand what you're trying to do but a bit of advice for the future: do not offend your reader. You can offend something else they might hate, e.g. "fuck procrastination".

    I just downvoted you solely on the lazy asshole comment because I took it personally, because I'm reading this. If you were to say it personally to someone, in certain cliques, you would've gotten the shit beaten out of you for saying things like that unless you aren't their teacher. I would personally just flip you off, told you to go fuck yourself, and then never spoke to you again.

    Just friendly advice.

  1119. Why There Will Never be Another Da Vinci 2011-07-16 15:32:06 namank
    Although your assertion is mathematically sound, do account for the fact that Da Vinci devoted his entire life to learning. And interdisciplinary learning at that!

    While I won't argue that the sheer volume of knowledge swirling today is exponentially greater than 500 years ago, its also very true that the type of education Da Vinci received, mentor-disciple, is almost non-existant today. The kind of personality he had, free-flowing (procrastinating and whimsical) and curious, is not suited to the current society's reward structure; in fact, its discourage by all but the very best of the schools.

    Sure, Da Vinci didn't have to learn calculus, but just how do you explain the amount of detail his work shows? He conceptualized SCUBA generations ago. In his design for underwater breathing apparatus, Da Vinci, was very particular about the details. Details that people today use computer simulations to figure out, when not the experience itself.

    And finally, Leonardo may have had less to learn because everything was as intuitive as the physical world, but the situation today is not so different. We are now closer to first principles than ever. Tomorrow's Da Vinci won't solve puzzles, he will build them.

  1120. How to Cure Deep Procrastination 2011-07-16 19:44:24 TeMPOraL
    Similar problem here - eg. I once almost failed a course because I decided that writing a computer game for a Lisp competition is much more fun. I get A's in courses I care about, which is a suprising minority, and learn some of the rest while procrastinating, in completely different order than university would like.

  1121. How to Cure Deep Procrastination 2011-07-17 03:59:13 ForrestN
    Yes, as I said it is definitely an attempt at dealing with the subconscious, but it's an attempt to do so only be engaging with the conscious. The idea is basically to bolster the strength of the conscious motives, which again, might be somewhat helpful.

    Discovering the cause alone might not necessarily helped, but being armed with the information is invaluable. Knowing that what's happening when you're declining to work on a project is that you're trying to recreate the feeling worthlessness associated with being criticized as a child is pretty useful in understanding the situation and addressing it.

    I guess the broader point is just that self-help and tips and tricks can be helpful to generally healthy people who occasionally procrastinate or whatever, but that people who are significantly inhibited by their inability to motivate themselves are likely depressed or suffering from anxiety and need to deal with it medically. You can't cure an anxiety disorder with "REPS".

    I'm not a psychologist, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it's damaging to people who are considering getting treatment to be told that "procrastination" is some kind of normal thing that they can fix by thinking about things a little differently.

  1122. Nearly Half of All College Grades Are A's 2011-07-17 04:54:59 harry
    The idea's still there in the administration tho. It's the Faculty who need to quit being butthurt about it.

    Generalizing: Working with leading faculty is a bit like working with the 'always answers in snippits' students from highschool 40 years later in their life. Procrastinate, panics when something isn't the way they expect it, and genuinely quirky. All it takes is one noisy tenure to make a stink to a VP/P and many things get shut down.

    Maybe in a decade when the damage grade inflation has done to accreditation and the value of a degree becomes apparent the faculty will allow for this type of thing to exist.

  1123. Estimate your English vocabulary size 2011-07-17 17:19:45 fhars
    Pears, just like apples, usually don't speak at all, let alone in foreign languages.

    Sorry for the pun but since this is a thread about vocabulary and it's sunday when most of the regulars are away instead of procrastinating at work anyway I hope I may be forgiven.

  1124. Just work hard 2011-07-17 17:38:57 flocial
    Sometimes it feels like HN is descending into a self-help group for intelligent but certified procrastinators. Does the consumption of such articles and other forms of self-help literature actually inspire you to create and do? Is the discussion of doing a form of action or the prelude to it?

    Just follow my patented 3-D treatment program for hardcore procrastinators. Decide, declare, and do. Just stay clear of the 3 Es: explanations, extensions and excuses.

  1125. How to Cure Deep Procrastination 2011-07-17 18:53:50 sek
    Very interesting, reminds me of the conflict between Freud and Adler. You answered on a post who explains procrastination with desire, but added the self-esteem element. I am with you on this, i suppose the problem is a combination of desire and self worth problems.

    I also can recommend "The Now Habit", this is really a book that stands out on this topic.

  1126. Just work hard 2011-07-17 21:59:23 relef
    Hey, wait a minute, you are procrastinating on HN just like the rest of us. Pfffft, working ....

  1127. Just work hard 2011-07-17 22:33:41 nochiel
    Just because an individual is browsing HN does not mean the individual is procrastinating. Please consult a dictionary for an accurate definition of the term.

  1128. Better To Do Than To Think 2011-07-17 22:39:23 rkalla
    In my own personal adventure with this (DO vs THINK) I have the following thoughts on the subject...

    1. "DOING" doesn't necessarily always mean what you think it means. DOING simply means "forward-moving-action", even if it isn't the super-important-thing-you-have-been-procrastinating-on-for-a-week.

    2. I've found that simply the act of DOING anything that moves me forward, seems to move ALL my efforts forward; a lot of times, just enough to get me over the hill that has blocked me in the first place.

    3. Thinking has its place though. DOING without any THINKING... that isn't any better than constant thinking with no doing. I currently have a 50/50 split between the two and end up thinking of critically important things from time to time that I wouldn't have had I kept DOING non-stop.

    4. DOING is suppose to be fun/challenging/engaging. If it never is, you might be working on the wrong project or in the wrong line of work. Don't be afraid to step back for a sec and think about that, maybe look at some alternatives down the road or start dabbling in some hobby work to try and find what sparks your soul.

    5. If you have been stuck THINKING about something for a month and not moved on it yet because it doesn't feel like you "have it figured out yet", set aside a day or an afternoon and commit to DOING it with the following allowances you give yourself:

      - This is a dry-run, nothing serious.
  - Be as hacky as possible, move as fast as possible.
  - You are just "playing around".
    I've found I get stuck when I need to make a next-move that isn't totally clear and I think it's committing me to something long-term.

    Once you get that momentum moving forward on whatever has been blocking you, you'll get clarity that you are either on the right track (then go back and clean up what you did) or you had it all wrong this whole time (pivot time!).

    This is just what has helped me (a chronic thinker).

  1129. Better To Do Than To Think 2011-07-18 00:31:26 cema

      a chronic thinker
    This!

    Much better than a "chronic procrastinator". Thank you for the word! :-)

  1130. Ask HN: How can you achieve the mental energy and stamina to do great things? 2011-07-20 13:37:49 hboon
    Well, that's great. In that case, here's what I think:

    Always push yourself to do more and better work. Wherever reasonable, do the right thing the first time. I know this is hard, especially in a startup, but there are micro-opportunities everywhere.

    I find that some people have this ability to stay laser-focused on a project. And some can't. I belong to the latter camp and what I do is whenever I slow down or procrastinate a project, I'd switch to doing something else. Maybe the context-switch isn't that efficient for productivity, but I'd find that over time, I feel more positive (having done work, real work), and even if I end up with a dozens of uncompleted projects, I learn things along the way and they usually help somehow, somewhere, later. But of course finish the core project.

    And while I'm at it, here's something I wish someone else helped me realised much earlier: learn good presentation, writing and documentation skills. (Perhaps you already do them very well, in that case, make it even better. Challenge yourself).

    There's a few visible folks on HN who are very young and seems to have achieved amazing things, perhaps drop them a note and see if they have any advice?

  1131. Show HN: I made a Web-based Todo App - used: CSS3 3D transforms, Node.js, love 2011-07-20 13:52:53 TheRealmccoy
    Hey, This is really cool. I am sure you are going to move some of the procrastination from the world, away. I am going to use this over any "To Do" app. Thanks for building this...

  1132. Show HN: I made a Web-based Todo App - used: CSS3 3D transforms, Node.js, love 2011-07-20 19:02:19 necenzurat
    This shit ROCKS Truly the ultimate procrastination app

  1133. Boost your productivity: Cripple your technology 2011-07-20 23:53:35 p4bl0
    But can one say that following the kinds of tips given in the article is already a kind of self discipline?

    I know that I myself have a very hard time to work (like, I almost _can't_) if I'm not interested by (or having fun with) what I'm supposed to do. But sometimes there's no choice and then I'm really, really not productive. In this case, disconnecting myself from internet is kind of mandatory if I don't want to find myself "procrastinating" on IRC, HN or reddit (I often go there unconsciously, by reflex!).

  1134. Boost your productivity: Cripple your technology 2011-07-21 02:39:23 o1iver
    As a matter of fact Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz authors of "Power of Full Engagement" say that the idea of self-discipline (in the form of strong-will) does not lie at the base of productivity. Indeed they say that human being do not have near enough energy to be self-disciplined in that sense for many decisions.

    I think that the real value of the article's tips is that as you get used to not going on HN/Reddit or just avoiding other types of procrastination you will get used to not doing that and thus won't do it even if you remove the barriers.

  1135. WebPutty: CSS editing goes "boink" 2011-07-21 05:55:35 Flam
    This is EXACTLY what I needed and wanted. I was literally about to code my own version of this today but decided to procrastinate and check hacker news, and I'm sure glad I did!

    I even made a thread on reddit webdev about it yesterday: http://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/itqy1/is_there_a_fir...

  1136. Boost your productivity: Cripple your technology 2011-07-21 06:08:55 icebraining
    Personally, the only thing that motivates me when the work is uninteresting is knowing that someone is expecting it. That's why I'm much less prone to procrastination on work I do for people than at college assignments. Blocking sites never helps, I can entertain myself staring at a blank wall.

    I do minimize external distractions (IM, SMS, etc), but that's because they annoy me even when I'm interested in the work. I don't know how people can stand all those notifications popping up.

  1137. Boost your productivity: Cripple your technology 2011-07-21 06:50:55 aaronf
    We need better productivity tools, not less technology. Much easier to just sign up for RescueTime. And try LazyMeter to focus on your to-do list one day at a time - we believe one of the core causes of procrastination is people not knowing what they're doing (it's easy to trick yourself into thinking you're productive when you're not).

  1138. Boost your productivity: Cripple your technology 2011-07-21 10:31:29 eric-hu
    I half agree with this. I've employed some of the above productivity tricks when I want to get things done really badly. I was productive.

    I've also ignored all of these tricks had equal productivity.

    When I don't want to do something, eliminating all familiar procrastination tools will just make me create or find new procrastination tools. I think the best advice is that small sentence in your post "you either do it or you don't". Embracing that mentality, I either do something or I put it behind me and do something else.

  1139. New DVCS with integrated bug tracking and scrum metrics 2011-07-21 20:21:16 swah
    If it used Git underneath I'd willing to try, otherwise it would be procrastination right now.

  1140. The Acceleration of Addictiveness vs Willpower, Productivity, and Flow 2011-07-24 05:44:02 static_cast
    Hardcore procrastinator here.

    Reading good articles like that won't change anything. That's the bitter truth. At least this is the case for me, and probably some other people on the internet.

    I'm nowhere near to have myself in full control again but I'm sick of wasting my days and feeling bad over this.

    Willpower for me only works when I'm concentrated.

    So there is a concentration problem. Being able to concentrate is also a muscle. I'm having a habit of actively avoiding exercising concentration.

    Related to programming it's difficult for me:

    A problem in my Code appears? I'm starting to Google solutions instead of trying to get a complete understanding of the problem. I'd fool myself into saying: I would look into this but I don't have the time and nobody will pay me for that. Googling and somehow trying to apply the results often works but it gives you an feeling of being unable to create something on it's own.

    Then there is this thought: I would like to do something but there are too much people out there that could it better, so why bother trying?

    And Instead of spending the days and nights learning and working on something I'm jumping around switching between problems I never fully understood nor am I able to afford the time to understand them...

    So it comes down from willpower to concentration and at the moment I'm believing the cause for a lack of these skills is a lack of structure.

    Structure for me is planning, planning in advance. Revisiting your plans and having clear ideas about yourself and the surrounding world. So creating structure requires concentration...

    It works like a Circulus vitiosus in both ways. If you are structured for a longer time you're concentration and willpower will go up. If you lack concentration your structure get's weaker and concentration will fall, procrastination will rise.

    How to solve this problem? Honest question.

    (Sorry for hijacking this thread, but I think it is somewhat relevant to productivity and flow to sort these things out)

  1141. The Acceleration of Addictiveness vs Willpower, Productivity, and Flow 2011-07-24 08:40:53 Mz
    How to solve this problem? Honest question.

    Honest answer: Consider the possibility that you may have a hidden health issue. Look into that angle. Addressing my own health issues has been the single biggest boost to my productivity, ability to concentrate and ability to stop being a serious hardcore procrastinator. If you simply lack physical energy and ability to concentrate, willpower is not going to overcome it.

    Best of luck, whatever the answer turns out to be for you.

  1142. The Acceleration of Addictiveness vs Willpower, Productivity, and Flow 2011-07-24 08:49:59 lostmypw

        Talking about stuff like this is bound to sound esoteric, I think. So
    I want to put this disclaimer upfront that I detest esotericism.

    I can only assume that your problems are similar to mine, so I can
    only suggest what works for me. And that might not completely work out
    for you in the end, but it's worth a try for sure.

    Concentration: The problem of not being able to keep distracting
    thoughts away can be lessened with meditation. I came across this
    suggestion in the book Pragmatic Thinking and Learning [1] and have
    found an excellent CD to listen to called Guided Mindfulness
    Meditation [2] by Jon Kabat-Zinn.

    I tend to try to avoid meditation because for a while I seem to do
    fine and so long as I do fine it just feels like a waste of time for
    me. Time that I could invest reading a book. But eventually I always
    end up having an extreme amount of distracting thoughts to the point
    that I cannot learn anymore. I've now had this problem crop up often
    enough with meditation always helping that I'm now a lot more willing
    to spend the time and meditate. I want to emphasize that for *me* it
    was necessary to get to the dead end and suffer from it to become
    willing to change something. Maybe you can relate.

    Structure: Well well, the way you write it sounds a little bit rigid
    to me. I tightened up imagining all that structure you strive for and
    I'm thinking you should relax a little bit. Or at least I should (and
    do). So maybe we are different in this regard.

    I do think you should lay back a bit and think about what really
    interests you deep down in your heart. I assume you've been working
    too much on hopelessly boring stuff, because with that I can relate
    again. I've been working a little bit on a little server in erlang but
    somehow at some point I couldn't bring myself to working further on
    it. Well I could, but all the time I felt something was wrong.

    As I'm happy to learn interesting programming languages and have heard
    all the hype about lisp for so long (I'm looking at you, pg) I finally
    gave in and started reading Practical Common Lisp [3] and now
    Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming [4] and what can I
    say. I see now that what disappoints me in erlang but also in other
    languages is having forced upon me one paradigm and/or a rigid set of
    rules. In the case of erlang that might be perfectly fine as the
    language can make certain guarantees that way. I've realized though
    that I would much rather enjoy the lisp-ish freedom while molding a
    solution. So this is my story of disappointment and fresh wind.

    One quick addition in the end: In an xkcd comic [5] there is a
    description of a solution (see the alt-text of the image) that delays
    access to certain websites (like reddit, hn for me) but does not block
    them completely. It just delays the access (-- more discussion on the
    xkcd blog [6]). This serves the purpose of destroying the notion of
    instant reward these stupid little bits of new information might give
    you, however irrelevant they may be. I've found this to be helpful for
    me because sometimes in the past I've procrastinated the hell out of
    the day. I got fed up with repeatedly spending hours with unproductive
    stuff and feeling sorry for the time in the end. See the pattern? I
    needed to run into this problem several times before I decided that I
    have to change something. I don't want to make some point here. I just
    find this pattern interesting.

    What I have done is I have taken an existing little chrome extension
    called delaybot which by default only delays for rand(1.5) seconds and
    changed the delay to 30 secs. This has worked wonders in the
    beginning. I say in the beginning because I've now disabled the
    extension as it is getting in my way now. No, this is not the
    procrastinator disabling a helpful little tool. :-) I've found that
    since I've picked up meditation again I didn't run into this problem
    anymore anyways. I also tend to just bookmark away a lot of actually
    interesting discussions to read them later, which of course I never
    do. I do this bookmarking and closing of tabs because I tend to
    accumulate too many tabs easily otherwise.

    Not all is great though, the article made me realise that I'm a little
    bit too hard with myself when I'm excerting will-power. I try to go
    through the mentioned lisp books fast (as there are more to come
    still) and at some point I notice that I can't bring myself to read a
    lot more at that point. To me this looks similar to the cookie
    experiment where a group of people is less productive after excerting
    will power in a previous task.

    So, to conclude: Even if not all is roses I can say with certainty
    that meditation is the single most helpful tool to increase my
    productivity. It changes me from being helpless to being more in
    control of what I'd like to do with my time.

    Regarding your lack of passion: Man, search your feelings. If you find
    something that really interests you, you probably wouldn't think much
    about what other people could do better than you. That AI book [4] I'm
    reading? It features ancient techniques at the point where I am right
    now but it's still a great read and I'm learning a heck of a
    lot. That's what keeps me going. Also, lisp.

    Phew, that was long.
    I would love to hear feedback. :-)
    [1] http://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Thinking-Learning-Refactor-P...

    [2] http://www.amazon.com/Guided-Mindfulness-Meditation-Jon-Kaba...

    [3] http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/

    [4] http://www.amazon.com/Paradigms-Artificial-Intelligence-Prog...

    [5] http://xkcd.com/862/

    [6] http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/02/18/distraction-affliction-corre...

    EDIT: I've changed the formatting because it renders with long lines otherwise.

  1143. How I Dealt with Student Plagiarism 2011-07-24 11:06:30 alf
    The problem is that test taking is only minimally useful outside of school, and by choosing tests as the only measurement, you end up optimizing for the wrong skill. (I know because I was a pretty good test taker as a student, but the laziness and procrastination that it fosters is really starting to bite me in the ass right now) I think tests are useful because they're an easy metric, but if you're goal is to teach or learn a skill, tests are a really poor tool. As a thought experiment, if you wanted to teach yourself something what would you do? You probably wouldn't do it by giving yourself written tests.

  1144. The Acceleration of Addictiveness vs Willpower, Productivity, and Flow 2011-07-24 13:10:49 bcl
    Excellent article! Much better than the normal post we see about focus or procrastination. But now I have something like 10 more tabs open and a couple of book I'm probably going to be buying... Thanks!

  1145. Show HN: Enter a message, delivery at a random time up to 6 months from now 2011-07-24 17:55:04 mreid
    How does this differ from http://futureme.org ?

    I used that service in the past to send myself a message from me pre-PhD-completion self to my post-PhD-completion self to ask how it was. Although it was basically procrastination at the time it was surprising and strangely cathartic to receive an email from a very different sounding me.

  1146. Ask HN: Is HN the online Silicon Valley?, if not where? 2011-07-25 23:08:47 eru
    Depends on your goals. HN can be beneficial. But you can also just waste a lot of time with procrastinating here.

  1147. Poll: Do you use Google Reader on a daily basis? 2011-07-26 07:09:12 _delirium
    Currently not too often. I go back and forth on RSS overall, and am sort of undecided.

    Pro, versus normal webbrowsing: I don't end up doing the nervous-tic "reload to see if there's anything new on site A, then site B, then site C..." procrastination dance.

    Cons, versus normal webbrowsing: 1) Everything gets put into a standardized layout, while I like the different kinds of design around the web, some of which aren't just aesthetic but include different paradigms (magazine-type versus forum-type versus link-sharing-type site layouts); 2) I end up feeling like I have this constant backlog of stuff to read, as if it were another email inbox, while it's easier to ignore old content when loading up a website.

    My compromise is that for now I have only 4 blogs in my RSS feed, which update infrequently--- some of them not even more often than one post every 1-2 months. I have them there because they update infrequently enough that I'd forget to check, but I do want to see new posts when they arrive. Other sites I either check regularly in a browser, or I read whenever someone shares an interesting link to them, or whenever I remember, depending on the site.

  1148. Ask HN: understanding software contractors 2011-07-26 11:17:23 angrycoder
    Possible cause:

    The start of every project is fun. Its new. I have a paycheck again. Horray! When it comes time to actually start doing work, the lusture wears off. Whoa, this is more complicated than I thought, hrm, I am kinda stuck. I'll take a break for a day, clear my head. Then one day of procrastination turns into 2, then a week. From there it just turns into an endless cycle of dodging the client and making excuses about the 'code being a mess' because you are so far behind and there is no chance of ever catching up.

    Possible solution:

    1) During the interview, look for signs of interest in the domain the software covers. Or interest in the specific technical problem you are trying to solve.

    2) Look for a candidate who is maybe a little less experienced but is really looking for a chance to prove themselves.

  1149. Poll: Do you visit the 'new' section of Hacker News? 2011-07-26 18:48:09 kalleboo
    Only when everything on the news page is marked as read and I'm in hyper-procrastination mode.

  1150. When you're in a team that I lead, there are 3 things that I'd like to ask you 2011-07-26 22:50:41 jsavimbi
    I was under the impression that it was Assume, Lie and Procrastinate.

  1151. Poll: Do you visit the 'new' section of Hacker News? 2011-07-27 02:14:20 TeMPOraL
    I do visit 'new' section to see if there's something worthwhile and upvote accordingly, but only if I'm procrastinating so badly that I've read everything even remotely interesting on the main page and started to see submissions I've read two days before.

  1152. Peter Molyneux Blames Success on Baked Beans 2011-07-27 16:14:13 hyped
    This article compelled me to create an account here to comment.

    I loved this quote of his: "Ive made so many countless mistakes...being as someone who isnt particularly bright, I have to make them several times before I learn." That quote coming from someone so accomplished puts things into perspective for me.

    I sometimes struggle with the capacity of my own intelligence. I am trying to change my mentality that intelligence is something that can gradually grow through experience/practice instead of it being an innate quality. I do believe geniuses such as Terrence Tao, etc. are exceptions and are born with the innate ability. For the rest of us, I believe we should emphasize hard work and just getting things done.

    I also believe that this is a source of my procrastination. Sometimes I struggle to work on some of my side projects because of my limiting belief that the task at hand is so huge/complex that I am just not smart enough to complete something like that.

    Does anyone else have similar thoughts or comments along these lines?

  1153. Hacker News Fires Steve Yegge 2011-07-28 06:15:30 jsavimbi
    Regardless of what Steve does in his professional life, I, for one, am going to stop procrastinating on all of those R links I've been saving up on Evernote and get down to some science.

  1154. From To Do to Will Do: Using the Case Method to Defeat Procrastination 2011-07-31 10:13:28 mechnik
    Erez Lieberman who inspired Cal Newport latest 'stop procrastination' method is a hero.

  1155. From To Do to Will Do: Using the Case Method to Defeat Procrastination 2011-07-31 10:40:48 brandoncor
    Though the reasons he recommends emulating a role model aren't that obvious. It's a hack to beat procrastination by making you more confident in your plan. Since the same plan was used successfully by someone else, you're more likely to stick with it. It seems like the quality of the plan isn't what matters, but that it actually worked at least once. A plan you've come up with on your own is unproven, so is more susceptible to procrastination.

  1156. From To Do to Will Do: Using the Case Method to Defeat Procrastination 2011-07-31 11:40:07 orangechicken
    It sounds like "find the story of someone who personifies what you want to accomplish, figure out how they accomplished what they did, then base your process on their approach" is just one more roadblock to progress you can use to divert yourself and continue procrastinating. It's another "I simply MUST do this before I do the thing I want to do."

    It makes sense in my brain (evolutionary procrastination, etc), but it would certainly keep me from getting things done.

  1157. From To Do to Will Do: Using the Case Method to Defeat Procrastination 2011-07-31 14:40:57 kachnuv_ocasek
    Yeah, sure, another method of curing procrastination. Making the situation even worse in fact.

  1158. From To Do to Will Do: Using the Case Method to Defeat Procrastination 2011-07-31 15:32:02 mkramlich
    I have a less convoluted way of beating procrastination: just do it!

    Because if it's important enough to you you'll make it happen. If you don't, you don't, and perhaps it was not meant to be because there's something you lack. Excuses can be endless and fractal if you dissect them enough. Just make it happen. And once you do, you may find it satisfying enough in comparison that you'll be more likely to take initiative again in the future, creating a virtuous circle. But in short:

    Just do it!

  1159. Reading Hacker News is not launching 2011-08-01 16:51:51 chemmail
    Like most procrastinators, 90% is done in the last night. A good way to give you this boost is to tell someone about your X you are building and you will show them tomorrow or next week or whatevers. Now you have to get it up and at least decent so you don't look like a fool. It will probably put you on overdrive.

  1160. How to Launch Your Startup Idea for Less than $5K 2011-08-02 03:32:57 codeodor
    > 1. Exploration & Execution.

    I found myself really liking this section. Unfortunately, I think it was because it helped validate my inner fears that manifest as procrastination.

    Overall, I liked the article, but be wary of using those early stages as a excuse on which to continue doing nothing.

  1161. An iOS Developer Takes on Android 2011-08-02 04:00:47 discreteevent
    Indeed. There is a fine line between sharpening the saw and procrastination. What usually clears it up is drive. It would be handy to have a ghost from our grandparents generation at our shoulder when we are about to go off on another whinge about an imperfect world who says "Get on with it!"

  1162. How to Launch Your Startup Idea for Less than $5K 2011-08-02 06:21:40 eric-hu
    So how do you get around your excuses to do nothing? What have you found to be most effective and least effective? I have some pretty terrible procrastination

  1163. How The Hell Is This My Fault? 2011-08-02 07:26:45 jodrellblank
    I didn't say you were lame or that they were bad points, I was more on the side that (a) you can't always win, (b) if you wait to start until you are sure you can win any situation, you'll be waiting forever.

    We're not really thinking that the AirBnB founders, if asked last year, would have said "don't communicate sensitively to a crime victim" or "good customer service means responding slowly" of "don't work with the police", and now they've been hit by this and learned these lessons they know better, are we?

    Planning to do everything right first time is a common failure mode and procrastination mode, that's all.

  1164. Founders: Burn Your Boats 2011-08-02 23:16:43 larrik
    Preparation is also a good way to waste your time procrastinating when you really need to be bold and charge into battle as an entrepreneur.

    "Well, gee. If I stay at my day job another 6 months, think of all the extra runway my startup will have!"

    "We can't release now! Feature X isn't even ready yet!"

    I would say preparedness and entrepreneurship aren't automatically great advice.

    When it comes to actual war (and other direct competitions, such as a negotiation), though, the advice is spot on. Preparation is how the US got Bin Laden from an (arguably) foreign nation without a single casualty, even after losing a helicopter in the process.

  1165. Founders: Burn Your Boats 2011-08-02 23:28:18 JanezStupar
    It took Steve Jobs twenty years to prepare sufficiently.

    And procrastination is by no means preparation. However delaying your startup for six years might be a smart move if you have a strategic plan on how to improve your odds.

    >"We can't release now! Feature X isn't even ready yet!": If the feature is core aspect of a product then by no means you should launch today. But if it is not a core or important feature then why did you even bother with its design and implementation.

    These are by no means easy questions. And there are no easy answers. Thats why it is always wise to be realistic about ones goals and prepare. Doing your first startup might also just be a preparation and if it fails you should not back off - but realize that you failed since you were insufficiently prepared.

    Dietrich Mateschitz was 40 years old when he founded Red Bull - and his life was (unknowingly) one big preparation for the Big One.

  1166. How to Launch Your Startup Idea for Less than $5K 2011-08-03 00:25:46 codeodor
    I'm still learning to identify my sources of procrastination, so I'm not sure I've found anything effective yet.

    On the other hand, I have done a couple of test/soft-launches this year, and have lost my fear of failing on those. That's more than I had done in the prior 10 years of being a programmer with aspirations, so it's progress.

    I still struggle with probably doing too much before testing an idea, but I also struggle with doing too little, so I'm trying to find a balance. Learning, still, really.

  1167. Windows 8 to feature stripped-down kernel, built-in virtualization 2011-08-04 00:49:26 brudgers
    Some things will - as they are today - be stored in the cloud [edit or its local equivalent using WCF]. While bookmarks may be one of them - many of the items I bookmark when I'm actually working on a project rather than procrastinating on HN et al., are pretty project specific. And of course, having HN et al. in its own virtual machine would allow all those idea bookmarks to be stored in one place relevant to their useful context rather than relevant to a file system which I have to keep organized (assuming I bother with organization).

    Most people don't keep their filing system very organized and when it comes to bookmarks even less so. Context is often a more efficient way of recalling what you did than a directory name - particularly over longer periods of time such as several months.

    And of course, you can multitask across virtual machines - I often have two or three open at once because I need access to software which runs on a legacy version of Windows and I run Facebook in it's own exclusive VM.

    At the same time I will be working on a project on the host OS. And there is no need for interconnection between any of them.

    And VM's solve a lot of legacy issues, cross platform compatibility issues (e.g. windows phone apps) and Microsoft has already developed methods of integrating VM's with the host (see Windows Virtual PC and XP mode integration).

  1168. Designing command-line interfaces 2011-08-06 05:52:05 Goladus
    Yeah most of my scripts use OptParse and I'm procrastinating the rewrite for newer versions of python. I think I may just use getopt, which isn't going anywhere, and roll my own extensions if I need them.

  1169. Ask HN: understanding software contractors 2011-08-06 14:32:34 standardminds
    software contractor here who occasionally hires other contractors:

    IMO the key to contracting is breaking up everything into very small milestones and releasing payment on completion of the the milestone. Start with a very small part of a project and set aside a few hundred dollars. The milestone should be due in 2 - 5 days with some penalty or even no payment for being late. Pay immediately if possible and have the contract go to the next larger milestone for more money. It's best if the first milestone doesn't require wading though much old code. If the contractor can't complete the small milestone on time, they won't be able to do the bigger milestones. Let them know this ahead of time. If possible, only sign the contract for the first milestone. Break up a big opaque risk into a series of very small, closely monitored risks.

    1. could be that your SW is too bad or complex but not enough info. One thing with references is that being a good contractor is very different than being a good programmer. Scheduling and client communication/management are actually\nthe hardest part of working as a contractor. It could be as simple as the contractor being talented but not working hard enough or procrastinating on the project.

    2. If I had to guess he's probably not on vacation. He's probably working on another project with a client that either pays better or he has a longer/better relationship with. This happens all the time. As a contractor, there have been days where I've gotten 10 proposal for \ndoing work. If you're not careful with scheduling it's very easy to take on too much work. Again breaking things up into very small milestones with clear due dates can save this. Make sure you do your part and pay the contractor immediately.Your project will become the "emergency" \njob that he pushes others aside to complete since the path forward is clear and he knows he'll get the money right away. If it's on elance or odesk let them know you'll have to give them a bad review if they can't fix it. Don't give them a bad review on your personal blog as it will make good devs nervous about working with you. Clients who have had problems with contractors in the past are likely to have them in the future as well.

    3. You're looking in the wrong places or you're not paying enough or you're scheduling the job incorrectly. I have some reliable contractors I can recommend if you ping me nm1161@gmail.com

  1170. WebGL Path Tracing 2011-08-10 21:18:02 hebejebelus
    That's fantastic. I've been meaning to get into WebGL (perhaps make some sort of tech demo game with it). I've held off because of performance issues (also, I admit, I'm not too excited about dealing with shaders).

    I think I should stop procrastinating now and actually do something with it. This is very exciting!

  1171. Ask HN: 0 - 6 months of programming, what milestones should I be accomplishing? 2011-08-13 11:57:56 Jach
    My first piece of advice is to ignore what everyone tells you and find a path you're comfortable with. :) What's been hard for me is deciding when to explore and when to exploit. With a full time programming job that's mainly applying my knowledge, not doing real research, I have much less time to explore, but back in high school and the summers in between I had lots of free time to learn a little of this and that and play around a lot. I started with a PHP+MySQL book and for the first couple of months or so just plowed through it, typing in the examples manually or doing my own variations of the topics. When I learned about the "ternary operator" I made a web page that just printed out alternating rows of color.

    My second piece of advice is to find a problem, ideally a bunch of problems, that you want to solve and that programming can help you solve. Solve them. Definition of problem: something to solve. ;P e.g. a program that prints the Bottles of Beer lyrics out, increase the start number until you can crash/slow down your computer or server, build a blog website, image gallery, video game with PyGame, or in text, native QT app calculator, project Euler math problems, robots, whatever. The key is you have to have a desire to work on whatever you're working on. When you lose that desire for your current project, procrastinate by switching to a different project.

    My third piece of advice is to learn how to use the git source control manager and interfacing with GitHub. Then troll some Python repositories ( https://github.com/search?type=Repositories&language=... ), find some with an open issues list and an issue that isn't assigned to a particular person, fix the issue if you want/can, and submit a pull request. Now you can say you've contributed to open source software!

    Edit: if you really have no ideas of your own, which I'd find hard to believe, you can do a small project I've been meaning to get around to for a while so I can blog about it. (I blog mostly to my past self.) Implement a clone of the game Pong three times in an imperative, Object-Oriented, and functional style of programming.

  1172. A Theory of Everything (Sort of) 2011-08-14 11:14:46 tryitnow
    Yes, that's my general reaction to Friedman too. This article is a bit better than his usual thin gruel though, it mostly points out the obvious but does time things neatly together. It's worth a quick read if you're trying to procrastinate which is apparently my main goal this evening.

  1173. Plea HN: perfectionism is ruining my life 2011-08-14 23:50:54 Isamu
    As psychologist Piers Steel points out in his book The Procrastination Equation, the problem is not perfectionism but impulse control.

    Even though you have no problem getting started initially, the label of procrastination applies. Here is my summary of the book:

    Book: The Procrastination Equation, Piers Steel (psychologist), 2011

      www.procrastinus.com
    Perfectionism does not lead to procrastination - this is well studied. It may be that they are thought to be linked because of the cases where there is this discrepancy in behavior. Procrastination is a result of impulsiveness. Self-control and delaying gratification are key to controlling procrastination.

    Procrastinators suffer from

      * weak impulse control
  * lack of persistence
  * lack of work discipline
  * lack of time management skill
  * inability to work methodically
    Motivation can be modeled by

      (expectancy * value) / (impulsiveness * delay)

  * The numerator is Expected Utility Theory in economics
  * Expectancy is the perceived likelihood of reward or success
  * Value is the perceived value of the reward
  * Delay is the perceived delay in receiving the reward
  * Impulsiveness is the tendency to (irrationally) pursue immediate reward instead
    Impulsiveness is moderated by the prefrontal cortex

      * the prefrontal cortex is late to develop in humans,   
  impulse control develops slowly in children
  * adults with damage to the prefrontal cortex may be 
  markedly more impulsive
    Temptation - defeating impulse control

    Important factors:

      * Proximity to temptation is a major factor in impulsiveness
  (low barriers to gratification)
  * Variable schedule of reinforcement causes a robust response
    Modern society offers many more sources of temptation

    Expectancy - optimism, expectation of success

      * too much pessimism causes procrastination
  low expectation of success keeps us from starting
  * too much optimism causes procrastination
  unrealistic ease of success may delay starting until the last moment
    Techniques for improving optimism:

      * success spirals - progressive series of successes build confidence (e.g. earning scout badges). regularly stretching  your limits is important to teach yourself confidence in your ability to tackle something difficult
  * vicarious victory - relating to someones success story, finding inspiration in books, movies, inspirational speakers, joining a group of inspirational people
  * wish fulfillment - visualization of success and contrasting with where you are now. Visualization that only focuses on the goal may drain motivation to complete the necessary steps. As you visualize attaining the goal and then contrasting the current situation, maintain your optimism so that you can translate this visualization into a plan of action.
  * Plan for the worst, hope for the best - develop strategies to recover from falling back into old habits.  Anticipate temptations and find ways to counter them.
    Value - the perceived value of completing a task

      * create a chain of goals that helps connect less pleasurable tasks to the ultimate desired goal
  * frame goals positively, rather than goals of avoiding something negative
  * make games out of tasks - avoid boredom
  * justify tasks by connecting them to your goals
  * recognize your available energy, and plan around it - schedule difficult tasks for your morning and mid-day peak performance (likely between 10 and 2)
  * commit to a regular schedule of exercise and sleep
  * snack as needed - avoid hunger
  * make sleep predictable, with a regular wind-down routine
  * respect your limitations
  * as an antidote to task avoidance, identify and do related tasks that are less intimidating - whittle down the main task until it is less intimidating
  * reward yourself for accomplishments
    Impulsiveness

      * identify and put temptations out of reach
  * satisfy your needs first before they become a distraction.
  * schedule your leisure time ahead - work harder knowing your leisure is ensured
  * add disincentives to your temptations, a penalty - e.g. a personal tax for infractions
  * mentally contaminate temptations, making them seem less attractive in your mind
  * eliminate cues that trigger temptation - e.g. keep your workspace clean
    Criticizes S.M.A.R.T. goals (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-anchored)

      * specific is redundant with both measurable and time-anchored
  * attainable is redundant with realistic
  * missing key concepts that are important to effective goals
    Instead, goals must be

      * challenging (expectancy not too high - too easy)
  * meaningful (high value)
  * framed in specific terms so that you know when you have to achieve them - what you have to do and when you have to be done
  * if long-term, then broken down into a series of short-term objectives. particularly daunting goals should start with a small goal to kick off.
  * organized into routines that occur regularly at the same time and place. A predictable work schedule is important.

  1174. A writer leaves Microsoft Word 2011-08-15 08:21:00 gallerytungsten
    re: "Many people agree that revision 5.1a, specifically, was the best version of Word that Microsoft has ever shipped."

    Fortunately, my Ancient Powerbook still runs version 5.1. Eminently usable, and far less annoying than the Office 2008 version. Among other travesties, the current version will often refuse to select a single word, obstinately selecting another word, next to the word you want to select (and delete) and thus deprecating one's deletion experience to repeated tapping of the Delete key.

    As a side benefit, the Powerbook won't load almost all web sites, thus removing one obvious procrastination temptation.

  1175. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 18:26:11 camperman
    Of all the anti-procrastinating advice I've ever read, this is the most succinct and the most helpful. Thank you.

  1176. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 18:28:41 peteretep
    http://www.amazon.com/Self-Discipline-10-Days-Thinking-Doing... <-- this book pretty much sorted out my procrastination problem

  1177. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 18:33:58 janjan
    This is not true for myself at all!

    Actually I think in my case all the stuff you read about procrastination does not really aplly to my procrastination:

    I think I am one of the worlds worst procastinators and it took me about 10 years to figure out what might be the main reason for my behaviour. It has nothing to with all the stuff you read in all these procrastination books. It's not about the fear of failing, it's not about the fear of winning, it's not some kind of rebellion against some outside force as you pointed out. It's something completly different:

    I never learned to do (unpleasant) stuff!

    When I look back on my childhood now, it's very obvious what went wrong: I grew up as a very very spoiled kid which never had to do anything "unpleasant". Did not want to clean up my room? No problem. Did not want to help my parents with preparing lunch? no problem. Did not want to do homework? no problem.

    From all those years growing up I can remember only one occasion at which my mother tried to force me to do something. But since I was already 12 or so that this time, she gave up after 10 minutes.

    I never learned to endure the "stress" or "pain" of all those unpleasant things I have to do (washing clothing, cooking, ...) so it's very hard for me to do them intstead of just browsing the internet and get instant satisfaction.

    In combination with some above average intelligence and a very big portion of luck I was still able to study with good grades and I'm currently in my second year of a PhD thesis. For me it's hell on earth! Giving lectures, preparing papers, filling out forms, applying for grants, ... I postpone all of this stuff all the time not because I am afraid i could not do them or because they are pushed on me from the outside. I postpone them because I never learned to actually _do_ unpleasant stuff.

    Does this makes sense? English is not my first language and the topic is quite hard to describe.

  1178. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 18:44:16 makeramen
    Very well written Edo, thanks! While I disagree that this applies to all cases of procrastination, it definitely applies to many, and was very eye (and mind) opening to read.

    Curious if you have other writings posted anywhere? I'd love to read more about your thoughts on other topics.

  1179. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 18:52:37 WilhelmJ
    There are tons of interesting books I bought, but I have kept on procrastinating reading, since I know that I can always read them later. That feeling IMHO - that I own something and can process it later - is major cause of procrastination for me.

    same way my browser windows are a mess with 70+ tabs open. Most of them are only open because the content is too interesting to close and I am too lazy to read!

  1180. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 18:55:10 Meai
    Yes, although I think procrastination (just like any psychological problem) is very complex, and I fear that we waste too much time trying to analyze these, therefore making the saying "just do it" or "suck it up" an appropiate response, which as you rightly discovered, got lost on modern parents. Sure, there may be some combination of emotional and logical constructs that will perfectly explain why I'm procrastinating..but then what? If logical reasons could convince us to work, we'd all be working at our top performance.

  1181. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 18:55:53 Arias
    This is the first time I've heard someone speak of procrastination in this light, have to say its impressive. "Regaining mastery of your own fate" makes almost too much sense haha. It's eerily true, kid throwing the tantrum is a good example. We don't feel like doing it, but ;now we have to, so we build up stress and despise the fact that we have to. Very good advice!

  1182. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 18:58:39 munchhausen
    "The reason why human-beings procrastinate is to feel in control of their life."

    Agree completely. Having said this, your suggested solution is incredibly hard to put into practice for many procrastinators out there.

    I have bills to pay and a family to support, and working for the Man seems like the only option, at the moment, to meet my financial obligations. I don't particularly enjoy my day job, and I wouldn't do it if I didn't have to. To maintain an illusion that I am not just a slave tied to a very short leash, I procrastinate. Ignoring my email inbox full of pending tasks and spending the day outside in the sunshine instead can feel very liberating, but obviously it doesn't solve anything, and doesn't get me a step closer to greater freedom.

    "life as a sequence of awesomely fun and exciting things" sounds great, but the reality is that only a very small percentage of people are lucky enough to lead this kind of life.

  1183. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 18:59:40 TeMPOraL
    Wow.

    That actually resonates with me much better than anything I've read on procrastination so far. I am burning lot of my mental cycles on thinking about my own procrastination, and it crossed my mind that when I start to do things that I'm (in broad sense) forced to - by my boss, lecturer or even myself, I feel like loosing some kind of self-awareness, control of my life... I never pin-pointed the feeling exactly, but it resonates closely with what you wrote.

    Also, I'm so used to my personal GTD-like productivity management methods that I sometimes feel I'm not able to think or work without using pen & paper or Emacs for organizing my thoughts. Now, the thing I'm worried about is that it doesn't really feel like I have 'boosted my cognitive skills' or whatever - it feels like I'm so handicaped that I can't think without help of external tools. I look around and see people (that look) smarter and more successful than me, and they don't seem to be using any productivity tricks at all. Maybe it's [something]-bias [1], but it gets me really worried. Anyone on HN felt something similar?

    [1] - need to catch up with LessWrong on that ;).

  1184. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 19:00:23 petenixey
    HN will never see a more eminently clickable post than one titled, "Dear Procrastinator"

  1185. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 19:05:04 silverbax88
    I'm sorry to disagree, but I do. My own battle with procrastination is completely due to laziness. No one likes to do difficult things, and sometimes even things we kind of enjoy. The reality is that we, as humans, never procrastinate when we really, really want something. Not once in my life did I have to "trick" myself into playing a video game a few extra minutes or watch a big basketball game.

    In short, we accomplish what we want to accomplish (meaning, the 'fun' stuff), unless we push ourselves.

  1186. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 19:12:34 olh
    tldr: "The reason why human-beings procrastinate is to feel in control of their life."

    The other parts are contradictions.

  1187. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 19:13:24 janjan
    I think there are some reasons for this:

    - I am always very lucky. Even if I put almost no effort in any kind of project it always comes out at least ok.

    - My bachelor course was more or less a joke. The description of the single classes always sounded totally impressive but in the end most it was just rubbish and very easy.

    - The master course I attended was a pure joke. If I had put any effort in it it would have been possible to pass it with almost perfect grade.

    - I got my PhD position through pure luck and some personal connections.

    - I am VERY good at pretending that I am actually working

    So all in all I just perfected the art of procrastination. For example, when I was in the military service (not US), I more or less had to smuggle myself into a local military base for a few weeks because I was just to lazy to get a new id card.

  1188. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 19:19:58 edo
    Silverbax, thanks for your comment.

    What makes you really want to play a video game and dislike doing the dishes? Is it something objective about the thing to be done, or does it have to do with your mental framing of the task at hand? I feel it is the latter. A friend of mine reviews video games professionally, and he procrastinates on playing games. I think it's because he is told to play games. An authority figure is pushing him to do something and he rebels by putting off playing.

    Pushing ourselves only leads to ourselves pushing back.

    Cheers, Edo

  1189. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 19:20:30 sireat
    The OP's point is a good one but it is not the whole story. People procrastinate for various reasons, as others have already attested.

    Personally, I found a simple habit cured me of 50% of HN and Reddit addiction and let me work on things I had procrastinated for a long time:

    First thing when I do every morning when I sit down at a computer is e-mail a simple TODO list to myself and also send a report of what I did on yesterdays TODO list.

    This e-mail is very simple, a few items and simple descriptions. Only caveat is making the items "actionable" that is something you can do, not something you can just try or consider.

    Also, if I do not complete every item on the list, I do not beat myself over it.

    This takes a few minutes of time and was very easy to make a habit of using a Don't Break a Chain technique. After a week or so, it doesn't feel forced at all anymore.

  1190. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 19:21:17 janjan
    "[...] therefore making the saying "just do it" or "suck it up" an appropiate response, which as you rightly discovered, got lost on modern parents"

    I had a discussion with my mother about this. To make a long story short she raised me this way because her father was a very very strict person. She had to work all the time in the household and therefore did did not have a nice childhood at all.

    When I was born she decided that i should have a much better childhood... The result: I had a perfect childhood (from the viewpoint of a child) but now I am plagued with some serious procrastination problem. In contrast my, my mother is one of the most organized and reliable persons I know.

  1191. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 19:24:33 TeMPOraL
    I'll second janjan's comment. I can completely believe that you can get through a degree being a total procrastinator.

    Somehow during the course of my university I've perfected my skills of presenting projects. I recently realized that I can get even a totally half-baked, barely working project to get a good grade, just by talking and spending an hour more on design than everybody else[1]. It wasn't until recently that my friend pointed out that I've learned to subconsciously depend on this and thus not working hard on anything.

    Also, I find doing presentations, talking, doing design touches, or implementing weird things (like animations in MATLAB[2]) - pretty much anything except what I'm supposed to be doing at the moment - much more pleasant, much more fun. And I see that you can get far this way at university...

    [1] - it's not about faking things, etc. - it's that people really underestimate how much depends on the general 'look and feel' of software, and the way it's presented.

    [2] - did you know that MATLAB plot can give you stable 60FPS? ;)

  1192. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 19:34:24 jodrellblank
    That doesn't seem to answer anything. If human beings procrastinate to feel in control, what of soldiers? They can be happy and fulfilled, work damn hard, and be only doing exactly what they are told.

    The next question, for you perhaps, is "what do you fear so much about the idea of not being in control of your life?"

  1193. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 19:47:22 silverbax88
    Anything that we perceive as hard or boring is a task for procrastination. We simply don't want to do it because it isn't fun. I am not a games tester; therefore video games are still fun. But when I was first starting as a programmer, I did it because I was having a blast, and it made me successful. It has nothing to do with being told to do something, and it has everything to do with our brains - especially creative people - being bored and only wanting to satisfy our ID. We really do want to dream all day. But as I've gotten older I've learned to reign that in and also how to balance it out.

    We must push ourselves if we want to improve. We must ask ourselves the hard questions. I have often called this 'throwing myself to the wolves' when I embark on a new endeavor...I know it will be hard. I know I will fail, badly. I know the established community will tear into me. But I will push myself and keep fighting and eventually, what was once hard will become easy.

  1194. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 19:54:43 gexla
    Going along with the thread that was started here.

    When I play a video game, it's the game I want to play at the time I want to play it and with the goal that I picked for that session.

    If I have to review a video game then I have all these choices largely made for me. The goal is to review the game rather than go for whatever I might want out of the game.

    The reality of our lives force us to do things which don't always align with what we really want to do. That's when I procrastinate.

  1195. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 20:10:23 usedtolurk
    I would be careful about jumping to that conclusion. Perhaps you would procrastinate just as much if you had been forced to do unpleasant chores. No way of knowing for sure.

  1196. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 20:12:41 prawn
    I procrastinate because I can get away with it. Any solution for me is derived entirely from that.

  1197. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 20:41:27 adnanymously
    Eckhart Tolle's ideas have a deep similarity of meaning with your idea: that the mind is part of you, and you are not defined by your mind. You need to control it just like any other part of your body. This concept has helped me immensely in casting off procrastination.

  1198. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 20:43:12 Jebdm
    At the risk of repeating myself: the "opinion" he is expressing is actually a theory of procrastination. When you make broad statements like "the reason why human-beings procrastinate is to feel in control of their life", you are declaring your belief about why a widespread phenomena occurs of the type which is either right or wrong (or partially right).

    Making such statements without providing any evidence for them is not only intellectually vacuous (since if there is no need to provide evidence, then any claim can be made), but it leads to bias in others where people assume that because an argument was not made, that the information is "well known" or the person providing the information is an expert.

    There's nothing wrong with sharing opinion. I'm guessing that the reason he came to the conclusions he did was based on personal experience (probably mixed with some reading); if so, then he shouldn't have said "the reasons why human-beings procrastinate is to feel in control of their life", he should've said "I noticed that I seem[ed] to procrastinate not because of (...), but because I didn't feel in control of my life". If his evidence wasn't introspective, then he should have shared whatever his evidence was. If he didn't have any evidence other than plausibility, then he should've framed what he was saying as a hypothesis (and ideally still explained his reasoning).

    You don't have to back up everything you say with scientific evidence, but you shouldn't make sweeping claims, especially in fields like this one where the jury is still out, without either providing evidence or qualifying your claim. (And I don't buy the "it's too much extra writing" argument; he could've inserted "I have a hypothesis:" after "Dear procrastinator" and had it completely covered.)

    And no, I'm not just being nitpicky; a number of well-known biases like the primacy effect, confirmation bias, the "trusting the confident statement" bias I mentioned earlier (which I can't remember the name of for the life of me), and wishful thinking (in this case, wishing for a solution to procrastination) mean that humans are very vulnerable to forming irrational beliefs when ideas are presented in this way. An ounce of prevention, in the form of stating the reason you believe what you believe at least when you're making new or potentially controversial claims, is surely not too much to ask given how easy it is and how far it goes.

  1199. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 20:50:54 asclepiades
    I think we should also discuss two widely recognized fears which, in my experience, are frequently related to procrastination: fear of failure and fear of success.

    Both usually go, somewhat amusingly, hand in hand, but I think they should be linked to the "mastery" discussed in the topic. Fear of both failure and success are, in short, fear of change, fear of losing control, fear of not being a master anymore.

    It is indeed quite common to trade a, sometimes illusory, feeling of easiness with the known current situation for the potential uneasiness of an unknown situation given as one the possible outcomes of the failure/success. Particularly in the last case, I have seen that it is not unusual to rationalize that we have already gained achieved should not be "gambled" against the changes that would result from the success of the activity we are procrastinating.

    In short, the "I'll do it tomorrow" is usually a "I'll do it when I will feel confortable with outcomes I now consider most likely". I personally have discovered that focusing in the positive aspect of the outcomes I consider most likely, even in case of failure, is usually my best weapon against procrastination.

  1200. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 20:59:02 Jem
    I grew up having to pull my weight. I'm one of 6 - it was just not possible for us all to get the attention we "deserved" without helping out. I was cooking meals at the age of 9 and helping out with the laundry shortly after. I cleaned my room, helped look after the pets, babysat younger siblings, etc.

    And yet I STILL hate having to wash clothes and cook for my family. I know that they need doing, but I too will often procrastinate instead. I would rather be at my computer than at the cooker, at my daughter's side than at the dishwasher...

    Is it my mother's fault? Did she push me too hard, or not enough? No, it is MY laziness that is the problem.

    Stop looking for a cause, looking for someone else to blame: you are responsible for your own path.

  1201. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 21:08:44 toddmorey
    I'm not lazy, I'm not too proud to do mundane things, and I don't feel others control my life. (How would that last perspective explain procrastinating on a personal project like a painting?) I didn't understand procrastination until I understood it from this perspective (and I imagine a lot of the folks on HN are similar): I procrastinate because I'm a perfectionist. If it's not finished, it can't be judged. There's more I can tweak! Once something is turned in, published, or launched, it stands as an example of my best effort. It wears my name. And that scares the hell out of me.

  1202. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 21:11:03 ctdonath
    "The act of rebelling against an oppressor, an authorative figure telling you what to do, is your way of regaining mastery over your own fate."

    Surely you jest.

    Oh, sure, some people will procrastinate as rebellion.

    Just as sure, some people procrastinate a simple matter of choosing from a menu: choosing steak over fish is for some a simple preference, not weighed down with rebellion against diet or splurging against budget. At a given moment I have the choice to do interesting thing X or less interesting thing Y; I choose X not out of the oppression of why Y is an option at all, but just because it is what I would rather do.

    You may struggle against authority an procrastinate as an act of rebellion. Others because it's just what they would rather do.

  1203. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 21:32:40 wisty
    Procrastination has many causes. I expect this is because humans haven't often needed to motivate themselves, as they have often been motivated by fear and hunger. Above $5 or $10 a day, basic nutrition and shelter is not an issue.

    Here's a few reasons why I think some people procrastinate. Mix and match:

    - The need to feel control. - Some urge to punish or test someone (a parent?)

    - Perfectionism (high standards, the need to over-achieve, or egotism), or a fear of being judged. If it's not done, nobody has to see your crappy work.

    - Laziness. Sometimes an issue for people who can pass without working.

    - Habit. See all the above.

    - Dopamine addiction. The internet has given rise to the junk food equivalent of achievement.

    - Unrealistic expectations, leading to a lack of motivation. Sorry, but they lied when they said the course / job you are getting into is the most important one in the world. They say that about every course / job.

  1204. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 21:32:40 hetman
    My tendency for perfectionism also contributes but for an entirely different reason; I often feel it's hard to motivate my self because of the increased effort yielding diminishing returns. Yet I know once I get started the perfectionist can take over and I end up burning a lot of time with not much to show for it.

    In many ways I sympathise with the OP's point of view to a large extent, while don't really understand yours. That makes me wonder if there's some even more fundamental reason that causes procrastination or whether it can be just different things for different people.

  1205. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 21:49:07 bobx11
    The Now Habit is a book that explains that exact idea... I do procrastinate a bit less after reading that book.

  1206. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 22:05:36 polyfractal
    You could also argue that Einstein was procrastinating from dealing with the hardships in his life by immersing himself in physics. He was using physics as an escape from the troubles of his life (job, parents, etc).

    Not that it really matters, but it is useful to look at the situation in both lights. There have certainly been situations where I stopped procrastinating on one task because a newer, more unpleasant task presented itself. "Boy, I bet I should clean my room instead of deal with these taxes!"

  1207. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 22:43:45 amorphid
    I have two forms of procrastination:

    1. Virtual procrastination. This happens when I want to achieve more than I can physically do. The end of the work week is here, yet I don't have the sense to just let go and pick it up again next week. I feel burdened by my inability to complete the surplus tasks.

    2. Vanilla procrastination. I hired an assistant. She helps me stay on track. I am a fan of this.

  1208. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 23:53:37 Tichy
    Can you learn to do unpleasant stuff? What does that mean - that your will is broken? Unpleasant stuff is after all unpleasant.

    I managed to see some positive things, for example when I do the dishes I enjoy the clean state of the room afterwards. Or in general I try to see cleaning as a workout. But you can only trick the mind to a degree...

    If procrastination really is there to prevent us from doing stupid tasks, maybe it is not desirable to learn to do unpleasant stuff. It would mean circumventing that protection.

    Thinking about it, maybe the way to learn doing unpleasant stuff is really to look at the bigger picture and why it makes sense to do the unpleasant stuff. If it doesn't make sense, not doing it might be the right decision.

  1209. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 23:55:57 Tichy
    But did you ever really only want to play video games or relax in other ways, or did you sometimes really want to do "real" things? I think your statement becomes tricky quickly once you start thinking about what it means to really want something (unless you define it as things you can do without procrastinating).

    Attributing one's own procrastination to mere laziness could also be a way to avoid facing the real issues.

  1210. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-15 23:56:44 pknerd
    Usually I procrastinate when I don't have a clear goal or not sure about it.

  1211. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 00:07:44 umjames
    What about scheduling some time (daily or weekly) for doing the things that you would normally consider your procrastination activity? Has anyone here tried that? How did it work out? The more details you can provide, the better.

  1212. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 00:13:04 orillian
    A soldier is programmed to be the way they are, their lack of procrastination is beat into them as a response to fear, primarily the fear of death. Do what youre told or your squad mates will die, your commanding officer will die, and by extension "you" will die. Death is one of the ultimate motivators.

    That said you get a soldier outside the army life and he finds ways and methods of procrastination that rival the rest of us.

    I have always fought with procrastination, and it always has boiled down to feeling forced to do things. If something is not happening in the moment, if its not feel spontaneous then I balk at doing it.

    The analogy of rebelling against a virtual or fictitious oppressor self is very fitting, for me, and my natural reaction to this internal dictator is only heightened when it is influenced by an external entity.

    I might internally procrastinate about doing dishes for example, but if my wife dares to even suggest or ask if Id be willing... that procrastination will flare into an outright rebellion against doing that THING that is required of me. Not saying I externalize the conflict, but mentally that part of me that was causing me to procrastinate is now engaged in guerrilla warfare.

    My morning was just ambushed by this small bit of writing btw. I'm "supposed" to be doing some programming you know. Deadlines are looming, people are getting anxious and I'm writing about my penchant for procrastination. ;)

    O.

  1213. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 00:26:08 dreamisnot
    I think that procrastinating is beliving there is an easier way to reach your real goals. If your real goal is to enjoy and do nothing procrastinating is the right way to go.

  1214. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 00:46:56 joshklein
    There is not a singular cause for procrastination. I've mentioned it many times on HN, but I think it's again relevant to recommend "Procrastination" by Burka & Yuen.[1]

    Half the book is spent helping you investigate the root cause or causes of your procrastination, which can include fear about control (losing OR gaining it), as well as fear of success, fear of failure, fear of separation, fear of attachment. They discuss the influence of family and culture, gender, and the role of ADD & executive dysfunction.

    The second half of the book is a practical guide to coping with your procrastination and habitualizing better behaviors.

    If you're serious about procrastination, my only advice is to listen to the experimentally & research-backed psychiatrists.

    [1] http://www.amazon.com/Procrastination-Why-You-What-About/dp/...

  1215. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 01:00:08 Killah911
    Just got done reading "The Now Habit", and the book concurs with this prognosis. The book also suggest several ways to tackle these issues that cause procrastination. Anybody have any recommendations/pitfalls from "The Now Habit"?

  1216. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 01:38:25 aaronf
    We've built LazyMeter to help with procrastination. We think the main cause of procrastination is an overhwelming to-do list, and therefore a lack of focus. When people know what they're doing, and have a goal for the day that they're working towards, they get a lot more done. I left Microsoft to build LazyMeter because I was a procrastinator and I thought I was lazy; I've learned that I was wrong - I was just overwhelmed. The idea that people are inherently lazy is absolutely wrong. www.lazymeter.com

  1217. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 02:16:55 aterimperator
    I like how this meshes with Cal Newport's ideas on procrastination. As I understand it, he views procrastination as the mind's natural tendency to avoid things it doesn't trust: that crappy plan you came up with for getting that project done? Yeah, you don't trust it, so why would you actually try to implement it?

  1218. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 02:19:47 mc32
    I think, for me, procrastination has to do with projecting complication into things. So, if I want to cook something new, I imagine needing to find the perfect recipe with the perfect ingredients, for example.

    But, then, there are times when I just decide to do it even if I'm missing ingredients or have not come across a recipe which makes sense to me. Powering thru.

    I think for the video game tester, if I were them, I'd project difficulty onto it. Finding the bugs, etc. Feeling like I might not be up to finding anything interesting. It's a bit of a fear of failing, in a way, till I felt, "I'm up to the task now."

  1219. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 02:22:59 olalonde
    Reading all these comments, I'm starting to believe that something like Alcohol Anonymous would not be a bad idea for chronic procrastinators... Procrastinators Anonymous?

  1220. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 03:26:22 adimitrov
    Dear Procrastinator,

    Go read up on the topic of procrastination, because it's actually an interesting field of research within psychology. I know you want to, because that way, you can procrastinate even more!

    I'm appalled that nobody has yet mentioned http://procrastination.ca — home of the Uni Ottawa procrastination research group. Also home of the excellent iProcrastinate podcast: http://iprocrastinate.libsyn.com/

    It turns out that procrastination is an immensely complex and multi-faceted issue, and no one single solution is going to help everybody. I like the OPs advice, but don't think it applies to every procrastinator! Also, it might be the right advice for you if you want to combat your procrastination, but it won't help you combat other "bad" aspects of your psyche, and eventually, you're going to fall into your old habits.

    I'm talking out of experience here: I originally went to a psychiatrist because my life wasn't working out anymore (it was really that general.) Several (mostly inconclusive) diagnoses and 2 years of psychotherapy later, I feel like I'm finally starting to grasp why and how my life went wrong.

    Not everybody who procrastinates has serious mental issues. But just as a hint: if, for a prolonged period of time, say, a year, you aren't able to get back on track, or you aren't able to fulfill your dreams or expectations, try a therapist, if you can afford it. (I happen to live in a country with free health care, so I didn't have to deal with that, gladly.)

  1221. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 03:37:16 tryitnow
    I find that preventing myself from reading HN works wonders for reducing procrastination.

  1222. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 04:11:21 Sthorpe
    The simple truth about procrastination is that it happens because you delay your happiness. The act that you are procrastinating or putting off is motivated by a risk of your final reward.

  1223. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 04:27:30 jrisg
    I'm not a procrastinator, I'm an anticipation junkie.

  1224. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 05:25:25 pacomerh
    My version of procrastination is not as simple as 'I'm lazy, I'll do it later'. I think the whole problem is in starting. Starting is key, reason many of use will procrastinate is because we know that we will enter a mode where our muscles (mental or physical) will not be idle anymore. Moving from idle to movement is very hard for our minds sometimes, its deceiving. For example, You are sitting down on our couch watching TV and your girlfriend asks you to get something from the kitchen, you know is super simple but you wont do it immediately, because just standing up puts you a little wall of effort that is impeding you from doing it quickly, but you know that if you where standing up it would be much easier. In terms of work, in many cases people don't start things because their environment is not setup, you have to open these files, close these other ones and enter that different mindset where you are not idling anymore. For me, if you beat the "starting" process you are on your way to getting lots done. So in other words, automating your starting environment to avoid that change of hot water to cold can be your key to beating procrastination.

  1225. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 05:43:33 janjan
    I totally forgot about this: This whole military thing itself was just the result of procrastination.

    Getting in the military was not the problem. Not getting drawn and doing something alternative was just too much effort for me at that time.

  1226. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 06:02:02 janjan
    > Stop looking for a cause

    Actually I stopped looking for the cause a few years ago because I found it ;)

    For me, finding the cause was very important, because for years I only knew what I did wrong but not why. I read a lot of books and articles about procrastination and never felt any connection to the explanations given there. Am I afraid of failure? Certainly not. am I presured from the outside into doing stuff I do not like? Yeah, sometimes, but this only explains 10% of my procrastination. There are a lot of explanation but none of those I read about did fit my specific behaviour.

    Only after I found the explanation I gave in my original post, everything felt in place and I understood why I am procrastinating. This was a very liberating moment since everythin suddenly made sense and enabled me to work on changing my self.

  1227. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 06:02:13 kevinstubbs
    Many times, my cause for procrastinating is usually due to a sense of fear. That if I start, I will not know what to do, or that the direction I must take on a task is too unclear for me to feel comfortable starting... Many times, the quickest way to fix this is just to write a todo list and do a few items. Every few hours I'll just compile a new list and keep going off that.

  1228. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 06:10:43 jessedhillon
    This thread has devolved into semantics.

    The OP had an original and insightful point about motivation and the process of getting things done. OTOH, you're contradicting him without, I feel, adding anything to the discussion.

    I think you've dismissed his point without showing that you actually considered it. Your conclusion that you're lazy and need prodding is exactly the thing Edo is talking about. He laid out a passionate account of procrastination and self-talk, and compelled his readers to consider that it's not productive to berate one's self for failing to accomplish goals in a timely manner. That perhaps there are better ways to relate to yourself and your goals.

    And your response is essentially, "Nope, I'm lazy -- period, full-stop."

  1229. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 06:34:22 gwern
    > The reason why human-beings procrastinate is to feel in control of their life. The act of rebelling against an oppressor, an authorative figure telling you what to do, is your way of regaining mastery over your own fate.

    The academic literature disagrees that procrastination is about rebelling, and 'efficacy' is only one factor; see http://lesswrong.com/lw/3w3/how_to_beat_procrastination/ and especially its reference section (Luke is great about jailbreaking PDFs and hosting them; I'm slowly reading through those specific PDFs).

  1230. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 07:47:05 lists
    I'd be interested in exploring the ascetic dimension of procrastination.

    That may ring the wrong religious bells but the problem of procrastination in the West was first of all, and there's a lot of documentation surrounding this, a religious problem. Saint Jerome is the first to directly speak of idleness but it's even there in Paul's letters: How do you secure a base of pagans for your Judaic sect in a world swimming with very similar cults and mythologies? Keep em busy with your sect.

    This is related to the consistent demand for communal surveillance stretching throgh all the church fathers; everyone should make sure everyone else is busy being faithful. So I wonder how and at what point that discussion of procrastination transforms into the modern formulation?

  1231. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 08:12:21 RobertHubert
    First off, Nice post. But I disagree slightly out of experience from my own toils with procrastination. I find that I, among many other humans simply want to remain in a state of comfort, whatever that means to each person. Every little thing that deviates one from constant comfort becomes a bump in the state of mind, this bump can be smoothed out in 1 of 2 ways, You can do what you should do, the task at hand, or you can put it off in exchange for a moment of instant gratification, or some distraction action. Now in behavioral theory, there is much less mental strife or tension involve in procrastination (initially), and if the competitor action to inaction a mentally or physically longer journey requiring more energy to complete, the natural response would be the shortest of the two. Instant gratification is powerful! Its a tug-of-war calculation between actions, we will do whatever we can do that's easier or more enjoyable unless we fear the outcome of inaction so much so that it out-ways the positives of the other. We are fundamentally powerless against this. For all you fellow entrepreneurs out there, we simply love building things more than anything else. My procrastination for example consists of working on projects or prototyping a new app. I will default to that when countered with options of going to the movies, eating out, or playing video games. One could argue however that fear of failure motivates one above all others to strive for success. Just my 2 cents.

  1232. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 09:40:36 syntaxfree
    There's something else that's a bit rarer, but not as uncommon as often thought: depersonalization. (Mark my words: depersonalization disorder will be the next ADD/Asperger's/depression as fashionable illness du jour)

    In fact, as acute (non-chronic) depersonalization can be a natural response to an anxiety attack, it may be at the core of why "fear of X" can lead to paralyzing procrastination. I've been debugging mine for years with a psychiatrist now, and it's still not clear that I have DPD itself and not depersonalization as a secondary symptom of one of the many things that are wrong with me, but clearly it plays a huge part.

    I'm kind of oversharing here, but it's in hope that more people are aware that depersonalization is something that exists, like headaches or muscle cramps, and like ADD (and ED to an extent) is a continuum.

  1233. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 09:45:40 silverbax88
    One of the best anti-procrastination hacks I ever heard was right here on HN: When you absolutely cannot get motivated to finish something, make a detailed list of exactly the steps needed to finish the task/project. Once the list is complete you will automatically begin working on the first step.

    Not my idea but it works for me 100% of the time.

  1234. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 10:06:23 dkersten
    I don't think its about if something is hard or boring. I enjoy hard things more than easy things, for example.

    I think its about the goal: doing the dishes stands in the way of the goal of having clean dishes. Playing video games, on the other hand, is the goal itself. Sure, there may be a goal within the game, the same as there will be obstacles and also boring things in the game, but playing the game itself is fun, and a goal in itself. Dishes are purely an obstacle to a goal.

    I find I procrastinate a lot over the obstacles, but rarely over the goal itself.

    Like gexla said (and like you said in the OP), its about being in control. I have little choice in doing the dishes - if I don't do them, they pile up and the place looks dirty, but I never really decide I want to do them. On the other hand, if I play video games, this is my choice and I'm in control. I can just as easily not play. Thats my choice. On the other hand, if, like gexla said, I had to review a game, then its out of my control and I could see myself potentially procrastinating over it (unless it happens to be a game I wanted to play anyway).

  1235. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 14:58:55 sdoctor
    how often do you procrastinate on making the list? by the time you've started making the list, you weren't going to procrastinate any longer anyway.

  1236. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 17:57:33 goblin89
    Hey, your post resonates with me as well.

    I think, the key is to go level up and turn it around. It's not lecturer or boss who force you, it's you who are using them to get something you want. (Here, something you want might include money, knowledge, a degree, but must necessarily include plain having fun (because the validity of any other reason is questionableand when you question the validity of reasons to do something, you're procrastinating).)

    In other words, a problem of procrastination stops to exist once you start enjoying the process. The GTD tools problem gets partly solved as well: you surely are going to get things done if you enjoy the process (although if it's hard to remember all of these things, then some sort of todo list might be handy, you'll know when you start actually needing it).

    I'm not saying this is simple (although I'm sure it is, in some sense) or I know how to do this, simply suggesting that thinking about how to enjoy doing things might be a more productive way to burn your cycles than thinking about how to stop procrastinating. The former problem is clearly stated (which is important, prevents losing focus when you're thinking a lot about it) and is likely simpler to solve.

    * * *

    IMO, many successful people actually do use productivity tricks without knowing it. It's implicit in their life, so they don't talk about it. Many of these tricks may not like like tricks at all. And even if people did talk about them The real productivity trick is not the trick, it's your habit, tricks become truly effective when you do them naturally, without thinking. Pick good habits. [1]

    [1] Relevant: http://lesswrong.com/lw/60y/action_and_habit/

  1237. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 19:27:56 horofox
    Actually, I know the problem:

    It's with our right hemisphere, it's the one of you that is creative, that had hopes as a child to really do something useful for the world, the one that is out of control, seeks freedom.

    The thing is that you aren't doing art/music(that's what people frequently do with it) and art/music is well known as freedom, what you are probably doing is:

    A stupid startup to proove yourself, make some money and shit. Even if you own twitter or facebook, it's still shit compared to art, believe me. It's shit.

    If you were doing something that would eradicate some sickness in africa and would save millions of people or had anything altruist in it, i doubt your heart wouldn't be pumping from the second you started.

    Believe me, it's because what you do is shit, your brain knows and it wants to free you from this bullshit.

    I don't procrastinate to wash dishes for my girlfriend, no matter how much it's boring, i fucking love her. But you know, if i had to wash it for ME, i would procrastinate all day. You need love.

  1238. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 20:36:48 jodrellblank
    I think, for me, procrastination has to do with projecting complication into things. So, if I want to cook something new, I imagine needing to find the perfect recipe with the perfect ingredients, for example.

    Need to... or else what? Instead of forcing onwards, ask yourself why you don't want to go forwards...

  1239. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-16 20:50:51 jodrellblank
    This is good. Brains are engines of prediction and they avoid doing things which will cause us harm.

    The only answers to procrastination are "are you motivated to do it?" and "is that overridden by a negative motivation against doing it"?

    Avoiding invalidation is much more of a strong and personal negative override than I ever thought years ago. It can hit you as the OP implies - fear that if I'm not in control of my life people will think I'm a weak and submissive person, or if I'm not in control thats like my childhood and makes menfeel invalidated by comparison to a helpless child - or like other people in this thread are replying - fears about doing something well (will people think me a swot?) or doing badly (my spouse will scorn me?) or all sorts.

    The most common factor among the replies here is stopping asking he question "what bad thing am I avoiding by procrastination" far far too soon, and/or accepting far too vague and unhelpful 'answers' as soon as they are thought of without realising they are unhelpful.

  1240. Ten Rules for Web Startups (2005) 2011-08-16 23:15:11 mtogo
    I think there are a lot of these checklists and top 10 things because they're easy to write and get a bit of traffic. In reality, 99% of people on HN already know everything in them. It's a great way to procrastinate, for the checklist writers and the readers alike.

    How about we stop these checklists and all get to work on something interesting instead?

  1241. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-17 02:33:26 jodrellblank
    I have always fought with procrastination, and it always has boiled down to feeling forced to do things. If something is not happening in the moment, if it’s not feel spontaneous then I balk at doing it.

    That's no more an answer than saying if a painting is has too many chairs in it you balk at looking at it. Balking at not-spontaneous things is a description of what you do, but not why you do that behaviour, right?

    that procrastination will flare into an outright rebellion against doing that “THING” that is “required” of me.

    This is not explaining that you procrastinate because you feel controlled, this is observing that you feel controlled and observing that you procrastinate, both when (something unspecified) is the case.

    Feeling controlled -> procrastination is not a link which must exist, is it? You can imagine people without that link, right?

  1242. My ideas are shitty so I'm going on an Internet diet 2011-08-17 17:51:25 thaumaturgy
    I've been thinking about this lately, too. A long time ago, I spent almost no time on the internet, because there wasn't really much of an internet to speak of. Instead, I wrote code. Lots, and lots, and lots of code. Some of it in assembly; some of it, even, in hex, with tons of printed pages of processor instructions in front of me.

    Feats like that required a level of concentration that I find almost impossible to achieve today. I've developed a tic: write a line of code, check a news site; write another line of code, check email; write another line of code, check a social site.

    I can't even call it procrastination anymore. It's something far more insidious. I'm fighting it, but the fight itself requires a nearly exhausting amount of effort.

    It's got all the hallmarks of an addiction -- a psychological one, rather than a chemical one, maybe. The trouble is, with many addictive substances, completely avoiding them is a reasonable solution. With the internet, looking up a function reference or even testing and uploading a piece of code can lead too easily to diversions; it's difficult to separate necessary things from distractions and impractical to avoid it altogether.

    I hate it. I've tried many of the tricks that people suggest, but the simple fact is, a significant part of my personality would rather mindlessly browse the internet instead of focusing intently for a long enough period of time to do something productive.

    > This leads me to believe that the ideas we have reflect the kind of world we live in.

    I think this is insightful. I somehow never managed to lose track of my childhood dreams, but instead I'm constantly preventing myself from accomplishing them.

    Good luck on your internet diet. If you manage to stick with it for a full month, you're a better person than I am.

  1243. The Artist's Way: Write 750 words every morning 2011-08-17 20:00:46 stulli
    Nice, i will definately check it out. At a first glance it seems to be a nice way to fight procrastination. "...it will help clear your mind and get the ideas flowing for the rest of the day." For me, this already worked today. Usually i browse the web aimlessly for hours until i get something done but after writing these 750 words i already know exactly what to do. Gamification obviously works for me...

  1244. Plea HN: perfectionism is ruining my life 2011-08-18 01:25:04 Mikhail_Edoshin
    I'd recommend Robert Boice's book "Procrastination and Blocking." It helped me a lot. The basic idea of the book is that the cause of procrastination is impulsiveness (as in the Piers Steel's book mentioned below, except that Boice was there first, I think :).

  1245. Dear procrastinator 2011-08-18 04:32:18 samspot
    When I procrastinate, it is quite often a task I do want to accomplish for whatever reason. But I put it off because I'm tired, just don't feel like it, etc. The authority figure you refer to is the voice of wisdom telling me that if I don't go ahead and do it, I will regret it later (this figure is right 99% of the time).

    My personality is a high 'C' (for compliance), meaning that I have an appreciation for authority. I think your original essay misses the fact that we all have different personalities and motivations.

  1246. Functional Programming Is Hard, That's Why It's Good 2011-08-21 05:36:58 stmartin
    Controversial is hiding a bastard child in plain sight for 10+ years while running a state. You're not :).

    Joke aside - I don't want to write essays here, so I'm gonna try to make a hopefully brief point.

    I -know- your essay was well-intentioned, and believe me, so is my reaction, after having written software for a living for nearly 15 years...

    Rather than to expound - let me ask you - do you know of Martin Fowler? I can get Graham and his cult-like persona has ensnared you/others somewhat in his FP-Kool-Aid cult :D... but read Fowler for a bit of balance too.

    Your intention was actually awesome - you want to illustrate a general principle, e.g. an abstraction, that thinking via and writing through a functional paradigm/language makes you a better programmer. Is that "true" to the extent you and a bunch of other FP-evangelists claim? Why, yes it is! So is learning assembly language, or Brainf*ck for that matter....

    Why I mentioned and really enjoy reading Fowler's non-imposing, well-argumented style of writing is because he effectively does, what you bravely attempt to do here, convey a general principle about _programming languages_, except he does it expertly, whereas you do it naively, despite the good intention. To get what I'm saying, surf over to www.amzn.com, and get yourself a copy of Fowler's Domain Specific Languages.

    Upon reading that book, heck, even half way, you soon come to the same realization that what one of the other repliers to my original rant has come into some time ago - we are ultimately discussing various paradigms/philosophies of thinking. Not ONE single or multiple paradigms that are tailored to your particular way of thinking or that you are "hard wired" for (which I find hard to believe, but I'll grant some 'nature vs nurture' arguments here too), makes you or anyone else, me included, necessarily a 'better' programmer... I'd go as far as saying that it's probably your personality, mental/emotional states you experience on a daily basis while glued to your PC, that have you be more or less effective at programming, e.g. you're a 'perfectionist/procrastinator', most common among programmers, or you're extreme and reckless and use inadequate tools to just conjure something up, looking to get 'promoted' and it blows up a few months later or BSOD's in a demo to the board of directors....

    This has been said over and over, and for some reason, it doesn't sink in - there is no silver bullet, there is no 'better/worse' programmer - unless you count lines of code produced per day as a 'productivity measure', hardly a clever measure of anything...

    Back to your essay - I'd much rater you embark on the topic of DSLs, rather than using CL as a platform to write a DSL in - which is -fine- except maybe people who are unfamiliar with Lisp's syntax, e.g. domain experts, can relate to a specific, external DSL better than they can relate to a LISP based DSL...

    Think of teaching a DSL to a ... I dunno, a postal worker who examines mail rejects that didn't pass the OCR phase. You could construct a DSL specific to that purpose. It would be relevant and useful and increase the worker's productivity.

    On the flipside, teaching him Lisp, such that he can learn a DSL designed inside of Lisp, would be a pain in the ass...

    DSLs, e.g. macros, are one of the highly touted benefits of Common Lisp, which I actually like, because of its multiparadigm ('dirty') nature...

    Anyway, I don't really want to indulge here - I think if you are serious about writing something, which I believe you are - be as balances as you can be, and never throw ANYONE under the bridge - including people who have only coded VB in their life.... You are either on board w/all people, or you're alone.

    Smugness about a particular paradigm is something I'd stay away from, as well as people who hypnotize you with their eloquence and "successes" (financial or otherwise) into thinking that they've discovered the next best thing since sliced bread.....

    This is why, as much as I like my Macbook, I still think Apple's a cult, and that Linux will eventually prevail, even on mobile platforms, tablets, etc.

    Peace.

  1247. Your problem with Vim is that you don't grok vi 2011-08-22 21:12:48 Tloewald
    Good post, and worth reading if you're stuck with vim and don't like it.

    But, reading this reminds me of how much I like GUIs. Yup these movements are great. I get the appeal of turning selecting text into a dumb programming trick, I'm sure it makes you feel very clever and productive. Of course I can do all this stuff and more without even consciously thinking about it using a mouse.

    Go do multi file grep in BBedit in front of an emacs jock one day. Look what I can do by finding a menu item!

    Douglas Adams used to talk about how powerful formatting features in word processors were a great way to procrastinate.

  1248. Web Surfing Helps at Work, Study Says 2011-08-22 21:40:57 TeMPOraL
    Well, it doesn't help me. I mean, why I'm even reading this? I should be working right now...

    Jokes aside, I find that reading stuff on the Internet often makes me unable to work at all - the harder problem I have to solve, the more I want to look for something interesting on the 3rd page of HN. But it's the usual procrastination stuff, covered many times on HN.

    My God, I actually installed a Twitter client for Emacs today while procrastinating...

  1249. Web Surfing Helps at Work, Study Says 2011-08-22 21:51:54 tilt
    That might be procrastination but remember that the brain keeps working on different levels. While you're doing something else you might come up with the solution you were looking for.

  1250. Web Surfing Helps at Work, Study Says 2011-08-22 22:03:52 TeMPOraL
    So far I found out that procrastination brings me some benefits, namely:

    - I have a better high-level overview of software development - this way I can keep in my head lots of things that I wouldn't usually think about.

    - I have lots of ideas on how to solve everyone's problems :). This is actually very important for me, as my relationship with some of my friends looks like this: they come with a problem, and I throw solutions at them until one sticks, and we're all happy.

    - I have lots of ideas for hobby projects that I usually don't have time to pursue :( (e.g. idea for nyan-mode was a result of procrastination and office jokes).

    However, all those benefits come at the cost of me not doing things I'm supposed to be doing at the moment. When I encounter a hard-but-not-too-hard problem at work, I might procrastinate for a minute or two, but then I sit down with a piece of paper and just solve it. However, if the problem is really hard for me, procrastination becomes a way to escape from it; I might read HN indefinetly and I still wouldn't solve it. Not to mention that there's a threshold point, after which every minute spent on procrastination makes me more tired.

  1251. How I use Emacs and Org-mode to implement GTD 2011-08-24 01:47:53 d0m
    Procrastination at his best! Writing a blog post about how to optimize your tasks by customizing and configuring a mode of Emacs!

    Obviously, I'm not totally serious here since it seems that he use it effectively each weeks; And I'm also happy that he shared it with us. However, talking for me, my best todo process consists of "Do it NOW else write it in todo.txt".

  1252. How to Stay Focused on the Important Things 2011-08-25 05:12:11 tep
    I don't agree with the article at all.\nThe author advocates that you should change the environment around you so less discipline is needed to stay focused.

    I think this is counter productive. \nIf this were a fundamental principle than our problems concerning procrastination would be solved for good. You browse unimportant websites and thus waste time? Just install Leechblock and the thereby created environment will require just as much "discipline" as you've got. Yeah, right ...

    It's also nagging me how he tosses around with words like "discipline" & "willpower" as if they were just as defined as colors like red and green.

  1253. Ask HN: Do you cross procrastinate? 2011-08-28 14:39:09 onedognight
    Others call it Structured Procrastination. http://structuredprocrastination.com/

  1254. Ask HN: Do you cross procrastinate? 2011-08-28 16:23:26 sathishmanohar
    @struppi and @onedognight awesome!! I'm so happy, because of the validations you've provided. Since, One of my core product is solely based on this, Attention, Procrastination Problem.

  1255. Ask HN: Do you cross procrastinate? 2011-08-28 20:14:32 Mz
    When one is basically "stumped", walking away is often the most effective, efficient means to make progress. The mind continues to work on it in the background while you do other things and then you can come back to it later from a fresh perspective, less frustrated and so on. I told this to my son once when he was playing a computer game. I walked past and he was basically spitting nails in frustration. I told him to walk away for a time. He did and when he went back later he was able to solve it, first try.

    If the task is more physical, a physical break can make it more do-able. I had to hook up my own washer and dryer by myself once and reached a point where I was very frustrated and couldn't make something work. Napping allowed me to come back to the task and promptly put together what I had previously struggled with fruitlessly for an hour. I had simply been physically tired.

    So I can see that switching between two tasks could be a very effective approach, and not "procrastination" at all.

  1256. I don't want to live in a world without Microsoft and neither do you 2011-08-31 20:55:06 dazzawazza
    I think what we'd all like to see a world where there is more competition in the tech market. Unfortunately for MS they became the dominant player in many markets and (like any company in that position) stagnated, procrastinated and behaved in a protectionist manor. Note that this doesn't reflect on anyone within MS, large companies behave in ways individuals can't control.

    Now, does MS have to die for there to be a more competitive tech market? No, of course not but if MS does die it doesn't really matter. They are not the sole providers of technology.

  1257. The Million Dollar Question 2011-09-01 08:07:45 analyst74
    This is exactly what I feel too! I'm generally lazy when there is no goal and no pressure, but I do work hard on things when there is a need, interest, deadline or even peer pressure. But when it comes to the big dreams, I procrastinate, and I don't know why.

    I just up-voted and bookmarked this article.

  1258. The Million Dollar Question 2011-09-01 08:19:21 astrofinch
    There are lots of bugs in peoples' brains that prevent them from doing things that seem like good ideas, and I don't think the fear of becoming illegible (http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/07/31/on-being-an-illegible-p...) is anywhere near the most important one.

    My vote for the most important bug is as follows.

    It looks as though human brains were architected to think in two modes: "near" mode and "far" mode. The reason for this is that early human tribes had important rules that directly impacted survival and reproduction (for example, "don't take more than your share of the food", "don't sleep with another man's wife"). It was critical for us to tell others that we were going to uphold these rules or we would get kicked out of the tribe. At the same, time our genetic fitness would increase massively if we could find a way to covertly break those rules while still upholding them verbally (more food and more descendents for successful rule breakers).

    The upshot of this is that even if something looks good when processed using far mode it's not necessarily easy to translate it into near mode where it actually gets done.

    In my view, this is an explanatory factor for procrastination as well. For example, the popular Google Chrome extension Chrome Nanny (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gpdgmmdbbbchchonpf...) requires the user to enter 64 random alphanumeric characters before visiting a distracting site--which moves the idea of visiting this site from near mode (where it might actually happen) to far mode (where it won't).

    For more on near and far modes you can read http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/06/near-far-summary.html. Note that novel tasks and desirable risky acts are both associated with far mode.

  1259. The Million Dollar Question 2011-09-01 12:51:24 LiveTheDream
    > when it comes to the big dreams, I procrastinate, and I don't know why.

    It's difficult to break down big goals into a series of attainable steps. Faced with this challenge, it becomes easier to maintain the status quo and not do anything.

  1260. Doodle or Die - our "bizarrely addictive" Node Knockout game 2011-09-02 05:58:13 pennig
    when I tried to draw "procrastination" it killed the server, apparently.

  1261. The conversation that led to Ruby being called Ruby 2011-09-03 03:31:43 patio11
    I took the liberty of rewriting this in slightly more idiomatic English:

    http://pastebin.com/tHDPJsUt

    It is tricky: Japanese chat logs don't have all that much context to go on, and you have to make a judgment call as to what sort of "voice" they'd be speaking with. I gave them fairly informal young American programmer personalities but with just as much reason I could rewrite this to loko like it was two frat boys.

    Disclaimer: I don't exactly go all-out for accuracy when translating to procrastinate about going to sleep.

  1262. The Dangers of Productive Procrastination 2011-09-04 09:19:06 pongo000
    That was a rather useless blog post. As a lifelong procrastinator, I was hoping for solutions, not a description of the problem...

  1263. The Dangers of Productive Procrastination 2011-09-04 10:21:39 bo_Olean
    When I read all these procrastination thoughts in HN, I sometimes feel that we should run a "Why do I put it off ?" thread once in HN where everyone answer for themselves and not for others.

  1264. The Dangers of Productive Procrastination 2011-09-04 11:36:15 splicer
    I wish I would clean my apartment when procrastinating. Instead, I procrastinate by coding (for fun, not work). That's it! I'm going to clean my apartment... tomorrow... or maybe the day after...

  1265. How to Successfully Procrastinate 2011-09-04 15:53:41 crazydiamond
    | But I never feel guilty about it. Because when I'm done procrastinating there is nothing else to do but the work.

    When I am done procrastinating, its usually time to take a nap. So I never really get work done, unless I am careful to take it easy on HN and reddit. Usually when I am coding full steam, I may not check HN/reddit etc for days, or just a quick glance at the titles.

    I guess it's to each his own.

  1266. Don't dumb girls down 2011-09-06 17:25:20 Tichy
    http://lmgtfy.com/?q=prettier+people+get+further+in+life

    You know, by saying "citation needed" what you actually say is "I don't really care for your opinion". If I wasn't so desperate to procrastinate, I should just ignore you. Why waste energy to educate you if you are obviously not interested in learning?

  1267. Pace, not Deadlines 2011-09-07 17:35:15 balsamiq
    Thanks Senko, I agree that good prioritization and frequent small releases do help a lot.

    As for procrastination, I think that's fixed by recruiting people who are the right fit and would do the job even if they weren't paid to do it. :) Hard to do, and some procrastination happens to everyone, it's natural. :)

    Re: external events, that's a good point. And if you're working for clients, that's a whole different game. :)

  1268. Pace, not Deadlines 2011-09-07 19:02:23 mattmanser
    They haven't changed, it's that you sell a small code-base product.

    What happens in a couple of years when, for example, you want to redo the whole UI in one go? Because you can't release that piecemeal.

    You're actually describing a classic anti-procrastination technique, small bite sized chunks that are so easy you can't fail.

    In programming that's not always possible. An AAA game being a perfect example.

  1269. Ask HN: Where/how can I find a personal Programming Coach? 2011-09-09 16:17:09 Joakal
    Lack of discipline sounds like you have focus issues. I suggest looking up threads in HN on procrastination. You could also try http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=startups Most likely will find some procrastinators ;)

    Codecademy does sound like a good idea. If you need to ask questions with such material, you can make a post to forum, mailing lists or even stack overflow depending on where most of the Ruby support is at. Especially if you only commit an hour as responses may take some time.

    Personally, I've learnt very well to know what keywords to ask in Google and it returns relevant results so I rarely post for support help.

    Keep doing your best.

  1270. Ask PG: What has changed since you wrote Hackers and Painters in 2004? 2011-09-11 05:45:02 jseliger
    Here's a request that's unlikely to be fulfilled but one I'll make anyway: assemble an essay collection aimed at high school / college students. In my ideal world, it would contain in about this order:

    1) What You'll Wish You'd Known

    2) What You Can't Say

    3) Disconnecting Distraction

    4) The Age of the Essay

    5) Why Nerds are Unpopular

    6) Writing, Briefly

    7) Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas

    8) Good and Bad Procrastination

    9) How to Do What You Love

    10) See Randomness

    11) The Power of the Marginal

    12) How Art Can Be Good

    13) Taste for Makers

    14) Two Kinds of Judgement

    15) Stuff

    There's obviously some overlap with this list and Hackers & Painters. But I think this grouping would be much more useful for the general population; most freshmen aren't as keen on programming language discussions.

    I often use the first three essays listed above in the freshman comp classes I teach, and they often yield interesting reactions from students. Sometimes we venture into "The Age of the Essay" and "Stuff." Students who are especially interested in why high school is structured the way it is often get pointers to "Why Nerds Are Unpopular."

    If you know anyone at O'Reilly, you can tell them they'd get about 50 copies a semester ordered. That's probably pretty small time, but I suppose something is better than nothing.

  1271. Ask HN: I am wasting so much of time, what can I do? 2011-09-11 22:35:05 antoinevg
    It's counterintuitive but try reducing the amount of work you take on until you start seeing a reduction in the amount of time you spend procrastinating.

  1272. Ask HN: I am wasting so much of time, what can I do? 2011-09-12 00:25:25 maxhawkins
    I find the same thing. My focus is much better when I remember to get away from the work take care of myself.

    At a friend's recommendation I started going to the gym when I feel myself drifting into procrastination. I was skeptical of the benefits at first but now it consistently clears my mind and sets me on the right track. I think it has something to do with the dopamine release that exercise provides.

    It might also be worthwhile to examine -why- you're procrastinating. In my experience, procrastination is caused by anxiety about the project I'm working on.

  1273. Ask HN: I am wasting so much of time, what can I do? 2011-09-12 00:29:37 Splines
    There's also a StayFocusd[1] plugin for Chrome which will block sites for you.

    I'm struggling with my own procrastination and it seems to be helping, although I find myself distracting myself via other means :-/

    [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/laankejkbhbdhmipfm...

  1274. Ask HN: I am wasting so much of time, what can I do? 2011-09-12 00:37:23 kurtm
    Forgive the plug, but give my blog a visit. I've been using it to document my struggle with procrastination and perfectionism since the beginning of the year. The main reason I put it out there was so what I've learned could benefit someone else. Drop me a comment if you find any of it useful. Here is the link: http://www.itneversleeps.net

  1275. Ask HN: I am wasting so much of time, what can I do? 2011-09-12 02:47:31 angdis
    Procrastination and not getting work done can be caused MANY different things. There is no way that a few sentences exchanged with strangers will crack this problem.

    You have to find the root cause of your problem in your own way. For some that means seeing a counselor or talking to a loved one or mentor who understands you.

  1276. Ask HN: I am wasting so much of time, what can I do? 2011-09-12 05:27:52 endymi0n
    Okay, so this is gonna be a bit longer, but bear with me, because I think reading this might help you.

    I've been exactly where you've been. AND I did almost all the things that people here suggest. Thought I had ADHD and took Ritalin. Thought I had a depression and took Prozac (both of which I definitely cannot recommend, as they screwed badly with my short term memory).

    I've tried gazillions of plugins, "hacks", to-do lists and the like, only to see that if you're smart (I assume you are because you're posting here), your subconcious is only smarter. If there's one universal truth I got out of these, it's: You can't shit yourself.

    I've personally read Getting Things Done, The Now Habit, Eat That Frog and consumed lots more of self-help from some of the distinguished authors there are, including Tony Robbins, David Allen, Steven Covey, Brian Tracy, Keith Ferrazzi, Leo Babauta etc. (just to name a few).

    I can honestly say that all of those books gave me something, some pushed me over the edge for a week, but then I slipped back into procrastination and self-pity. So here's the deal: For some of us, it's just much harder to stay focused on our goals and dreams. All that can and will change, but only with the right leverage, and your missing piece of the puzzle might be a different one that someone else needs. Anyway, I'll be listing the things from all those excellent books above that helped me most (repeating some of the excellent suggestions here), and finishing with my personal missing piece, that I only received a few weeks ago.

    So what helps?

    - Get rid of your TV if you have it. Completely. That's really just a senseless time-sucker and you won't miss it within a week.

    - Babysteps, babysteps, babysteps. Taken from today's Hacker News: "I can not emphasize how important baby steps are. They are the key to avoiding fatal frustration. I have a law that helps define the size of subtasks: DO NOT EVER LEAVE THE COMPUTER IF YOUR PROGRAM DOES NOT RUN." http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/09/11/video-game-progr...

    - Fighting your urge to "procrastinate" all day long leads to lots of decision fatigue that will make everything just worse: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-fro... . The best way around this is to create habits, as they will get you on autopilot through difficult procrastination situations within a month. Some great thoughts on this from Leo Babauta: http://zenhabits.net/will/ My personal take on this: The key is starting out VERY slow (one habit a month at the most) and keeping your expectations really low. The habit itself needs to survive through all times and is more important than the actual outcome. Example from me: I do exercises right before showering, but the least I do is 5 pushups. That sounds like nothing, and actually it isn't but I do them no matter what - drunk, late, sad, happy. Habits will eventually carry you through everything, but you just stick to them. Suggestions for you: Not reading e-mail after or before a certain time, turning of the computer completely at a certain time. Stuff like that.

    - Building on that, affirmations and meditation are extremely powerful as a habit too. I've written an article on this if you're interested: http://www.growinup.org/?p=5

    - Gym and sports definitely helps your willpower, as long as you don't discover another way of procrastination in there. It can happen ;-)

    - Knowing what you really want. Maybe you know already (I certainly did), but you're too scared and unfocused to really take action. If you're too scared, watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk0hSeQ5s_k If you're too unfocused, read this: http://focusmanifesto.com/ Anyway, know what you wanna do and where you're going.

    - All these things helped me in a way, but the final piece for me comes here as promised. I've had a huge fight with my wife for all kinds of reasons related to my procrastination, and she told me something I've never forgot. I've distilled the essence of what she told me on a paper and I read it every night. Here it is, for you all to read:

    "Every time I pray, I feel you falling down this black hole, but I cannot help you. Only YOU can do it. No amount of reading or games or [insert your timesucker here] can fill that emptiness inside of you. So don't do stuff out of an impulse. Do it conciously. Whatever you do, choose to do it and accept the consequences. Don't be guilty about anything anymore - just accept that you made your choice and be responsible. There's no need to lie to yourself. It's just ok. Live, breathe, be gentle. There is one and one way only out of the frustration, anger and depression: Accept your choices. Love yourself. Leave the guild behind and FOLLOW YOUR HEART".

    Since then I've been living by it and haven't gone back to bad. Truth is, I HAVE been reading Hacker News and playing a round since then. But I chose to do it because I felt like it. I didn't hide it, I didn't feel guilty about it. Taking responsibility for every single thing that you do sounds harsh, but it helps you grow enormously. Think of it: That way you also reap full honor and appreciation for everything you do. So next time you feel that urge, just do the following: Think about what you're about to do. What will it lead to? Will you accept that outcome and take full responsibility? And then just do it - or not. It works the same way if you're already in the middle of that procrastination mess. The second you see you made an unconcious choice, make a concious one instead. Will you continue - or stop and do something worth it?

    I told you it's gonna be a pretty long post. So you finally arrived here, congratulations. You already took the time to read it - now take the time to do it, and you won't fail anymore. Promise.

    Best,

    Dominik

  1277. Ask HN: I am wasting so much of time, what can I do? 2011-09-12 12:55:32 happyfeet
    I used to feel the same way, earlier when I was in a cushy job, waiting to get into my own startup. And I used to search for ways to avoid procrastination, wasting time etc.,

    Then I just decided to quit! And got into my own startup. Boy!!! Now I am not finding time to do anything that does not help my goal of building a company ground up. I can see through my own eyes that it is just lack of a passionate goal and a worthy cause that has just tricked my mind into surfing & wasting time on internet.

    So, my suggestion for you would be to take up a goal worthy of you. If you want to continue in the same job revisit your goal and one that is extremely challenging as if you are running your own company and not working for another one. Good luck!

  1278. Unknown or expired link. 2011-09-14 08:22:27 davesmylie
    Yup. Super painful.

    I put it down to a (perhaps unintentional) * anti-procrastination device on HN's part.

    Eg I'll load up a page worth of links and go read them. If by the time I finished reading and go back to HN to click on 'Next Page' and I get 'Unknown or expired link', this means that I've probably spent far too long reading already and should probably go and do some actual productive work.

    * This doesn't always work as intended = /

  1279. Heretical Confessions of an Emacs Addict – Joy of the Vim Text Editor « /usr 2011-09-15 20:38:28 swah
    I have the same feeling, that both worlds are appealing. Vim being "Just focus, don't go meta improving your tools your filthy procrastinator" and Emacs being an "comfortable playground". "How is that algorithm again? Let me try something in elisp on the scratch buffer."

    I'm trying to use Sublime Text these days (won't ever have Slime to develop Clojure, though).

  1280. Are you like me? Or do you have discipline? 2011-09-19 07:31:19 darylteo
    On the topic of discipline, yesterday I tried a new way to work.

    I placed a few large boxes on my regular desk, and placed all my peripherals and monitor on an elevated plane (too cheap to get a standing table :D). Then, turned on some good dance music.

    Funnily enough, I found that by dancing (in my own awkward way) to my favourite music I actually stayed on track with what I was working on instead of procrastinating by visiting HN or Reddit :)

    Well, bring on day 2.

    (solo-ing a project for 6 months now.)

  1281. Hire For The Ability To Get Shit Done 2011-09-21 01:09:20 jcromartie
    I have to say that some combination of these negative traits can describe me at certain points in time. I'll set out to try to build the "perfect" thing, and then snap to reality and use the quick-and-dirty solution.

    Procrastination, distraction, laziness, lack of follow-through, slowness, those all manifest themselves when I have no reason to be engaged in the work. The work might just be a really bad match (example: endless maintenance and toiling through bad legacy code, putting out fires, when I could be designing and building something half decent).

  1282. A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day 2011-09-21 05:01:41 wisty
    Note - this isn't "20% of full-time telecommuters are skiving off". Some might be, others might telecommute 1 day a week and use that to do their chores (which might be sanctioned by their manager). Some are freelancers who are effectively unemployed. Others are self-employed, and procrastinating. Some might be students, who have a part-time job they do from home. Some might be full-time mothers, who do the odd job on Mechanical Turk.

  1283. Hire For The Ability To Get Shit Done 2011-09-21 09:52:41 prawn
    Elad, really enjoyed your post. I am a notorious procrastinator, I start things I don't finish, I am very easily distracted, but I also run a small business. I didn't hire GSD types intentionally, but it happened through sheer luck and I would definitely favour those attributes in the future. My two current employees, usually without deadlines or any real structure, crank out work at a great pace.

  1284. A Fifth of Telecommuters Work Less Than An Hour Per Day 2011-09-21 20:30:00 Goladus
    I've been using the internet at work since 1997. But it was not nearly as ubiquitous as it is now. "Surfing the web" was generally something people did at home, on a 56k modem. A software engineer fixing the Y2K bug in bank software probably didn't have much access, and probably didn't care a whole lot anyway. Certainly, the movie made no mention of the internet.

    And obviously facebook was merely an example. 1999 was pre-reddit, pre-wikipedia, pre-digg, pre-hacker news, and pre-twitter. Yahoo had just bought viaweb. Most of the people using the web today weren't using it in 1999, and most of the pages, services, and content that exist today did not exist in 1999.

    The point is that no matter how distracting the internet might be, procrastination has always been an issue for developers.

  1285. The Teacher 2011-09-24 01:41:41 djb
    I've had the opportunity to speak with Gerry on a couple occasions. He's an incredibly nice and brilliant man. He pulled a postdoc into his office and they talked to me for about an hour on a huge variety of topics. He taught me the Y Combinator, gave me a pocket protector (same as the author's) and signed my copy of SICP. (Hal, unfortunately, was on sabbatical at Google at the time.)

    What impressed me about Gerry was the incredibly wide variety of topics he could speak on, not just computer science and electrical engineering but many other hard sciences and I even remember him mentioning something about the ambiguity of ancient Hebrew. He had something intelligent to say about everything. A few other interesting points are that when he was my age (high school) he used his knowledge of chemistry to make explosives for fun, and he had a chair hanging from the ceiling he had built himself. Being around someone that knowledgeable and intelligent has the potential to automatically make you more ambitious, and it's something I recommend every young person do as soon as possible. (PG said something similar about showing founders how to be relentlessly resourceful: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=508048)

    I came back and visited Gerry a few months later for a briefer visit. At the time I was deciding between colleges. He asked me about where I was considering and provided me the most helpful overview of the strengths and weaknesses of each of their cultures. Needless to say, he was a pretty big fan of MIT. ;)

    He told me an interesting anecdote about Marvin Minsky that I haven't heard anywhere else so I'll put it here. We were discussing good procrastination. He said Minsky advised putting all mail in a pile, newest on top, and only processing the pile top-down. Then, once a month throw out the bottom half of the pile to save time. "Anything important will come twice," Minsky said.

  1286. All of life has been utterly, profoundly changed thanks to Facebook... 2011-09-25 09:09:18 busyant
    For me, the best way to use Facebook is to "mute" everyone. Family, friends--everyone.

    It has the following advantages: - No one knows that I've muted them. - I'm still on Facebook, so if people need to contact me through that medium, they can still do it. - If I'm really curious about what anyone has been up to, I can still look at their page - No need to log to procrastinate because I never have any updates.

    Kind of perfect, for me at least.

  1287. Why you should not go to medical school 2011-09-25 23:58:29 krschultz
    (Not a med student, but I double majored in two different engineerings so I had a pretty tough road)

    Honestly I think people over rate how difficult school is.

    I was definitely in the camp of 'it's so fucking hard, I have no life, it's horrible' etc etc etc. And I'm a smart guy. Guess what, when I actually went through and figured out how much time I was spending working, it wasn't that much. If you clear out the procrastination and bullshit and just sit down and work hard while you are working, it's not bad.

    Then you actually have free time.

    I struggled with this for years, but working at 50% effort for twice as many hours is a horrible way to go about things because you end up living a miserable life.

    At my graduation they announced the valevictorian. It was one of my friends. We had no idea. He never talked about grades. He never bitched about work. He went out drinking nearly every day of the week. He spent a lot more time chasing women than chasing grades. But when he went to the library to work, he worked.

    Remember, 6 hours a day of hard work is worth a lot more than 12 hours of half assed work, and thats what he did. That leaves 18 hours a day to enjoy yourself.

  1288. Stanford's online Machine Learning class now open for enrollment 2011-09-26 19:01:06 pakitan
    I, too, am of the the type that learns better by reading, rather than listening but this format provides some additional "incentives" for the hardcore procrastinator who plans to read that AI textbook "later". Most important of all, if you want to complete the course, you're forced to follow a schedule and there are no excuses. Then there is the "reward" factor - you'll be getting a certificate and also all students are ranked based on their exam scores = you'll be motivated to work harder. Last but not least, the instructors will answer student questions about the course material. That's not something you can get from a book.

    These are the reasons why I signed up.

  1289. Show HN: Selectively block Hacker News so that you can go and build stuff 2011-09-28 10:06:57 angryasian
    this is already built into HN, procrastinate

  1290. Sublime Text 2 - 2126. Hot Exit, Code Folding, and more. 2011-09-28 20:39:47 hynek
    This is really getting tempting! Before I procrastinate hours away by learning a new editor:

    Does ST2 have advanced editing features like vim's cit, ysaw( or ci'?

    I'd really love to switch a to modern editor with a scripting language I like. But I use the constructs above all the time and would dearly miss them.

  1291. Poll: Non-Founders, Why Are You Not Starting a Start-Up? 2011-09-29 07:34:03 RockerCoder
    Ive got some ideas, none of them are very fancy, since I have no plan on being funded, all my ideas are little micro-business bootstrap stuff...

    and I'm not starting them up because I don't have enough discipline yet to go spend enough time working(Im a remote coder) to have free time later to work on my own stuff... I always end up spending my whole day between work and procrastinating, then I work more to compensate my procrastination, sleep late, wake up late...etc

    :(

  1292. Learning the hard way: Moving from NYC to Palo Alto and back in 1.5 months 2011-09-30 01:03:53 tptacek
    I know you can't reasonably say what % you offered (you're still apparently a going concern), but know that people on HN are pretty accustomed to b-school types and their notions of what "significant equity" are.

    Again though, the top line here is, we're in the middle of a tech bubble, there are a lot of venture-backed companies, most of them are going to fail, tech comp packages have never ever been higher, competition is fierce, aggressive, and protracted. There has never been a worse time to assume you've got talent locked up.

    I'm sympathetic to the idea that someone who isn't 100% sold shouldn't represent themselves as 100% sold. BUT. Oftentimes, we don't demand of others the frank answers we don't want to hear. How many serious sit-down conversations did you have with your potential partner about his commitment level? Your post is "Red flag!" "Red Flag!" "Warning sign!". Well, did you react to any of those flags?

    If you didn't: I appreciate the idea of writing a post about the warning signs you've learned people should be looking for. However, if you ignored warning signs that the guy wasn't committed, it becomes harder to sympathize with the idea of a blog post designed to slag one guy for not signing on with your company.

    If you did react to the warning signs and diligently qualified and re-qualified this guy and he kept coming back saying "absolutely I am one hundred fifty percent behind you": I agree you got shafted a bit, but again remind you that tech people mostly don't give a shit. A guy who can execute on the level you're saying you needed can simply write his own ticket. The game theory suggests that you have little to gain by lashing out.

    ((I'm having a really procrastinate-y morning, which comes from knowing I'm working super late tonight, so sorry I'm being so noisy. At least you're not on the logo design thread I'm howling at.*)

  1293. Staying Productive When Working From Home 2011-09-30 01:29:58 rlivsey
    I find the pomodoro technique really useful.

    Just the simple thing of having a countdown timer going makes me focus on the task at hand and restricts my procrastination to the breaks, which I also limit in length using the timer.

    I'm currently using 45min working periods with 15min breaks, I've found that's the best balance for me after experimenting with various combinations.

  1294. Learning the hard way: Moving from NYC to Palo Alto and back in 1.5 months 2011-09-30 02:31:52 zach
    Thanks for bringing this topic up. This is a real and serious issue that isn't talked about much. But I should mention one more thing in greater detail, because it's crazy important.

    If there's one warning I would give to every potential technical co-founder and those who work with them, it's this.

    It's the very same motivation that drives the dedication of many developers not to disappoint people depending on them that often leads to a cycle of despair.

    Since developers are enthusiastic and don't want to disappoint people they've already made commitments to, they often choose to accept an easier form of cognitive dissonance over another. That is, they prefer to believe that they will make crazy things happen instead of accepting that they made a commitment they can't deliver on (even for perfectly understandable reasons).

    So they offer an overly-optimistic outlook or overcommit themselves as a result. They're not being knowingly dishonest as much as believing in something unrealistic. This pathology often starts with procrastination in school and can manifest itself like an addiction: it builds and builds until the individual either hits bottom (the stress is finally too much) or there's an intervention (they are confronted with a reality check or given an out).

    Be extremely careful about this because it is the epidemic of software (where estimation is difficult enough if you're completely rational, possibilities are great and heroic feats are legendary). Always be on guard and try to prevent this cycle from happening, because if it takes over an organization, things will begin turning in a Yeatsian gyre.

  1295. Stop reading HN, start reading HN newsletter 2011-10-01 04:59:31 wazoox
    I just want to say that I subscribed to the newsletter, and it's great. Unfortunately it didn't cure my HN addiction; it simply allows me to keep up to date for those unfortunate days (working abroad, or else) when I missed some threads.

    Actually, the "Classic" section even makes it worse, because it brings you to read old threads you missed years ago, or had forgotten.

    My advice: HN newsletter is fantastic, go subscribe now! but don't expect it to free you from your procrastination, it will get you even more addicted :)

  1296. Interested in a mentor program for programmers? 2011-10-02 04:31:20 kareemsabri
    I am. I've been thinking about it for a while, but procrastinating as well. I will email anyone who's interested in getting involved.

  1297. How to Procrastinate and still get things done 2011-10-03 11:29:49 subnetvj
    I guess a procrastinator would have a hard time thinking about what are the important tasks what not .. Mr Professor might deem that he is a procrastinator, but I think he really is not ..

  1298. How to Procrastinate and still get things done 2011-10-03 14:58:11 tikhonj
    This seems to reflect my experience perfectly--I think the only reason I get some things done is because I don't want to do other, ostensibly more important things.

    I think this habit has a couple of interesting results for me: - The amount of stress I feel--and the amount of time I spend "working"--does not go up linearly with workload. I am doing roughly twice as much (in terms of course credit and part-time work) as I was last year, and my classes are harder, but I feel maybe 1.3 times as much stress and still have an effectively similar amount of leisure time. - I am much more efficient than I would have been otherwise. There are two reasons for this: I give myself less time to do things but still finish them and I sometimes procrastinate by learning my tools (keyboard shortcuts, emacs-fu...) and by automating things I do regularly (writing bash scripts or emacs extensions).

    Ultimately I do not view my procrastination as nearly as big a problem as others make it out to be. I think I'm happier and more efficient for it; I suspect that I would actually have accomplished less had I not procrastinated all these years.

    Of course, this is probably just a result of confirmation bias (I like procrastinating, I think it helps me so I only see the cases where it does) but I don't really care--it works for me.

  1299. How to Procrastinate and still get things done 2011-10-03 15:56:35 kqr2
    The author's website on structure procrastination:

    http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

  1300. How to Procrastinate and still get things done 2011-10-03 18:23:28 orionlogic
    John Perry's in depth talk about procrastination http://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/procrastination

  1301. How to Procrastinate and still get things done 2011-10-03 19:19:17 vilya
    This reminds me of a really quite wonderful paper: "Scheduling Algorithms for Procrastinators"

    http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~bender/newpub/2007-BenderClTs-JoS-...

    Well worth a read when you've got something else you're putting off.

  1302. How to Procrastinate and still get things done 2011-10-03 20:17:27 chris_dcosta
    "begin by establishing a hierarchy of the tasks you have to do"

    I bet I could procrastinate about doing this too.

  1303. How to Procrastinate and still get things done 2011-10-03 21:30:48 vsl2
    I added "comment on procrastinator article at HN" to my list of things to do and gave it low priority.

    If only I could convince myself all of the onerous tasks at work were low priority...

  1304. How to Procrastinate and still get things done 2011-10-03 22:10:51 jarofgreen
    Interesting, but the hard part of this is really knowing what is and isn't important.

    For instance, in the article he talks about how he "has" to publish his reading list at the start of the summer and how he puts it off a couple of months because he thinks it isn't really important. That's nice, but maybe the students who want to sort out their books or even do some reading over the summer and the hard working people in the admin office and bookshop disagree. "I got almost daily reminders from the department secretary; students sometimes asked me what we would be reading;" Sounds like his procrastinating on this caused problems for others.

  1305. How to Procrastinate and still get things done 2011-10-03 22:47:55 chris_dcosta
    Mmmm you're clearly not a procrastinator. By replying to my post with urgency, you indicate a tendancy to get things done, unless of course you didn't finish reading the article, in which case welcome to the club.

  1306. How to Procrastinate and still get things done 2011-10-03 22:50:31 ZeagleFiend
    The problem with actually implementing this system is that, after drawing up said list of things that need doing, I would simply go and find myself doing a bunch of other stuff, stuff which isn't on the list, but is capable of making itself seem important and worthwhile enough to me to keep me from feeling bad. Stuff like reading that book I bought a year ago, practising piano, reading articles about interesting stuff online, writing and then scrapping the opening few pages of a novel...

    The point is, making such a list of tasks to do would simply give me something else to avoid entirely. I might even progress to having lists of lists of tasks.

    I realise this article isn't serious, but it's interesting to consider. I could never make it work, because pandering to procrastination like this would just engender further procrastination and further doing of things which can seem important but are really utterly unimportant.

    There is almost always something you would rather be doing than what you are doing right now.

  1307. Googles Management Doesnt Use Google+ 2011-10-05 06:39:07 Tichy
    Maybe they have actual work to do and can not procrastinate on Twitter or G+ like the rest of us.

  1308. Ask HN: What's your morning routine? 2011-10-05 19:02:11 nasmorn
    I second that. Started convict conditioning a month ago and I don't have a rigid schedule for training. But I will train every other day regardless of what happens on that day. This can mean I will do it at midnight but usually I do it earlier taking a break from work. It is a great way to channel procrastination into something useful.

  1309. The Coding Interview 2011-10-05 23:15:22 noarchy
    For me, I think having an editor in front of me gets my mind "in the mode". Heck, I can break a period of procrastination just by firing one up.

    I never enjoy writing anything on a whiteboard, be it code or some kind of drawing for a meeting. I'm also plagued by lousy handwriting, and I don't draw particularly well.

    One interview scenario that I did not mind, and was editor-free, was one where I was shown Powerpoint slides of code. I was asked to fix what I saw, or determine if anything was really wrong at all.

  1310. Stephen Fry: Steve Jobs 2011-10-07 08:07:27 pigbucket
    This is a rare and wonderful eulogy. We can nitpick over the details of Fry's grasp of the Apple way, but today it is probably better just to appreciate what Fry gets right about the phenomenon of Steve Jobs. I think one thing he gets right, the thing in any case of most importance to me, is the attitude that Jobs brought to the things he did. The phrase "insanely great" has been knocking about in my brain as a kind of touchstone for that attitude since I first heard it used of the Mac in 84. I was a kid, but the phrase stuck with me, like the voice of conscience, becoming a constant challenge to do better. Beyond the macs and the pods and the phones and the pads, what I feel most grateful to Jobs for is the fact that he supplanted the old clarion cry "good is not good enough" with the much more powerful idea: "great is not great enough." There are other powerful ideas, including the antonymous "Just ship it!" Perhaps the challenge of living well and doing good is to somehow respond to the imperatives implied by both ideas. "Just ship it!" is a useful antidote for the procrastinating and hesitating conscience, but the romantic in me appreciates more the restraints placed on whatever forces lead us to accept mediocrity by having the ideal of the insanely great held before us the proper measure of human achievement.

  1311. Hacker News Front Page Snapshot from Last Night 2011-10-07 15:29:57 kamaal
    I am from India, and pg I have a question for you.

    Its almost 1 in the afternoon here. So it must be midnight in the US. I also see you replying to posts during the US day time.

    If its not too personal, can you share you a brief outline of your schedule. I assume you do not procrastinate, but about the energy and how do you plan your tasks.

  1312. How To Stop Procrastination And Actually DO Something 2011-10-07 22:14:14 AskGeeser
    I find in order to stop procrastination you would first need to evaluate the importance of the task required. We all know that we do not place merit on tasks or interests that have no sufficient barring on our individual attention. To most attention is a restricted resource which allows most to only be able to devote awareness to task one at a time. We are able to allocate attention to two or more task simultaneously as long as the input and out paths are different. We don't return to something we recently experienced or examine. So procrastination could be on terms of temporary avoidance or chronic avoidance. An excellent strategy to start will is start your day doing the things that bore you the most or the most difficult get it out of the way (band aid style rip it off quickly). Next one most likely experiencing time management issues so getting more organized with to-do lists or using your cellphone's calendar to add your scheduling and giving ample time to complete each task and even adding breaks if need or allowed. Set goals and then add logical planning to see to the achievement of the goals it's also a sense of pressure some work well under pressure. Sometimes procrastination is the gateway defense mechanism recondition your thinking into removing the "I need to" "I have to" to a more assertive goal "I will" or "I want" and follow through. Lastly, don't leave room for deliberations. The more you think about your mountain of tasks the likely you are to select the ones "most" convenient or "easier" thereby putting the others off to another time that is already spotted for the stealing of new tasks. If all else fails simply provide yourself with a positive reinforcement such as treat yourself for a job well done which is motivator in itself; should you not complete the task the discipline will also motivate you to get the task done in order to get your treat and the consequence for not doing so

  1313. Ask HN: Do you use timetracking at your startup? 2011-10-10 20:15:57 kandu
    I am currently using toggl (http://www.toggl.com). I am not using it for billing nor for monitoring employees, but for monitoring how I spend time. The purpose is to balance work between my several projects on which I work concurrently, and also to avoid procrastination and wasting time on distractions.

    I spent a lot of time (pun intended), i.e. about half a day, on searching a time tracker that would fit my needs. I was not interested in features related to billing clients, and thus I found too expensive the services that seem to be most popular, like Harvest, whose pricing starts at $12 per month if one works on more than 2 projects. I would not pay more than $1 per month for a simple time tracking service. I needed a web application / service, as opposed to client software, since I work on multiple computers. Also, the ideal service that I was looking for would have an Android app such that I could track time when I'm not using a computer.

    Toggl does all of these within the free plan, however it is somehow buggy - the Android app, the desktop app and the web service do not synchronize well and I am kind of forced to use just the web service through a browser.

    I would be interested to find out about other apps that would do the job.

  1314. Ask HN: How many of you read beyond the top 200 posts on HN? 2011-10-11 01:55:57 smoyer
    Very rarely ... and when I do I start thinking perhaps I should go adjust my procrastination settings.

  1315. Remind HN: Y Combinator application deadline is today, 8pm PST 2011-10-11 06:06:03 pg
    We always get about half the applications on the last day. It's not necessarily a sign of procrastination. A lot of these people have been working on their applications; they just haven't submitted them yet.

  1316. Why are 95% of blogs abandoned? 2011-10-12 01:27:05 kgtm
    95% of blogs are abandoned for the same reason 95% of projects never materialize, which in fact is the same reason 95% of life changes remain new year resolutions: Procrastination.

    The Postary announcement states:

    Postary - the simplest way to share posts with no strings attached, no obligations and no expectations. Postary reduces the Blog Lifecycle down to step four: if you are inspired to say something, then just post it and share it with the world

    Similarly to suggestions for product landing pages, you do not state how Postary will help me with that, i.e. how the procrastination factor is dealt with. Is there gamification? E-mail reminders? Where is the cheese? Expand on that "simplest way" to sell the idea on me.

    Additionally, I will not click-through the "Write a post" button since it requires a Twitter account. Why do I need to login to Twitter, assuming I do have a Twitter account, if you haven't convinced me that there is a reason to waste a couple of minutes of my time?

    To sum things up, what differentiates you from, say, Blogspot, Tumblr, Wordpress et al? I can "just post it and share it with the world" over there too.

  1317. Why are 95% of blogs abandoned? 2011-10-12 02:14:40 mol2103
    Glad you like it. Feel free to pimp it/use it whenever you want :)

    Anyway - if we can find the time, we may release new features in the near-term that will make it even more interesting! Or we might just procrastinate and not do anything...

  1318. Forced Exercise's Effects on the Brain 2011-10-13 21:02:18 jonnathanson
    "You don't necessarily need someone cracking the whip to do that..."

    You'd be surprised. Long-term goals are notoriously bad at motivating most people in the short run (hence, why procrastination is such a powerful force). So, even if you have the specter of something like total physiological degeneration looming over you, you're still going to work only to the brink of your comfort level unless someone pushes you further.

    Anecdotal, but: I broke my arm a few years back in a really bad fall. Totally shattered a few of the bones in my right wrist (and I'm right-handed). Got a metal plate put in, and went through a year of physical thereapy. At the outset of the PT, I was told in no uncertain terms that I'd never regain proper movement of my right hand unless I worked my ass off every day at range-of-motion exercises -- which, at the time, were extraordinarily painful. So, in theory, sure, I could do them at home and never actually go in for PT. But whenever I did that, I'd work up to the edge of my comfort level, but never go past it. Conversely, when I went in for PT, having someone there to "crack the whip" pushed me past that discomfort threshold, and that's how I broke through the plateaus on the path to recovery.

    The body's (and mind's) natural inclination is to avoid pain and discomfort, so you trick yourself into thinking you're working as hard as you can when you're actually not. And exercise isn't about working as hard as you can; it's about working harder than you can. That's where the progress happens.

  1319. As more hackers start to die, when do we finally do something about it? 2011-10-14 12:01:07 veyron
    Why is death a bad thing? Not in the "I want everyone to die" sense, but I personally find my mortality a motivating force (to get things done quickly and avoid procrastination :)

  1320. A Programmers Greatest Enemy 2011-10-15 20:33:34 AndrewDucker
    I completely agree.

    I sometimes find myself procrastinating, not able to get my head into the game.

    And it _always_ turns out that I'm afraid of something. That there's something lurking ahead that I don't know what to do about - lacking requirements, a problem I don't know how to solve, technology that's being a massive pain to work with in the past.

    The thing that works for me is stopping, working out where the fear is coming from, and then taking a bit of time out to work out what the solution is. Once I've done that my productivity skyrockets.

  1321. Tired of Being Tired 2011-10-16 14:00:09 lywald
    One year ago I was tired all the time, couldn't get anything done, had to lay on my bed every hour, ect... And it totally disappeared since everyday I have to walk fast one hour total between uni and my place, instead of commuting. People who don't exercise at all are missing out on something. Now I can procrastinate fully awake.

  1322. Ask HN: How to escape from technologic addiction? 2011-10-18 02:46:29 polyfractal
    I don't think this is anything new. Before the internet people sat around and watched TV instead of being productive.

    You are procrastinating on your projects because you've hit a difficult, unpleasant part. It is easier and more enjoyable to read articles and daydream about finishing your projects than actually finishing your projects. I speak from experience: my deepest character flaw is starting projects and never finishing them. It's a common joke amongst my friends.

    Pick a project and force yourself to work on it for at least an hour a day. You'll quickly find an hour really isn't enough time and before long you'll actually be putting serious time into your project. Just push through the unpleasant part (usually the last 10%) and finish it :)

    As a college student (it sounds like you are in college based on your Stanford class) you have tons of time. It only gets harder once you get out and have to work 8-6pm every day. Enjoy your excess time and energy while you can, because doing the same later gets exponentially harder.

  1323. Video: Quantum Levitation 2011-10-18 10:02:12 skeletonjelly
    When I came into work this morning this was at the top of reddit.com/r/all (got to get the procrastination out of the way first thing right!)

    A guy spoke up regarding his father who works in the field. Currently doing Q&A

    http://redd.it/lfsjn

  1324. Biographer: Jobs refused early and potentially life-saving surgery 2011-10-21 15:12:19 b0rsuk
    I think Steve Jobs acted stupid.

    "The first 90 percent of the task takes 10 percent of the time. The last 10 percent takes the other 90 percent."

    Do you see where I'm going ? If you believe there's some truth in this saying (quote, murphy law, whatever it is) then you should fix problems as early as possible. Granted, you don't always have time for that, and this saying applies mostly to such situations. Software projects, for example. But if you have an opportunity to fix a complicated problem/task early, don't procrastinate. There are often unexpected complications. Solve them early. If you start earlier, the chance you into the deadline is smaller.

    I think it's perfectly possible that Steve Jobs acted brilliant in some situations and plain stupid in this case. There are no 100% brilliant and 100% stupid people. It's not binary, a smart person is not immune to stupid actions.

    http://www.searchlores.org/realicra/basiclawsofhumanstupidit...

  1325. Ask HN: Combat sloth and regain focus/resolve 2011-10-24 21:02:32 cshipley
    Here is what I did. Perhaps it would work for you:

    - Create a todo list. Each thing must be specific, measurable and unambiguous. Update it every day, first thing.\n- Grab a copy of "Will Power": http://www.amazon.com/Willpower-Rediscovering-Greatest-Human... Awesome book.\n- Find someone to work with, or an accountability group. Working with someone is a great motivator for me. \n- Track your time. See how much time you're spending on which thing, (or nothing).\n- If you've been procrastinating on something or more than a month, then maybe you should remove it from your list.\n- Have a clear understanding of where you're going and why. Perhaps your expectations of yourself are too high?

  1326. Ask HN: Combat sloth and regain focus/resolve 2011-10-25 14:46:44 knowledgesale
    My experience shows me that there are no magic snake instant solutions. The only way to improve productivity is to gradually change your everyday routine for the better. One can do it by trying different things and sticking to the ones that work for you.

    One thing that is certain is that guilt and self-loathing are as unproductive as it gets. This approach won't get you far because the brain doesn't work that way. I am sure we all have read plenty articles on this issue [1].

    For example, try something along the lines of Magic Work Cycle [2] or Pomodoro technique [3]. Caffeine and other nootropics can also be helpful. Jogging is the best nootropic I know.

    [1] http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/10/27/procrastination/

    [2] http://www.magicworkcycle.com/

    [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

    I hope some of it was useful.

  1327. Dropping out is probably not for you 2011-10-25 21:52:01 michaelochurch
    I would make it simpler than that.

    1. Don't procrastinate and get distracted. Even if you're taking hard courses, a college course load is rarely more than 50 hours per week. Average in hard majors is probably 35-40 all-in. That's not onerous at all, especially when you're only working 40 weeks per year (including internship).

    2. Concentrate on learning interesting stuff, not on the grades. Good-enough grades (3.5+) will come from this for most people in most circumstances. There are hard-ass professors and even unfair ones (although I never had an unfair professor) but they are very rare and their damage is seriously limited.

    I find it odd when college students claim they're going to sue professors over grades. Really? In college you're judged on the average of 30-40 (!) mostly independent grades. If you flunk a class and ace the other 35, you have a 3.89 GPA. In the real world, manager as career-SPOF is pretty much the default.

    That said, I dislike grade inflation because it adds to the stress of college. If 2.0 were average, then acing a course could cancel out a failure. (When my parents were in college, a 2.5 was a perfectly respectable GPA and 3.0 was actually good.) With 3.2 as the average, flunking a course cancels out 4 As. That sucks. It makes people risk-averse and stressed out.

  1328. Dropping out is probably not for you 2011-10-25 22:14:00 drzaiusapelord
    Oh, I don't know about that. I don't want to get all Kanye about highed ed, but I never understood why university teaching methods are so dependent on the final exam. All the work students do throughout the year is worth very little compared to the final exam. Its a system, imho, that encourages skipping class and binge studying.

    It rewards people who can cram well and have good memories, but punishes those who do good work and who aren't good at last minute cram sessions. I've always thought it borderline cruel, especially when the workplace doesn't reflect this. I rarely jerk around M-F and stay up until 4am on Sunday to perform some big task. Its all about rationally addressing problems, breaking them into chunks, and performing those chunks. At universities, its all about irrationally fucking around and doing a last minute cram to get by. I can see why so many talented young men and women would consider dropping out to enter the startup workforce, especially in a down economy that isn't hiring and the sudden realization of having a huge loan debt for the next 10-20 years.

    I remember more than a few classes that were structured as 90% final exam and 10% everything else (or more typically 80/20). I never felt this was fair to the student and only encouraged lousy study habits, procrastination, and cheating. Its almost as if the American college experience is one big exercise in not doing things the proper way.

    I feel this made me a worse procrastinator than I already was and that it took me several years to shed these bad habits.

  1329. Ask HN: Constantly shuffling between toy projects. 2011-10-26 01:20:32 DanBC
    Here's a useful URL for procrastinators. Weirdly they've made it so long that people needing help probably won't get around to reading it.

    (http://writingcenter.unc.edu/resources/handouts-demos/writin...)

    One suggestion is to build in a finish condition before you start. That at least allows you to not feel guilty frustrated / angry when you reach that point. Then post-mortem the project to see what you learnt and what can be applied.

    Another suggestion is to find a small easy bit of OSS to fix and brush up.

  1330. Dropping out is probably not for you 2011-10-26 01:37:37 dasil003
    Or... it taught you to deal with procrastination head on?

    Anyway, this is not universal. My CS program (University of Minnesota) tended to be about 50% assignments / 50% tests. It varied by class of course, theoretical stuff has to go by tests (numerical computing, discrete math, etc). The programming classes sometimes had competitions for bonus points, optimizing a C program in machine architecture, or a head-to-head game competition between programs (that was super fun, and really cut my cleverness down to size).

  1331. GitHub open sources Hubot (chat bot) 2011-10-26 02:51:43 gbelote
    This is great, thanks GitHub! I've been procrastinating on writing my own Hubot, now I don't have to!

  1332. 15 year-old needs your advice 2011-10-28 03:01:53 goshakkk
    It is. But it's in a very beginning state. And wait, I _don't_ wanna live in here. There are many reasons to not live in here. I don't want to explain each of them.

    And I don't wanna study at Belarus, because the only thing all the students need in here is degree, but not actually knowledge. It's stupid. (And the quality of local education is very, very low)

    I know, but I'm afraid my procrastination and laziness make me degrade from a developer with passion to just another geek, even non-dev.

  1333. Show HN: anti-procrastination community for startup founders 2011-10-29 01:02:35 vanni
    Hi fellow HNers,

    I'm Giovanni (aka Vanni) Totaro, founder of asaclock™.

    I'm building an effective solution for startup single founders (and would-be ones) to beat procrastination and ship their damn MVP.

    You've never seen such a thing, trust me. Expect a lot of psychological tricks (opt-in, of course).

    Please show your interest now leaving your email for launch notification, or THE NEXT GOOD THING will never happen. It is up to you.

    Feedback is welcome.

    Thanks :)

  1334. Show HN: anti-procrastination community for startup founders 2011-10-29 01:14:12 mattwdelong
    > receive your 1 years 10% off gift.

    Does this mean you will be charging for it? Don't get me wrong, it may be a good idea to pursue this but perhaps you never considered that people who procrastinate are likely to be too lazy to sign up, and start using this - let alone pay for it. "Oh, it's 10 bucks..I'll get my card and do it later"

    Maybe I'm confusing procrastination with laziness, but I just don't think this is something neither type of person would pay for.

    Regardless, best of luck!

  1335. Release your start-up project before december 21st, 2012 2011-10-30 18:02:51 diminish
    any technological project you were working on, dont procrastinate; quickly finalize and release.

  1336. Ask HN: Constantly shuffling between toy projects. 2011-11-01 09:33:07 cschmitt
    I have been known to do this as well, but I have also found that I am more creative when I have more than one thing going on. Generally I find that a solution in one application will lead me to rethink a problem in the other.

    That being said I also go through times when I want to work on both or use one to procrastinate from working on another one.

    So you are not alone. I have found the best system that works for me is setting small goals and deadlines. That gives me the flexibility to move from project to project while also feeling like I am accomplishing something.

  1337. Why AUR is part of the Arch Linux Success 2011-11-02 11:11:03 hollerith
    There might be an inaccuracy in my recollection because I have not been using Debian since 2006.

    The shell scripts that run when the OS boots (in /etc/init.d/ and /etc/rc* IIRC) are a lot more numerous on Debian than on Arch -- or so I seem to recall. So for example I remember that trying to increase my boot speed by identifying and disabling unneeded services was an exercise in frustration. I configured my Arch Linux to boot to the text-mode console, and if I wanted to start X and Gnome, I used startx. I probably never tried to do the same thing in Debian, but am left with the distinct impression that it would have been harder. (Why would I want to do that? As a procrastination-reduction measure: when I wanted to focus on work, I would quit Gnome and X. On my slow machine, it would take a good 30 seconds or more for Gnome to restart, and the thing about procrastination -- at least for me -- is that if I can arrange it so that the decision to procrastinate is not immediately rewarding, then the temptation to procrastinate becomes weaker. I realize most people do not need their Linux install to help them fight procrastination, but this is an example of my tailoring my install to my particular needs, so I think it is relevant to whether Debian or Arch is easier to customize.)

    When you build something from source on Arch, it takes very little additional effort to arrange it so that Pacman can install it and the arch build system can rebuild it from source. And if you make the effort, it becomes easy at a later date to look up what you did to get the software to compile, so the (again, mild) additional effort ends up saving you time in the long run when you need to rebuild stuff you built years ago. And since pacman installed every file in my /usr and my /bin, if I ever needed to know where a file in /usr or /bin came from, pacman was able to tell me even if I had compiled the software from source. I know that all this is doable on Debian, but doing it on Arch is very very easy. So I liked building stuff from source on Arch better.

  1338. Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (Its Just So Darn Hard) 2011-11-05 01:07:54 _delirium
    There's an odd cultural aspect to it that I'm not sure is entirely the same as difficulty per se. Among some programs, at least, there's an almost masochistic love of all-nighters, long-as-hell problem sets, etc., etc., and if you're not into that culture, you'll probably feel like a foreigner.

    Fortunately, where I went, that was common in engineering but not in CS, which had more of a "work smarter, not harder" attitude--- still quite a bit of work, and sometimes people pulled all-nighters, but there was a cultural difference in that people didn't see pulling all-nighters as a good in itself, some sort of hazing-esque badge of pride, but just something that, unfortunately, sometimes happened due to too much work, poor planning, or procrastination.

    That's a bit different from the actual difficulty of the material; you can study difficult material without that kind of culture, and in the other direction, it's quite possible to grind someone down with piles of work even if they find the subject matter itself easy, depending on how you design courses and assignments.

  1339. Six Ways to Overcome the Urge to Procrastinate 2011-11-05 02:48:56 tmh88j
    The "startup kind of person" is ambitious so I'm not sure how many people that applies to.

    An ambitious procrastinator...is that an oxymoron?

  1340. Six Ways to Overcome the Urge to Procrastinate 2011-11-05 02:55:00 phzbOx
    #7 Don't write a blog post about ways to not procrastinate

  1341. Six Ways to Overcome the Urge to Procrastinate 2011-11-05 03:55:40 vanni
    I am working on a new way to fight procrastination: http://asaclock.com

    It is an elite anti-procrastination community for startup single founders and people working on side projects.

  1342. Six Ways to Overcome the Urge to Procrastinate 2011-11-05 04:27:27 whateverer
    Maybe you don't like being a procrastinator and you have yet to find a way to help it. Like people with ADHD, in which case it's likely that you got a bad hand dealt to you by genetics.

  1343. Programming Languages Suck at UX 2011-11-05 04:31:50 andolanra
    There are pleasant, non-awful ways of doing characters in programming languages that don't involve memorizing the hex codes for Unicode characters or weird keyboards. For example, the Fortress language has three representationsa pretty, LaTeX-ish image form with operator symbols and the like, a plain Unicode form, and an ASCII form; I am under the impression that you type it up in ASCII, and then it gets prettified for printing. I'm actually as I type procrastinating from writing some Agda code, and Agda also uses Unicode in its source (it is admittedly heavily tied to its emacs mode, and inputting characters is done by typing in the LaTeX character entity, which the mode converts to the Unicode equivalent.) Agda is still ASCII-tolerant, as well; for example, it understands both and its ASCII equivalent -> as being an arrow.

    The issue is, a lot of languages don't necessarily need this. In a close cousin of Haskell like Agda, it makes sense, because it's very much like writing mathematics on a page, so using Greek letters and operator symbols is expected and will be understood by Agda programmers, especially if there's an assumption that it will be widely printed or read, as Fortress would be. But I honestly can't look at C++ and say, "Oh, it would be almost infinitely better if everyone updated their compilers so I could overload the operator! That's exactly what I wantto be forced to use a Unicode terminal font so I can read source code over SSH!"

  1344. Six Ways to Overcome the Urge to Procrastinate 2011-11-05 05:08:50 timwiseman
    No...many ambitious people are also perfectionists, and perfectionists are often horrible procrastinators as they wait for things to line up perfectly or wait to refine it one more time before releasing, putting off the next phase over and over.

    Also, one very dangerous form of procrastination is doing real work...just work that is less important than what you should be doing. Paul Graham touches on this at http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

  1345. Six Ways to Overcome the Urge to Procrastinate 2011-11-05 05:19:46 pbreit
    I like Marc Andreessen's post on productivity, especially "structured procrastination" where procrastination is actually encouraged (there's a good chance that the things you procrastinate on aren't all that important).

    http://pmarca-archive.posterous.com/the-pmarca-guide-to-pers...

  1346. Six Ways to Overcome the Urge to Procrastinate 2011-11-05 05:30:59 antoinehersen
    My favorite way to procrastinate is to read online article about procrastination. I also bought a book about it, one of the few I never finished. If you procrastinate too much there is usually a reason for it, try to find out why, and what you can do about it. For me it is ambitious project that are ill defined. Breaking them in smaller task that can become daily achievements helps a lot.

  1347. Six Ways to Overcome the Urge to Procrastinate 2011-11-05 06:45:00 tagawa
    Reminds me of this well-written article/confession: http://chronicle.com/article/How-to-ProcrastinateStill/93959

  1348. Six Ways to Overcome the Urge to Procrastinate 2011-11-05 09:02:27 ysilver
    7. Effective stress management.

    Stress causes procrastination. Reduce stress to procrastinate less!

    It seems like this is what the author was trying to get at. My favorite stress management methods: exercise, meditate, socialize.

    Also, the first thing you do each day should be something low stress, achievable and important. ...gets you off on the right foot.

  1349. Six Ways to Overcome the Urge to Procrastinate 2011-11-05 21:23:56 greenxc
    Ambitious people can often times be the worst procrastinators because they can have an over inflated idea of what they can get done in a given day putting too much on their plate and thus leaving off many things for later days (often times the things they dread most which keep getting put off)...

  1350. Six Ways to Overcome the Urge to Procrastinate 2011-11-05 21:29:29 digamber_kamat
    One Noble prize given for the research that said best way to achieve your goals is by working on a goal to procrastinate even higher goal.

    Secondly, I remember reading a research paper that said, whenever you have a task at hand which you want to procrastinate at least give it a start. Urge for postponing the task goes seriously down once you at least start doing it.

  1351. I loved C. But it always fell short for me. Objective-C fixed that. 2011-11-07 20:32:56 rbanffy
    Having learned object orientation with Smalltalk/V, I never quite liked C++ (to the point of procrastinating for 8 years before really touching it). It felt just wrong.

    Objective-C was always attractive (I like C), but its close association with NeXT and Apple (and corresponding little support from other platforms) always puts me off.

  1352. Take a short break in a quiet place 2011-11-08 19:54:14 josephg
    I'm not going to defend the tone, or facebook bashing, or anything like that. I will say, I enjoyed that site a great deal.

    I feel like I'm often on a slippery slope toward easy, short, quick and cheap entertainment. Sometimes I'll go to my computer not for any particular reason, just because I want something to do. I should be going to my computer to accomplish something I want, and if I want to relax I shouldn't do it reading blog posts. From time to time, I need to (yet again) jolt myself off the short attention span path and remind myself that I have agency. Then I'm alright for awhile longer.

    I think its this tendency in people which makes sites like facebook so popular. I think this is what caused reddit to drift from an interesting discussion forum to a repository of memes and cat pictures.

    I suspect a lot of the facebook bashing you see on hackernews isn't because we hate facebook, but because hate using a site like facebook as a crutch to procrastinate doing anything actually useful.

  1353. Hacker News Instant 2011-11-09 14:45:34 sravfeyn
    From how many days have I been procrastinating doing exactly this :(. Now here it's already here! congrats :)

  1354. Zynga Chief Seeks to Claw Back Stock 2011-11-11 06:06:46 wpietri
    Do you know any writers? Because the ones I know mostly have a terrible problem with procrastination, avoidance, etc.

    Fulfilling a compulsion is not actually enjoyable. So unlike most game-makers, I don't see them as creating fun.

  1355. If Youre Busy, Youre Doing Something Wrong 2011-11-11 13:27:35 mmaunder
    "It completely ignores the possibility that the behavioral difference might be caused by a difference in ability, rather than the behavior changing the ability."

    Exactly why I clicked the comment link. The differences in behavior could also be caused by a difference in psychology between students. e.g. the elite group love what they do and the other group don't. Which could indicate why the other group spread their practice throughout the day - because they're procrastinating all day long.

  1356. If Youre Busy, Youre Doing Something Wrong 2011-11-12 05:32:49 jonnathanson
    My thinking was also along the lines of procrastination vs. discipline, though love of the activity may or may not be correlated strongly.

    What it may come down to is simply strength of self-discipline. What separates the achievers from the middle-of-the-roaders is self-control. The classic "marshmallow experiment"[1] would seem to bear this out.

    [1]A famous longitudinal, social-psychology experiment in which children were offered a marshmallow (or a cookie, depending on which study), and told that if they didn't eat it, they could receive a second marshmallow in five minutes. Then they were left alone for five minutes. Most children ate the marshmallow. The ones who didn't -- who waited it out and resisted temptation -- were also the ones who grew up to be more successful, earn higher incomes, and perform higher on tests of intelligence.

  1357. PragDave: I'm on vacation, and I've deleted your messagereally 2011-11-13 23:44:11 dylangs1030
    "Of course, there's also the fact that people email/IM/FB others simply because they can, whether they have anything of import to say or not. You'd think twice if you had to walk over to somebody's cube to show them a picture of a cat, but you wouldn't blink an eye to post an article with the same content to 100 people on FB."

    I think you encapsulated YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, among a myriad of other websites with that last comment. That's why I just don't turn any of those on at work. People don't even mean to distract you, but inevitably, they just do. I also keep throw-away email addresses for receiving the (mostly unnecessary) email updates those websites send for notifications and the like. The borders between procrastination and working have blurred so much these days that, even when all studies demonstrate humans cannot and should not multi-task, it's become the norm for people to work with loud (not classical or meditative) music playing, several social networks and news media open in a bunch of tabs, and a miscellaneous distracting website in the background, all while they work urgently on an assignment.

  1358. LaunchRock Launches 2011-11-14 12:39:14 callmeed
    I feel like LaunchRock goes against Lean Startup/MVP mindset a bit. It's an excuse to procrastinate.

    It takes stones to build a thing and throw it out there, knowing its ugly and broken. It takes humility and perseverance to listen to the first users and iterate on your idea.

    I guess I just don't get the viral/buzz thing. Seems like the 2011 under construction gif to me.

  1359. Why I Don't Use RSS Anymore 2011-11-16 01:17:36 ramraj07
    I'm actually very sad that people don't understand the power of RSS. Of course you have to be stupid to push Reddit through Google Reader, but that does not mean RSS is dead as much as email is dead because we have Facebook messaging. While that analogy sounds outrageous, think about it: you won't kick yourself because you missed the top post in Reddit from the morning (maybe it annoys you that you don't understand the windfall of followup posts) but I sure as hell don't want to miss the one important publication that got published in a journal about my research. Sure, my unread count is now 2000, but I can still rest assured that my procrastination will not make things I haven't read to just disappear.

    I used to really love some subreddits, especially r/askscience. I used to be able to just put an RSS feed and never miss a single question I could help with. But now its overwhelming; I can't do anything about it. So I just didn't even bother going there for a while. Until I figured out ways to filter the posts in the subreddit and feed them into RSS (I used http://ifttt.com/ for that btw) and now I can at least try to answer questions of my interest.

    While social aggregation sites are good to go through while munching dinner, when you need to consume data for real knowledge acquisition, I don't think you can beat RSS. For that I hope RSS never dies in spite of all the ignorance around it.

  1360. Ask HN: Unable to stay motivated on one particular thing. 2011-11-16 20:12:35 jhchabran
    It's a quite common problem, I faced it myself some years ago. Basically, changing your target without any achievement like you did means you're avoiding to complete your task by starting a new one.

    You may flag this as procrastination or not, but you're asking us here how you could stop changing targets while you should ask yourself why don't you want to complete your tasks ?

    Usually, when you start something and guess how much work learning something require, you underestimate it.

    When you're halfway in, you got a more precise estimation. That's where you may get bored, faced to the great amount of work required to complete it.

  1361. Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity (2009) 2011-11-16 21:52:18 phzbOx
    Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity? Because they procrastinate the other 50% of the time! (Obviously, it is a joke. But ironically, we're discussing that on HN...)

  1362. Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity (2009) 2011-11-17 02:20:41 wayathrow
    Or they procrastinate and take it easy because there is an upper limit to compensation per unit of time & effort. If I am truly 10x more productive, that means I should be able to keep a steady paycheck rolling in with 4 hours a week!

  1363. If you want to get rich, stop being a fucking joker 2011-11-17 13:26:14 dasil003
    Maybe this is what people need. I don't know because I don't know the people involved. I can say that what he's saying resonates and the words have poignancy because I remember times where I wasn't clearly enough focused on the end goal and such a speech might have been the right motivator. On the other hand when I'm really procrastinating it's usually because something is not right on a deeper level, either the goals, or the people, or something else is rubbing me the wrong way. It's not easy. Sometimes deep introspection is necessary. When you're talking about others it's even harder, but that's where the art of management comes in.

  1364. I Saw An Extremely Subtle Bug Today And I Just Have To Tell Someone 2011-11-18 04:36:38 laughinghan
    TL;DR:

    1. Rails 2.3.11 introduced two subtle changes:

    - CSRF tokens have to be included in XHR POST requests

    - failing the CSRF check silently resets the session instead of throwing an exception

    2. A/Bingo (his A/B testing library) checks if visitors are human with an XHR POST request. He did not notice that he needed to patch it to include the Rails CSRF token.

    3. Race Condition: When the login/signup page is loaded, usually the A/Bingo human check will fail the CSRF check and reset the session, and A/Bingo will mark the visitor as human, all before the visitor logs in. The session won't be reset again, because A/Bingo will remember that the visitor is human. However, if the visitor is very fast and logs in/signs up before the A/Bingo human check goes through, it might not be until later in the session that the human check missing the CSRF token resets the session, prompting the visitor to log in again. Now that the session has been reset and the visitor marked human, it won't happen again.

    4. His analytics indicated referral stats were way below normal because the referrer was usually getting reset with the session at the login/signup page. The only time his analytics libraries would log the referrer correctly was when the very fast visitors logged in/signed up before the human check missing the CSRF token reset their session.

    Lessons:

    - Race conditions are hard to track down.

    - When analytics indicates something is way out of the ordinary, don't procrastinate tracking down the problem.

    - Don't dismiss bugs because they (seem) irreproducible. Figure out how to reproduce them.

  1365. New Stanford class on Cryptography 2011-11-20 04:25:47 riffraff
    other already pointed out that having assignments helps, I'd add that for some people (e.g. me) a _schedule_ is a great advantage.

    If you are trying to learn something on your own timing it's easy to procrastinate. Maybe you could keep a faster pace but you just won't push yourself a bit.

    It goes without saying that people with good self discipline can do without a schedule, but for some of us it helps.

  1366. New Stanford class on Cryptography 2011-11-20 09:22:48 dhx
    I'd argue that the key motivator for hackers is the presence of interesting and creative course work that has a clear purpose. Schedules tend to arbitrarily restrict creativity and learning.

    This means that courses should be designed around the concept of incrementally building something useful.

    A "subject" would not be broken down into one specific topic area, but rather, would encompass a small project such as:

    1. develop a library that performs rudimentary speech-to-text translation and then create a plugin for {selected open source software} that makes use of this library

    2. build a geospatial database that stores OpenStreetMap data and then create a rudimentary website that {highlights areas that are not within a 3km diameter of a police station, etc}

    3. analyse the implementation of cryptography in {selected open source software} against many avenues of attack, particularly side-channel attacks, entropy of random data sources, etc and prepare patches that solve the problems found

    In the above examples, mostly-complete plugins or websites could be provided to students so they can focus on more important parts of each problem.

    I feel this would work because each small project:

    1. allows a great deal of creativity from students

    2. encourages students to extend themselves throughout and _after_ the small course has been completed

    3. doesn't force students to move on too early

    4. demonstrates how to _apply_ knowledge they've gained

    5. rewards students with something more than a number/grade as they progress

    6. encourages entrepreneurship

    n. ...

    Many of these points are built into Kahn Academy by design. This is why the theory is well suited to Kahn Academy where you can map out skills and ensure you've ticked off dependencies before moving on. Their new grading system (a learning algorithm) helps students move on _when they're ready_, not at some arbitrarily defined point of time.

    A course would therefore start by introducing the project, providing a demonstration of the expected outcomes and seeding some ideas for how the project could be extended and applied to unsolved problems.

    Links to Kahn Academy would provide succinct theoretical background. Course material would apply that knowledge and demonstrate how it is used to do something useful to assist with completing the project.

    Hopefully this form of education builds a desire to learn. Schedules and grading become irrelevant when students are having fun and making progress on interesting problems. Students will prioritise the project over other things in their life that they'd otherwise procrastinate with. The added benefit to society is increased levels of research and development, entrepreneurship and decreased education costs.

  1367. Some threshold has been passed when there is a startup for creating launch pages 2011-11-21 02:49:26 tptacek
    I thought the same thing at first too, but then decided this was no different from any other startup providing services to other startups (like metrics, or novel databases). Unlike some of those services, this one at least eliminates an issue people tend to procrastinate around.

  1368. Don't. Waste. Time. 2011-11-21 03:35:10 edw519
    When it comes to efficiency/effectiveness, I prefer to focus on "Do" instead of "Don't".

    Richard Hamming (from "You and Your Research"):

      1. What are the most important problems in your field?
  2. Are you working on one of them?
  3. Why not?
    http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html

    Paul Graham's (from "Good and Bad Procrastination") generalization of Richard Hamming:

    What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you?

    http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

    edw519's generalization of Paul Graham:

    Work on the most important thing until it's not the most important thing any more.

    I have developed this excellent/horrible habit of not being able to focus on very much of anything if there was something more important hanging over my head.

    Excellent in keeping me from trivial pursuits. Horrible at meal time, bed time, other people time. I'm still a work in progress.

  1369. Ask HN: How do you know if you're burnt out or just being lazy? 2011-11-21 20:11:36 BonoboBoner
    lazy: procrastinating an activity with something that is more fun

    burnt-out: no activity provides enough fun to procrastinate the current activity

  1370. Free Online Courses from Top Universities 2011-11-22 02:16:59 barik
    It turns out, at least for me, that the courses themselves have been widely available in various formats (such as through MIT OpenCourseWare), so that by itself isn't new. The main difference that I've seen is that I think Stanford not only has the content, but is also chose to the right approach to providing an online experience that is amendable to actually learning the material.

    As I said, having the videos themselves is not a sufficient motivator. Either I start out with full enthusiasm and quickly burn out, or I procrastinate and never start the video series in the first place. Or I see a question, answer it, and have no idea if it's even in the right ballpark. By adding some form of scheduled assessment, even if it isn't "real" (let's face it, the actual grade in these courses is meaningless), I think they've hit a sweet spot -- and these are the types of courses that I'd like to see more of, particularly in CS, where automated assessment (submission of programming assignments for evaluation) is more easily feasible.

  1371. Amazon Puts Your $1000 Kindle Library 'On Hold,' Apologizes, Shrugs 2011-11-24 02:49:13 pyre
    I think that it's silly to blame the user because they waited a month. You have no idea what was going on in that person's life to cause them to wait that long. You also don't know that person's personality. Maybe they are a major procrastinator. Maybe they are phone phobic.

    To say that the person was obviously in the wrong/doing something shady/to blame just because of how long they waited seems like you're really stretching to give Amazon the benefit of the doubt.

  1372. Amazon Puts Your $1000 Kindle Library 'On Hold,' Apologizes, Shrugs 2011-11-24 03:44:17 JonLim
    Didn't say they were obviously wrong, just that something feels missing.

    However, not sure how it's silly to blame a user if they waited a month. Personal issue? Fine. But procrastinator and phone phobic aren't really excuses for this. If you're really concerned about your Kindle (I would be VERY concerned if it were more than a day.) then I would do almost anything in my power to fix it.

    Wait a month? But that's a whole month of me not reading my books!

  1373. How I Became a Programmer in ~12 Weeks 2011-11-24 07:39:36 marquis
    There's also a lot more to learn and possibly more confusing. In 'my day' it was just CGI with MySQL, Apache and perl, then comes Java, then along came PHP then Python, Ruby, now there is JQuery and Redis and Hadoop and.. and on HN now you see a hundred new frameworks each saying 'we're great, use us!'. While I welcome that there are easier ways to actually learn all these things and the amazing communities, I'm not sure it's really easier to actually just get started. Oh, and you've got Reddit and Facebook and HN sucking up your time and a fast internet connection to procrastinate on Netflix and Youtube.. I could go on.

  1374. Show HN: my weekend project - stumbleupon for videos 2011-11-24 13:46:47 FlightOfGrey
    I like it, it would be better if it had a few more options your opinion on the video instead of just awesome or dislike, maybe a middle option would be good?

    Also if this is successful and people actually use which I will when procrastinating, maybe add some other genres like extreme sports, interesting etc?

  1375. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-25 02:58:12 arketyp
    How does cases of workaholism suit into this? That is, specifically, persons focusing too much on their career for big parts of their lives and then later regretting never having spent time with their family, enjoying a slow day etc. Isn't this almost reverse procrastination? Somehow you have deluded yourself that the future reward is worth the short term costs. And I guess in the end the habit would be so hard to break that it is indeed a sort of short-term procrastination kind of deal once again. You keep working all days because it is the easiest choice to deal with. Stepping down is such a drastic choice and a big commitment and scary and so on.

    I guess I also want to point out that these things are really complicated dynamics. How do I know how much I should deny myself the instant rewards? What do I really know about the worth of this task I have setup for myself and its benefits? Why do we procrastinate? Well, because we don't know, because we're uncertain, because we doubt.

  1376. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-25 03:02:49 jodrellblank
    Well, because we don't know, because we're uncertain, because we doubt.

    What about the people who don't know and don't procrastinate?

    What's bad about uncertainty and doubt? What are you afraid of if it "goes wrong"? If it was uncertain what would happen but any outcome was exciting, you wouldn't procrastinate, right?

  1377. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-25 03:15:54 DenisM
    I think this simplistic explanation does not do justice to the complex subject which is procrastination. If it were that simple, we wouldn't be having those problems, would we?

    For a more rounded perspective on the subject of procrastination I suggest reading someone who observed a few hundreds of cases and helped in fixing most of them:

    http://www.amazon.com/Now-Habit-Overcoming-Procrastination-G...

  1378. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-25 03:18:20 arketyp
    What about the people who don't know and don't procrastinate?

    I guess they got God's blessing. I don't understand your point.

    If it was uncertain what would happen but any outcome was exciting, you wouldn't procrastinate, right?

    That's exactly the time I would procrastinate. Or am I missing something?

  1379. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-25 03:23:44 rkalla
    In addition to the temporal aspect of decision making given in the top reply, there was a study recently (posted on HN maybe 8 months ago) that found procrastination was a function of confidence in a decision.

    I think the temporal aspect of decision making is a red herring and the real issue is the confidence in the decision; which is harder to gauge the farther out it is.

    Some people have a great sense of confidence in their decisions and subsequently may procrastination less as their lack of faith in their decisions are not impacted by temporal locality.

    This explanation happened to fit my tendency to procrastination to a T, as opposed to decisions simply being farther out on a timeline.

  1380. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-25 03:24:31 tryitnow
    It is unsurprising that this gets so many upvotes since HN is where many go to procrastinate (myself included).

  1381. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-25 03:24:37 erikb
    Hm. I never saw this as a bad attribute nor can I accept it as the reason for procrastination. Yes, sure. People work more for goals that are closer in time then for goals that are further away. But that is not irrational, nor is it the reason for procastination. First let me explain how I see the procastination thing and then let me say a word or two about why I think that temporal discounting is something rational and useful.

    Procrastination often has no reward at all. If it has a reward, why call it procrastionation? You actually do something useful, if it has a reward. The thing is, that "not procrastinating" is considered work, thus related with stress, concentration and energydepletion. So "not procrastinating" has a cost, which humans overestimate. There is some research (that I can't quote right now, but psychological material here on HN often cites some good sources about that) that people value a cost of an objective value X around 2 or 3 times higher then a reward of the same objective value (so losing $100 might feel as bad, as winning $200 might feel good). So most humans prefer instinctively to avoid or minimize costs before they maximize the (stochastic) expected value of an action. Doesn't avoiding cost (stress, "work") seem much more reasonable then missevaluating the reward for procastination? Well, what the truth is can nobody know, because the science also doesn't know yet. But for me it sounds way more reasonable, especially because I know how much I like to not work and to have no stress compared to getting anything done.

    So, now why do I think that temporal discounting even is a good thing? Time can change the reward we gain from an object. An object might increase or decrease in value over time. With money we can even be sure that it decreases over time. Also our preferences might change according to our changing situation. Whatever we do now, we can be sure that our situation will be very different one year in the future. And last but not least, the risk increases drastically, that we don't get any reward at all. Dying in a car accident is a very unlikely thing if you sit at home in front of your comuter now. But if you think about that risk again for this point in time + one year it is not that unlikely anymore. All risks increase with a bigger time frame. All this leads to a situation in which gaining something now makes it much more rewarding then gaining it somewhere far in the future.

    I think the big problem about that article is that it mixes truth with false assumptions. For example saying humans act irrational is true. It is also true that humans discount rewards over time. But both doesn't mean time discounting is something irrational. This article shows clearly that having some right arguments doesn't make your assumption correct. (this might also be correct to say about my arguments)

  1382. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-25 03:41:48 ggwicz
    "Procrastination is the soul rebelling against entrapment." - Nassim Taleb

    People procrastinate because they're doing something they don't like.

    I procrastinate when I'm doing homework. But wouldn't you know, I always get motivated when hacking on an open source project or when working on a freelance project.

  1383. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-25 03:53:15 stdbrouw
    What that comment doesn't get is the anguish that sometimes accompanies procrastination. I don't want to start real work, often for a reason I can't quite fathom, so I go play Skyrim, and while I'm playing it I feel really really bad for not working even though I can't quite force myself to quit playing either. There's no joy in this particular kind of procrastination, and so it can't be explained by the lure of immediate gratification.

    It is or should be any hacker's goal in life to do something that you love, not to accept drudgery for some supposed long-term benefit. Which means that any procrastination that remains is likely to be of the kind that I describe here, which must have different origins. I like the "procrastination as a function of faith in a decision" theory.

  1384. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-25 03:56:03 jconnop
    "Why do humans procrastinate?"... with a link to reddit.com

    How fitting :)

  1385. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-25 04:11:57 mih
    An interesting video on procrastination from a chapter of the book 'You are not so smart'

    http://youtu.be/DJ2T4-rUUcs

  1386. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-25 04:14:33 nekojima
    I'm currently multi-tasking my procrastination. Reading HN & watching football, while avoiding yardwork and if I do that, between games, then "real" work will lie ahead, which I should really be doing instead. Btw, its not a holiday here. :-)

  1387. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-25 04:26:01 dusing
    Sometimes (not often) procrastination saves me from making a bad decision because my during my delay something plays out that would have negated or been worsened by my planned action.

  1388. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-25 05:55:30 ma2rten
    For those who, didn't see it three month back. There was a great threat about procrastination:

    http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2886187

  1389. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-25 06:13:37 funkah
    Simple, scorn of the abstract. The hour spent watching tv is valued more highly, right now, than the consequences that come some point in the future. The tv-watching hour presses the brain's reward buttons harder than the abstract notion of having your work done ahead of time.

    Taleb's "The Black Swan" has a nice discussion of scorn of the abstract, though not in the context of procrastination.

  1390. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-25 06:56:53 GHFigs
    I think the issue here is the language used. The research usually describes things in such a way that "rational = maximizing" and and the phenomena cataloged are "errors" or "biases" that make human behavior fall short of maximizing. So, you could easily come away with the impression that "irrational = always wrong" or "irrational = bad", but what is really meant is that "irrational = not maximizing".

    Temporal discounting is just something we do. It's a heuristic[1] sometimes gives good results, sometimes doesn't. When it doesn't, the redditor suggests, that's what we call procrastination. When it works well, we generally don't even notice, because it seems so natural.

    Procrastination often has no reward at all. If it has a reward, why call it procrastionation? You actually do something useful, if it has a reward.

    That's setting a higher bar for "reward" than what is meant. Pleasurable activities like watching television or playing video games are "rewarding". That's why people do them. That's why people continue doing them even when they "have more important things to do". Yes, in the end, you might not get anything material out of them, but if it truly had "no reward at all", nobody would do them.

    losing $100 might feel as bad, as winning $200 might feel good

    That's known as "loss aversion", another cut from Kahneman & Tversky's Greatest Hits.

    But if you think about that risk again for this point in time + one year it is not that unlikely anymore.

    Notice that you say if you think about.... When people procrastinate, are they really thinking of those sorts of things. Suppose you're a student that has a paper due soon and opt to play video games instead. You'd probably be thinking something like "I'll play games now and do the paper later." rather than something like "I might die before the end of term, so why bother with the paper?"

    That's not to say you're wrong: only to bring it back to the original context.

    [1]: A heuristic, in other words, being a way of "avoiding cost" of doing the rational (maximizing) computation. So it's not really different from what you're saying.

  1391. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-25 07:07:33 ramanujan
    There was a recent highly cited paper describing the concept of willpower as a measurable, physiological, depletable quantity, strongly affected by glucose levels:

    http://www.fed.cuhk.edu.hk/~lchang/material/Evolutionary/Bra...

    And there was a very interesting Metafilter thread from a few years ago that found that a small amount of alcohol overcame procrastination:

    http://ask.metafilter.com/22924/Why-does-alcohol-overcome-my...

    It's probably time to start studying these kinds of things as genuinely biological phenomena.

  1392. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-25 10:35:58 prawn
    I use No Doz and find that it just makes me procrastinate at incredible speed.

  1393. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-25 10:38:21 prawn
    I found my old Wunderlist account which has stuff on it from at least nine months ago. I've done a lot of related things since, but 90% of the items on the list, I've still not done and still need to do. If anyone ever needs to study procrastination, get in touch because I am a pro.

  1394. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-25 12:22:41 ramanujan
    Yes, for me personally caffeine and loud music also work. Didn't have a cite, which is why I removed it.

    But: next time I feel like procrastinating, might self-prescribe a Red Bull with vodka plus some music at 120bpm. Let's see what happens.

  1395. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-25 14:30:00 lightcatcher
    Before reading the content behind this link, I thought for a few minutes about why people procrastinate. I came up with a few reasons:

    1. Fewer context switches. A true procrastinator only works on the single next thing they have to get done, so they don't have to switch between tasks as often. Imagine the simplicity of popping tasks off of a priority queue compared to some sort of coroutine setup.

    2. Saves work. Occasionally, the things that people have to do get cancelled. The procrastinator never has to do these things that got cancelled at the last minute, while the person who works ahead does.

    3. Some kinds of work are easier later. Particularly in collaborative environments, getting things done is much easier when other people have already done some/most of the hard works. Examples of this include my problem sets for school. However, there is less reward for doing things after others. For instance, there is less intrinsic reward for being aided by others than for just doing everything myself on my problem sets, and it is much easier (and much less valuable) to do something like building a light bulb now than it was 100 years ago.

  1396. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-25 17:39:22 hvass
    I'm surprised nobody has given this link from LessWrong: How to Beat Procrastination: http://lesswrong.com/lw/3w3/how_to_beat_procrastination/

    I highly recommend it!

  1397. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-25 18:00:15 freemarketteddy
    yes..one way to avoid developing tolerance is to not use it regularly....in my case I try to alternate between periods of relaxation(lots of procrastination!) and intense work periods when I use 10 mg XRs on weekdays!

    Here is a very good quora thread on the long term effects http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-long-term-effects-of-Adder...

    Also nearly 3.3 million Americans age 19 and younger used an ADHD drug last year, according to Medco Health Solutions Inc.I think there is enough data to conclude that there are not really any serious and irreversible long term effects.Would love to be proved wrong on this?

  1398. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-25 23:13:39 WickyNilliams
    One drug that definitely doesn't help is cannabis. As a habitual smoker for over ten years I know this all too well. As of late I've started wondering whether the real damage of cannabis is not in it's health consequences but in it's ability to completely demotivate. As a complete coincidence I actually started writing a poem about this last night:

    Procrastination was higher on my to-do list, Than achieving all the things that I otherwise wished. Aspiration blew motivation a farewell kiss, And said a sad goodbye, "you will be missed"

  1399. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-26 03:27:15 WickyNilliams
    You're quite right, i was in a bit of a rush writing that original comment so perhaps didn't elucidate enough. The point i tried to make was that the major damage that cannabis can do is to your ability to achieve, the consequence of which is probably far more widespread and damaging to our culture and advancement than any other ill-effect.

    Now i'd be lying if i said i was a drop-out who hasn't achieved anything in the last ten years - i've done remarkably well, putting myself through university, graduating, getting a good job - but there's so much i want to do when i'm not working that i just put off because i get home, get stoned and suddenly nothing is boring - i could probably stare at a wall for hours without a hint of tedium. And therein lies the real point, that cannabis eliminates boredom. Without boredom people don't feel the need to push themselves, try new things, achieve what they want etc.

    I've just been postulating on the issue of procrastination so much recently, this post really struck a chord. Also it was a strange coincidence that i wrote a poem on topic yesterday, as i literally never write poems; and i hoped someone might like the excerpt.

  1400. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-27 08:30:07 Fliko
    I've experienced this form of procrastination a lot and I've found out that the best way to overcome it is to clean my desk, remove everything that isn't relevant to the work I want to get done and then dive into it. I'll usually be put in the zone within a few minutes after doing this.

  1401. Why do humans procrastinate? 2011-11-27 08:34:01 Fliko
    I really like Taleb, but I think his quote is a bit wrong. I love to just pick up my guitar and try to learn songs by ear but I usually find myself procrastinating against doing such things. I try to take procrastination as a sign that I've been doing too much of one thing and need to start doing other things (The thing I've been doing too much =/= what I am procrastinating against).

  1402. What I learned from reading The Clean Coder 2011-11-27 08:56:10 prodigal_erik
    I'd like to know how everyone else came to grips with his arguments against the Zone (flow). I find that state to be an important part of the quality of my life, as well as the only way I can stay employablewithout it, I trudge through coding painfully slowly and procrastinate like crazy.

  1403. Nobody's Going to Help You, and That's Awesome 2011-11-27 20:26:54 itmag
    If you can only stomach scientifically proven self-help advice, then you might like this:

    http://lesswrong.com/lw/3nn/scientific_selfhelp_the_state_of...

    http://lesswrong.com/lw/3w3/how_to_beat_procrastination/

    http://lesswrong.com/lw/4su/how_to_be_happy/

    Now, upvote me :) (reverse reverse psychology)

  1404. Speak Truth to Stop Procrastination 2011-11-27 21:09:45 ennovates
    here this is the full article on it http://time-management-success.com/how-to-stop-procrastinati...

  1405. Speak Truth to Stop Procrastination 2011-11-27 21:19:32 karambir
    here are my two principles that i always keep in mind to stop procrastination:

    --> Start with the hardest part first. You'll attack it while you're energetic and enthusiastic. Encourage yourself by knowing that all the rest of the job will be easier.

    --> Avoid saying yes. Don't start taking on too many tasks at once. Be sure you really have the time. Don't work on a project if you're tired, in a distracting location or not thinking ahead.

  1406. Code sober, get things done drunk 2011-11-27 23:37:58 udp
    I'm the other way round - I try not to send emails etc when I'm drinking, because I think my social behaviour changes a lot more than my programming ability does (it's easier to write a message, but much more difficult to judge if it's the right thing to say).

    I find that after a beer or two I'm much more likely to stay motivated to work on the same project, rather than procrastinating or switching to something else. Keep in mind that the line between there and being drunk can be surprisingly thin.

    (Homebrewing and working from home are a great combination to find yourself drinking when you shouldn't be)

  1407. Speak Truth to Stop Procrastination 2011-11-28 01:30:13 yason
    I procrastinate by doing interesting things in favor of less interesting things.

  1408. Nobody's Going to Help You, and That's Awesome 2011-11-28 02:22:15 naner
    I think most peoples' distaste with the self-help genre is that the books often feel more like a distraction or a tease than a source of change and improvement. People read the books and start to feel productive and like the solution to their problems is within their grasp. Then when the book is finished, almost no change in behavior or thinking result and you quickly lose the "high" you had while consuming the book.

    Psychological and behavioral problems are highly individualistic and can be quite complex. Say you have a problem with procrastination. Maybe you have ADD? Maybe you are depressed? Maybe you are tired? Maybe you are afraid of failure? Maybe you hate your work? Maybe your mind is focused on other problems you need to address? Maybe your work is too difficult? Etc. We could go on listing hundreds of possible causes. Well, using a tomato timer or implementing GTD isn't going to fix any of those problems.

    I think that the few well written and researched self-help books that are out there can give people useful strategies if they already have their shit together, but for most people they end up as a dud. That is if these people even finish the books to begin with.

  1409. Code sober, get things done drunk 2011-11-28 05:16:48 tommi
    I agree with what you say about the effects of alcohol. However, with small amounts, a glass of wine for example, the positive effect of getting things done is way bigger than the negatives for most people. Procrastinating and putting things off for weeks like the author is far worse than little bit of insensitivity in a mail.

    Of course it's better if you don't need any toxics to live your life happily.

  1410. The Trouble with Bright Kids 2011-11-28 12:07:56 Jach
    The general idea here, "praise effort, not smartness", is pretty well backed by the research, I came across a similar study some years ago and they keep popping up. (Maybe it was the same one?) It's definitely made it into my mental catalog of parenting techniques should I ever have kids.

    It also reflects my own personal experiences I think a lot of above-average-in-something people go through: at some point in their academic or professional lives, they hit a wall where their ability isn't enough and they don't have the mental discipline and other habits to put in the needed effort. Some things stop being fun and look suspiciously like busywork even if it will help. (And sometimes it actually is unhelpful busywork.) I know some people eat up busywork, they just grind through it, personally I can't stand it and avoid it as long as I can. Nor have I found anyone suggesting a general solution to gaining a hard-worker attitude if you didn't develop one in your childhood, and it seems like a hard problem to solve since it's part of the wider motivation and procrastination problem.

    Unfortunately the conclusion of the post is a bit too strong:

    "No matter the ability whether it's intelligence, creativity, self-control, charm, or athleticism studies show them to be profoundly malleable. When it comes to mastering any skill, your experience, effort, and persistence matter a lot. So if you were a bright kid, it's time to toss out your (mistaken) belief about how ability works, embrace the fact that you can always improve, and reclaim the confidence to tackle any challenge that you lost so long ago."

    Effort is insufficient, and great effort is not always necessary as those of us, who breezed through anything others struggled with, know. Ability is necessary though not sufficient. A 3-and-a-half foot tall person has no chance of being an NBA All Star, and I've witnessed not-very-smart students pour hours and hours into things like studying and still fail. Work smarter, not harder (though that requires you to be smart enough).

    I remember Feynman reflecting on his art saying he didn't think it was very good, that he'd never in a hundred years rival a Renaissance master. Yet he still did it, probably because it was fun or interesting. Cultivating a spirit of playfulness and curiosity that produces effort in disguise seems more important to me than cultivating a spirit of effort for effort's sake.

  1411. The Trouble with Bright Kids 2011-11-28 14:05:13 lightcatcher
    At my school, we have a bit of a "culture of genius" problem. Many, if not most, of my classmates grew up being one of the smartest people they knew. This lead to the widespread (and maybe not untrue) belief that we can do things that other people simply cannot. This leads to a lot of students setting themselves up to fail (epic procrastination, expecting to do well on finals after never going to a class or studying) and most students eventually fail hard at least once, but there are enough success stories to keep the "culture of genius" alive.

    This article addresses what happens when the students fail. As the article states, many of us seem to blame failure on not being smart enough rather than just not working hard enough. Personally, I hope I've made away from the genius fallacy. Interning at a startup (as well as competing in athletics growing up) have made it pretty clear that success is more a function of effort and persistence than innate ability.

    As bane offered some advice at the end of his post, I guess my mantra could be "Being smart makes things possible, actually working hard makes things happen".

  1412. Brain Gain: The Underground World of Neuroenhancing Drugs 2011-11-28 17:48:38 hendrix
    Lulz at the history major needing adderal/Ritalin to write papers/gpa. Most likely he was procrastinating all night too, and using the drugs as a crutch to be coherent at 3 in the morning. Many people have survived ochem/thermo/analysis without anything other than coffee, you just have to be _interested_ in the subject.

  1413. The Trouble with Bright Kids 2011-11-28 21:50:49 kitsune_
    Same story here. I was always the "bright kid" in school (and I got beat up quite often because of this : ) My environment (aunts, grand mothers, parents, teachers, friends, other pupils), always made sure that I knew this in some form or another. I was "smart" and excelled in all school classes, without effort.

    One teacher once found personal gratification by grilling me for 1 hour in front of the class room: He set up an advanced math problem 4 years my senior and ridiculed me until I started to cry. "See, even you don't know everything". This happened when I was 11 years old. Yay for education professionals!

    Now, as you said, there is always going to be a wall ahead. My parents have no college background so I was pretty much left alone after I finished high school. I enrolled with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Computer Science and bombed HARD. I was shy, I didn't know how to make friends, I failed at simnple administrative tasks required when growing up, couldn't support myself financially and on top of that the course material obviously wasn't going to be a walk in the park.

    To this day I struggle with "boring" work and procrastination.

  1414. Watch a VC use my name to sell a con 2011-11-29 10:46:04 prawn
    I'm glad he finished with a note for the people who actually get something out of hard work on their personal project because I doubt I'm alone in getting a lot of personal satisfaction in performing like that. It's not all the time that I pull an all-nighter or a couple of weeks of hard slog, but I often feel better for them.

    And I'd rather be doing that for myself on a side project or in the start-up lottery or within my own business than for someone else. If that isn't possible, then even for someone up the chain. If someone else (VC, client of mine, landlord, etc) also profits from this endeavour, so be it.

    Sometimes you have to know the lows to fully appreciate the highs.

    Further to that, I tend to enjoy weeks of fulfilling hard work with those glimpses of recreation more than I do the ones where I'm procrastinating, spinning my wheels or at a loss for something I can be bothered doing that day. Hard work, or hard holiday - that half-arsed stuff in the middle rarely satisfies.

  1415. "What I Miss About Counterstrike" - Blog authored by CSS legend JonMumm 2011-11-30 14:31:13 kaichanvong
    Having read this, there are so many skills you can pick up from the gaming culture that helps you integrate with working as a programmer.

    He probably knows how to do scripting from IRC... maybe he's written a bot or knows how a bot works from IRC. I remember lots of bots that work in different way and what you can learn from watching it run.

    At 16 I remember seeing my very first bot and being amazed by it. The problem was that I was on a Windows box and everyone around me was on Linux. Then the problem was which language did I pick. Then the problem was that the most popular language was a bitch to install... then there was the problem I had no idea what the error was and if it was something I had done.

    Oh the list goes on.

    What I'm trying to say is, not everything is a waste. Knowing when something is valuable enough to spend time of is a skill in its self.

    +1 procrastination proclaimer

  1416. Watch a VC use my name to sell a con 2011-12-01 01:45:01 aaronf
    Working consistent long hours does not mean you're getting more done. I believe RescueTime has data showing the average person at work 8-hours a day is only working 2-4 hours. The people I know who are consistently first in and last out are not getting more done - in fact they're usually doing it to make up for something. One theory on productivity says procrastinators and workaholics have the same core issue - but respond to it in opposite ways.

    This reminds me of the Seinfeld episode when George Castanza leaves his car at work so his boss thinks he's always there.

    We need to stop measuring productivity by hours worked. Instead, productivity should be about finishing what you set out to do. If that only takes 4 hours, GO HOME. Plan the next day. Get some rest. Your output will be higher, and you'll be healthier and happier.

  1417. iPhone 5 and iPad 3, both with 4G LTE, reportedly due next year 2011-12-01 03:19:59 Pewpewarrows
    At this point they should really consider dropping the "suffix" to the iPhone model name. They've kind of dug themselves into a hole, name wise, since this upcoming one will be the 6th version of the model. They could name it 5, which would probably only upset us geeks that actually know how many models there have been. They could name it 6, but then the general population would start wondering where 5 went. They could even just name it 4G and procrastinate solving the problem for another 12-18 months.

    Or they could just go the way of a lot of their other products and just advertise it as the new iPhone (like the new MacBook Air, etc).

  1418. Response time to email reveals your close friends 2011-12-05 01:22:16 madiator
    Few years back I used to reply to email much faster than I do now. Now its slower mostly because of having too much mail and procrastination. In any case, I hope they look at normalized response time rather than actual response time.

  1419. How do you track and decide what topics you want to spend time learning? 2011-12-05 11:45:00 billswift
    >Instead of trying to do Deliberate Practice, Id fool myself into thinking I was investing my time wisely by reading blog posts and examples but not actually doing much of anything.

    That is one reason for serious learning I use textbooks. The book itself helps structure your learning, it is easy to keep track of how much you have covered, and commitment is simpler, since you can just commit to finishing the book.

    It doesn't help as much though for longer term learning; I have a tendency to procrastinate between books, and often switch directions and even fields of study. On the other hand, the OP's "learning list" doesn't help much with that either.

  1420. Stop being so productive 2011-12-07 00:20:18 peregrine
    I completely agree with this. On days when I have class, work and personal projects are days when I feel like I get the least quality of work done, further I am much more likely to procrastinate on all of them.

    If I'm just working on a single project I feel better, I procrastinate less and my work is considerably higher quality. I believe this is partially because of the Makers Schedule[1] and getting into a state of flow.

    Nice article its in stark contrast of some articles we've seen about startups and programming lately.

    [1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

  1421. Stop being so productive 2011-12-07 00:27:13 abk
    I feel that work habits are a very personal thing.

    I find that I'm more productive if I work on multiple projects throughout the day instead of dedicating to just one. I don't know if it's because I'm putting artificial deadlines for myself (i.e., I have 3 hours to get this done before I move on to task / project B) or because I stay more engaged and motivated if I'm working on very different things.

    On the other hand I know people like Swizec who will feel overwhelmed if they know they have a number of tasks to get done in one day and will procrastinate on all of them.

    Always interesting to read about other people's productivity tricks though.

    Edit: Also completely disagree about the comparison with professional athletes. Burnout is very real and it will sneak up on you if you don't take some time off to relax here and there, but just working hard will not damage your brain like being a pro-athlete would damage your body.

  1422. Stop being so productive 2011-12-07 01:36:29 TeMPOraL
    If you badly have to context-switch, make the process as efficient as you can.

    Context switches take a lot of time, but sometimes - like day job vs. side project - are unavoidable. So instead of trying hard to avoid all of the switches, maybe let's optimize the switching process so that it doesn't hurt so much?

    I started doing that at my last work - 10 minutes before leaving the office I would open up my "Context Dump" file and write down exactly what's on my mind - current project status, what I was working on, what have I done, what has to be fixed, what quirks are there, what ideas I was considering - pretty much a stream-of-consciousness-like mind dump to text file. And then, the next morning, first thing I would do would be to open up that file and re-read it. It helped me to rebuild my mind state in few minutes instead of an hour. Also, my anxiety went down, which reduced the amount of time I procrastinated on HN each morning.

  1423. Why We Think We Can Prevail in the Notoriously Crowded Online Dating Space 2011-12-07 19:27:44 slig
    I can only image they would. I often see people complaining that they don't have anything to do on facebook, what means that they get bored, they want more useless stuff to procrastinate.

  1424. Wordless: stop writing Wordpress themes like it's 1998. 2011-12-08 04:23:55 egypturnash
    This is... impressive.

    Not for me, though. When I got my current webcomic up and running I didn't even bother writing a custom theme like I did before - I just made a child theme of the Comicpress theme and started hacking away at the CSS.

    It is inefficient, it is inelegant... but I got it up and running in a couple of days rather than a couple of weeks of tweaking the hell out of everything. Every now and then when the comic's being hard to write I procrastinate by tweaking the theme a little more.

    I don't know if this means I'm a talentless hack or a pragmatic professional. Maybe some of both.

    Then again I'm also not doing a crazy dynamic site that happens to be using Wordpress as its backend.

  1425. You've Probably Read Enough 2011-12-08 06:15:32 hrabago
    At a certain point, it's no longer reading to gain more knowledge, it's about procrastination.

    Doing takes work, it requires making decisions, it requires critical thinking. Reading helps you delay this with an activity you can justify to yourself as being helpful in the long run.

    However at a certain point, you've delayed too long and the time investment you've sunk into reading has been way too much for what you're getting out of it, compared to the act of doing and producing something and/or learning from experience.

    (Edit: spacing)

  1426. You've Probably Read Enough 2011-12-08 10:03:18 vanni
    > What is reading one more article going to do? Probably nothing.

    Reading articles after articles instead of doing things is a very common form of procrastination. From Wikipedia: "procrastination refers to the act of replacing high-priority actions with tasks of low-priority".

    <on-topic-shameless-plug>

    To fight this plague I'm working on an anti-procrastination web community for startup founders and people working on side projects: asaclock (http://www.asaclock.com).

    </on-topic-shameless-plug>

  1427. I quit my job to do a startup. 2011-12-08 20:38:12 vanni
    Very similar experience here.

    > Finishing the MVP is Priority #1. At all times. Anything else is a distraction: hackernews, twitter, food, sleep, gmail, friends. Saying no is hard (...)

    I quit my day job in 2010 to work on my first web startup and to help fellow startuppers (and would-be ones) overcoming procrastination:

    <on-topic-shameless-plug>

    asaclock, an anti-procrastination web community for startup single founders and people working on side projects.

    </on-topic-shameless-plug>

  1428. The diagnosis 2011-12-10 03:25:40 outworlder
    I shudder to think what could have happened, had she delayed the exam. From what I understand, she was not in a risk group and didn't yet require periodic exams. Not many people will jump through the hoops unless they have been told by a doctor that it is something they need to do.

    And that's not even counting the heavy procrastinators, such as myself, that will postpone exams even when the doctor asks for them. Which reminds me...

    In any case, I find the bureoucracy a pain. For most exams, you have to schedule an appointment in advance. Depending on what prompted you to seek medical help in the first place, you might even be feeling better already. Too many times I have been told that there was nothing wrong - no kidding, I was feeling better already.

    Don't even get me started on how hard it is to find good doctors...

    I believe we are reaching a point where we have the technology to cure most maladies, but which doesn't do us any good because it is not applied consistently enough, even disregarding economic factors.

    I guess that's why the Star Trek's sick bay appeals to so many people. It is not hard to envy a future where one just has to walk-in with an obscure disease, get state-of-the-art scans, done by one of the very best doctors, who will not stop until he finds what's wrong. And not go broke afterwards.

    Yeah, give me that over a transporter any day.

  1429. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 04:03:23 kapitalx
    For me, procrastination always come from a lack of having a digestible plan of attack.

    When you find yourself procrastinating, figure out a single next step for your project, one single feature, or one single task in that feature that needs to be done. If you know what your next step in the project is, you'll have this urge to jump back in and do that task.

    If you can't find that task, then you need to step back and look at your project from a higher level and analyze it to see if you have a clear picture of what you're trying to achieve.

    Try it, it works wonders.

  1430. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 04:05:12 j_baker
    I don't understand why some people beat themselves up so much over procrastinating. Sure, it becomes a problem when you can't get anything done because you're so busy procrastinating. But everyone has a day here and there where they just can't be bothered to work on anything. Usually, it's a sign that your brain needs a break. Listen to it! Take a break.

    If it happens so often it interferes with your work, you need to address the underlying issues. Do you enjoy what you're doing? Are you stressed out about something outside of work? Your problem procrastinating won't go away until you resolve those issues.

  1431. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 04:09:38 herbivore
    I feel you. I've been procrastinating a project for 3 years already (yes 3 years). I write code maybe half of one day each week. The rest of the time I do as you describe. I'm so ashamed of it I tell no one. Glad to have quite a bit of savings.

  1432. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 04:11:00 JamesAn
    How I kicked the same problem:

    Spend a day procrastinating. Contemplate how unpleasantly wasteful it was (even if it felt superficially 'fun' at the time.)

    Spend time being productive. Contemplate how I enjoyed doing it, and how I enjoyed having done it.

    Consider the contrast between a day spent (in my case) learning C++ versus a day messing around on Reddit.

    I don't have to make an effort any more. After my allotted procrastination time is up, I lose interest, and start to feel drawn towards my studies. It's like an internal productivity timer that automatically dampens my enthusiasm for wasteful activities and makes me keen to return to my books. I guess this is what it feels like to be hypnotized into disliking chocolate and into preferring healthier snacks.

  1433. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 04:11:46 Sukotto
    I find procrastination is a symptom, not the actual problem.

    The very root of the problem is that I'm either faced with something I just don't want to do or can see that the NEXT thing is something I really don't want to face.

    It usually means I need to do some introspection.

  1434. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 04:15:45 wattjustin
    As some say, procrastination may be a symptom not an actual problem I think the less "tools" you have to procrastinate with the better. My top recommendation that I think has helped me become more productive within the past month is deleting all bookmarks and apps involving Reddit. Yes, it is just one site and you can easily replace it with another time filler but it is easy to get lost on that site for quite some time each day. Replace "Reddit time" with work and you can gain back some time to complete tasks each day. It's working for me and I don't really miss it.

  1435. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 04:16:47 angkec
    Here's a realization that scared me to death that I don't procrastinate any more: The whole life only exists in the current moment. The reason being that the past doesn't exist any more, and the future has yet to come into existence. Hence all my life exists only in the current moment.

    This leads to the conclusion that if I procrastinate for even a bit moment, I'm wasting away all my life. This is the most scary conclusion I've ever had and it works wonders to drag me back to work.

  1436. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 04:17:29 daenz
    I'm with the "it's ok to procrastinate sometimes" camp. Lot's of exercise plans include a "junk day" where you're allowing yourself to eat whatever you want without guilt. The reason is because it's good to reward yourself with something you like, and because it's near impossible to continue at something forever without little breaks.

    From the sounds of it, maybe your "junk day" breaks aren't regular enough to keep you balanced, and you've reached an overloaded point.

    Take regular breaks, don't feel guilty, and your net productivity will benefit.

  1437. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 04:24:22 rhizome
    So, my procrastination won't stop until I resolve the reasons for my procrastination. Thanks!

  1438. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 04:24:55 perlpimp
    I have been fighting somewhat winning battle with procrastination and it sums up to a few things, key ones are: - get a good nights sleep, having less then 8 hours of sleep lowers your IQ and therefore doing complex and rewarding work its a catch 22, you go home feeling bad fret go to bed late. - make a plan before you go to sleep for the next day, visualize, conceptualize results in your head - feel the accomplished goal. - when you wake up focus and tell yourself that you trust that you can be reach each one of those goals. goals can be .. being focused and productive and feeling great! - few pushups crunches goes a long way at the beginning of the day. if you feel a bit tired - i take a shot of double espresso before morning excerize, it all falls into place.

    Procrastination can be good if it is deliberate, like when you are stuck and you can't move you can deliberately switch focus, take a nap read a book.

    My 2c.

  1439. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 04:29:14 billpatrianakos
    I'm having one of those days today and I need help! The while week has been that way. It sucks. I know much of my procrastination is due to burnout. I totally burned myself out and now I need to recover. But sometimes recovery isn't an option when you've got deadlines to meet. Sometimes you've got no choice. So now it's off to try to force myself to finish and hope to God I end up with just enough time to take a long enough break to recover.

  1440. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 04:33:55 gabaix
    I found a way to reduce procrastination, while enjoying some of it. I alternate a procrastinate day with days of non-procrastination.

    For one day, I am allowed to watch as many movies as I want, play chess, do whatever useless and enjoyable I might want. Then I would do variable periods without procrastinating. This could be 1 day, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month. It depends on your other priorities, work, family, achievements. During those periods, I have blacklisted the things I usually do when procrastinating. When I go back to my procrastination day, I am very happy since it has been a while I have watched a movie, trailer or play chess.

    This is very similar to some drug-addiction techniques, and I found it worked for me very well. If you feel bad and haven't tried that yet, try that and let me know how it went.

  1441. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 04:34:24 msutherl
    Yes, for me this also seems to be the case. Most of my procrastination results from not having scoped out my task load. I overestimate how much work I have to do, get anxious, then engage in various activities to quell the anxiousness in the short term.

    Lately what works best is to clean my room, do the dishes, do laundry, etc. anything productive and meditative and when I've had a minor success and calmed down, I find it easier to confront my TODO.txt + .reminders and sort everything out.

  1442. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 04:37:34 pawelk
    > If you know what your next step in the project is, you'll have this urge to jump back in and do that task.

    For me it is the next interesting and possibly rewarding step. Just simply knowing what's do be done next doesn't cut it for me when I perceive it as a dull task. Even if I know it can be done in a few minutes I tend to avoid even starting to work on it. I have lots of these little boring things piling up for weeks and I know I'm going to have to finish them one day or another, but for the time being I'm here on HN, following work-related links on twitter, exploring stuff or answering stackoverflow questions.

    What works for me is finding something interesting, even way outside of the scope of the project. Anything that could make me start to work with the project I should be working on. From there, as soon as I catch the flow, I usually can go to fixing bugs and doing the tasks I have avoided doing for days. I spit code like mad, close a dozen of tickets in an hour, fix things only I knew were broken, doing these final touches here and there. And suddenly even these annoying things start to be highly rewarding, because finishing any of them - and most of them take very little time and effort to complete - makes me feel I've accomplished something and started to dig out of the hole I dug myself in.

    Then the work day is over, or a distraction comes, I go to a meeting etc, and the next five minute task turns into countless hours of procrastination, followed by finding that itch to scratch which puts me back on the track again.

    tl;dr: I have to buid elaborate scenarios to lure me into doing anything tangentially related to the project (but funny/rewarding/explorative) from where I can move to the real, but somehow boring tasks.

  1443. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 04:40:06 firichapo
    I find that procrastination, at least in my personal case, is strongly correlated to the amount of work I have pending. I tend to procrastinate when I a light work load. I find that I can focus on task when there is a heavy load. Well, at least now days, back when I was a student it was quite a different story and I guess I changed because of that experience.

  1444. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 04:42:10 plebu
    I agree. Procrastination is caused by a lack of vision.

    Here are some painless quick-wins:

    1. Make a list of things you would like to accomplish the following day BEFORE you go to bed. Prioritize it. Then close your eyes and visualize the next day. Start from the moment you wake up. Wakeup -> Bathroom -> Coffee -> Get Dressed -> Check email -> Commits to GitHub -> etc... Visualize everything. Watch the following day like a movie in your head. Do it every night.

    When you wake up you'll know exactly what to do. You'll feel focused and ready to make things happen for yourself.

    2. Set goals. Make plans. What would you like to achieve in day? One week? One month? How about in the next 10 minutes? I'm sure there is something you have been putting off that you could accomplish in 10 min. Just work hard for the next 10 minutes.

    Start now. Right now. Ok, Go. 10 minutes. That's it.

    3. Oh, you are still reading? Well, watch these: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1WC6hNTONg (procrastination) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi_zx40B9S4 (vision)

  1445. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 04:45:09 msutherl
    I've spent some time trying to impress this thought into my mind likewise Steve Jobs' daily reminder that you are going to die but I just can't make myself care. The issue for me is that wasting away is really quite nice in the present moment. I really do enjoy procrastinating. Sure, I don't enjoy tit as much as doing things that I love when I'm not worrying about something else subconsciously, but it's so much easier to just drown it out. Why not?

    After some thought and experimentation, I came to the conclusion that I need external motivation to kick me out of this cycle. Internal motivation doesn't work for me. The things that works better than anything else is setting up my tasks so that other people are dependent on me finishing them.

  1446. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 04:51:36 msutherl
    I found this article on Less Wrong to be extremely useful: "How to Beat Procrastination": <http://lesswrong.com/lw/3w3/how_to_beat_procrastination/>.... The article establishes The Procrastination Equation and outlines some scientifically suggested techniques for increasing Motivation:

                     Expectancy x Value 
  Motivation = -----------------------
                Impulsiveness x Delay
    My notes on the article:

      Increase your expectancy of success.
  Increase the task's value (make it more pleasant and rewarding).
  Decrease your impulsiveness.

  Success Spirals:     small successes one after the other
  Vicarious Victory:   watch inspirational things, read books 
  Mental Contrasting:  imagine where you could be vs. where you are now

  Flow:     match the difficult of the task to your ability
  Meaning:  think about what you're doing and make it mean something
  Energy:   sleep, drink water, caffeine, exercise, cold water, music, de-clutter
  Rewards:  reward yourself for success
  Passion:  increase the value of the task

  Commit Now:    commit in advance (tie yourself to the mast)
  Set Goals:     break the ice, then daily goals
  Set Routines:  for instance, exercise every day

  1447. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 04:51:53 3pt14159
    I don't mean to come off as a dick, but switch projects. I procrastinated for a month straight on something, as soon as I dropped the project the code flowed.

  1448. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 04:56:45 angkec
    If you just think you will probably die tomorrow it won't really work because secretly you don't believe that. It didn't work for me until I was talking to myself the moment is _all_ my life. If it's not all your life you'll feel fine wasting it because you always have more.

    As for external motivations, I guess everyone is different. I sweat on external pressures and I avoid doing them at the last moment then I procrastinate because I feel worse and worse missing the deadline. I guess everyone works differently :)

  1449. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 05:03:26 tomjen3
    Since monday my home internet hasn't been working. Was told by tech support to call them if it didn't work two hours after rebooting it.

    My internet is important to me (and using an iPad with 3g wasn't a great solution). The tech call wouldn't have taken more than 15 minutes. I had the time.

    Yet I procrastinated making the call. I might have made it, but the connection started working today so I didn't.

    The plan was simple. Pick up the phone. Dial the number.

    Yet I didn't.

    Not really sure why.

    Heck I don't have any clean socks. I could easily pick the used one up from my bed, put them in my laundry bag and put them in the machine. Yet I don't. It is not like I don't know how or that I like not wearing socks.

    So yeah the plan of attack is one thing, maybe it helps somebody, but it is far from enough.

  1450. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 05:03:41 mrleinad
    Something that helps when acknowledging Im procrastinating is to fast forward to the future and think: How will I feel after Ive wasted a perfectly good day doing nothing, when the day before I told myself I was so going to do all of those things?

    Getting myself out of the present, in a nutshell.

  1451. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 05:11:30 hndl
    Procrastination shouldn't just suck, it should be unacceptable. Don't tolerate it. No excuses. Not even if it's "just today".

    Close everything! Ask yourself why you're not enjoying your work today. If you're not enjoying what you're doing, do something about it. Either finish it, so you can move on to something you enjoy. If that's not the case, talk to someone about how boring your stuff is and fix this problem.

    DON'T ACCEPT PROCRASTINATION!

  1452. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 05:12:31 herbivore
    I did twice already. Both times because competitors beat me due to my chronic procrastination.

  1453. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 05:36:10 obilgic
    I think procrastinating is one of the most obvious symptoms of low EQ. You are just to emotional, you feel extremely unmotivated because you do not want to do what you need to do(studying etc). You just can not overcome your emotions and you do what ever your emotions want you to do, which is procrastinating and feeling better for this moment of time.

    Emotions do not care about what you will feel in the future, they just care about what you feel right now. Procrastinating makes people happy. It is some type of addiction. You just can not ignore your emotions, and you do what makes you happy right now which is procrastinating.

  1454. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 05:38:05 rane
    I have a problem with procrastination.

    Seeing this post has led me to possible solutions to the problem.

  1455. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 05:43:15 sheldor
    There are a million sites on the Internet about procrastination and you found your solution in a mediocre (at best) 15 line blog post? Google. Seriously.

  1456. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 05:52:21 dudurocha
    The solution is not on the post, is in the comments.

    So you think that the solution for procrastination is google for it? I see this approach going all way around, and making people procrastinate more. Here in hn we can listen to other peers, that have the same problem and have good solutions.

  1457. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 06:11:45 ugh
    Finding a way to start work without immediately hitting barriers was so important while writing my bachelor thesis. I now sort of whish I had known about your tip earlier, that seems easier than having to actively search for a simple way to start while procrastinating.

    That said, sometimes it seems it was necessary for me to stop work and just do nothing for a while in order to find that important insight.

  1458. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 06:13:49 eps
    You know how sometimes you are reading a book and then at some point you realize that you have no idea what the last few paragraphs were about. There was a study that traced this sudden loss of comprehension to the first word that didn't make sense. Anything between that word and the current position was read, but not understood.

    I am guessing the procrastination is similar. I would be working and it all would be flowing along, but then I would hit a problem. Something stupid, like having several variable names 5 characters each, and needing another variable, but not being able to find a 5 char name for it. And that's it. I will just keep idling here.

    The remedy in both cases is to realize there was an unknown word or a stumbling block, explicitly identify it and work around it. This really works, though YMMV.

  1459. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 06:20:40 Sukotto
    There's a difference between dealing with a little boredom or muckwork in a project (there's always some of that) and the sort of relentless, day-long, can't do anything procrastination the OP describes.

    Sure, we all have those little jobs we don't want to do... But if you find you just can't get anything done for days at a time, it means your subconscious is trying to tell you something. You'd be wise to try and figure out what, and take steps to address the underlying problem.

  1460. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 06:28:50 vanni
    Lot of posts about procrastination past days here on HN. This confirms my feeling that this is a real and widespread issue. Even for startuppers.

    [On topic shameless plug] This is why I'm building asaclock (http://www.asaclock.com), an anti-procrastination web community for startup single founders and people working on side projects.

  1461. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 06:52:08 harryf
    > I've still no clue why humans procrastinate.

    I do - it's a sign you need a rest and a sign you've been doing too much of the same and some variety is required. Take a day off, do something different, get some fresh input.

  1462. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 07:39:22 baby
    Finally a post that talk about procrastination without giving advice away.

    Because really, I've read them all. I'm pretty sure I could do a PHD about procrastination. The thing is, I would never start it.

  1463. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 07:43:14 baby
    This is a very interesting statement that I've read before.

    It is interesting because it deals with the moment you're working and not about the moment you're procrastinating. Because yeah we've all read those articles while procrastinating which gave miracle solution. Never works.

    This is a real solution.

    It doesn't tell you what to do to stop procrastinating, it tells you how to stop working as not to procrastinate the next day.

    It is a lifestyle about knowing WHEN to stop something. And I truly believe it can be applied in a lot of life situations.

    When you talk to a girl, don't wait the last minute, when the conversation starts getting boring, to leave. Leave in the middle of a conversation, leave when it's interesting. She will keep a good memory of you in mind and the next time you meet her you guys will be at a peak of exchange.

  1464. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 07:45:44 TheEzEzz
    Just a friendly caution: overcoming procrastination to study is very different than overcoming procrastination to work. I'm not exactly sure why. Perhaps because learning is more passive than producing. Perhaps because learning usually feels productive, like you're permanently gaining something, whereas a lot of work will lead you to question the purpose of the work itself, and usually doesn't compound in value of time.

  1465. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 09:00:42 poodougnut
    I'm procrastinating reading the comments to this post.

  1466. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 09:31:22 roryokane
    I think it’s a little bit insightful in that it highlights how not-fun procrastination is, even while we’re doing it (“Procrastination is the worst feeling ever”). A reminder of that feeling, which we often forget when we desire to procrastinate, can give people a little extra motivation to avoid procrastination.

  1467. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 09:34:10 NiceOneBrah
    Check out the excellent book "Procrastination: Why You Do It, What to Do About It Now" by Burka and Yuen. I discovered it via a HN comment and figure I should repay the favor.

  1468. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 09:47:21 sukuriant
    So ... you've scheduled in breaks and call them 'procrastination days', because 'break' or 'vacation' or 'sanity holiday' sound wasteful?

  1469. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 11:56:02 gnosis
    That might work for mild cases of procrastination, but not severe ones.

    I know all the things I should be doing, like setting goals, making lists, visualizing myself working on and achieving various tasks and goals, checking on my progress, etc..

    The problem is that I don't do those things.

    Well, sometimes I do manage to make some lists, but I don't work on any of the items on those lists. I don't even check to see what's due next on those lists. I've tried taping my lists to my bedroom door and to my bathroom mirror, but I just walk past or look past those lists like they weren't there.

    It's easy for to say things like "just work hard" or "just do it" and give advice on things a procrastinator should do. But what's to be done when someone can't "just do it" or follow your advice? That's the real problem.

    I would be the most productive person in the world if I could just follow through on things I know I should be doing. But I just don't.

  1470. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 12:01:53 apurvamehta
    I can't believe that this has been up 8 hours without any mention of Steven Pressfield's "The War of Art" (http://www.stevenpressfield.com/the-war-of-art/)

    This lays bare the root of procrastination. It is also provides forceful, direct ways for dealing with it. I don't know a single person who has read it and not taken something positive away.

    And it's a really quick read. I went through it in an evening.

  1471. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 12:42:36 shreeshga
    Procrastination is also because of a tired mind. I get spaced out after a long/hectic week and lose a day or two without realizing. Then I just work on something else which dosent need too much brain-work [read: blogging]

  1472. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 12:59:42 tdavis
    This may not apply to everyone, but I found the thing that consistently removed my procrastination was simply to stop working in isolation. Whether it's going to the office of an employer or renting a desk at a co-working space, being around other people who are being productive worked wonders for me.

    I used to think there was some fundamental flaw with my psyche; I would procrastinate quite often and always feel utterly depressed afterwards. Turns out that external motivation and clear delineation between "work space" and "play space" was all I needed. I still work after work pretty often, but usually on other projects. If I just sit around and watch TV or play video games I don't feel badly about it because I know I just put in 8 hours of solid programming, which is something I used to think myself utterly incapable of.

    If you're in an environment where watching Hulu all day is acceptable, find an environment where it isn't. I practically guarantee it's all you'll need.

  1473. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 13:30:21 billswift
    Wash socks when you want to procrastinate doing something worse. If there is nothing in your life worse than washing socks, you really don't want to move, you're already living in Shangri-la.

  1474. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 14:40:53 evoltix
    I find that writing things down on paper in a divide-and-conquer fashion really help in battling procrastination.

  1475. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 15:43:45 stupidhurts
    It's pretty simple:

    When you procrastinate your day away, at the end of the day you feel like a shit.

    When you work hard and deliver, at the end of the day you feel like a boss.

    I'm going to keep feeling like a boss :)

  1476. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 16:11:10 lazyeye
    Tales of mere existence - Procrastination

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItMFWpKofSg

  1477. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-10 22:57:45 ed209
    This question: Why do humans procrastinate, and how can it be beat? prompted an excellent reply from Sneering.

    "People overestimate the value of the reward if the reward is imminent, and increasingly discount the value of the reward, the further away it is in time."

    Worth a read if are interested in neuroeconomics [who knew?].

    http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/mkwf2/why_do_hum...

  1478. At the End of a Procrastinated Day 2011-12-11 02:16:40 goblin89
    At least one post I've read here on HN while procrastinating influenced my life quite significantly (in a measurable way). More than pretty much any number of hours spent working instead would. That made me reconsider my classification of activities as useful and useless. What matters more is probably willingness to take action or something along these lines (haven't thought this through yet).

  1479. None 2011-12-11 22:06:48 grovulent
    Yep - know your pain...

    Dex has helped me a lot. It gets me through my boring day job.

    But a big part of it is also learning to make peace with your eclectic nature. You'll bloom late - but it will happen. And you'll also have powers of thinking outside the box that will dwarf those around you simply because you've tried on so many different things.

    It might mean you won't be successful - and relationships for you are probably going to suck. But if you fight your nature to be what you're not - you're not even going to be able to take pleasure in your flights of fancy when they hit.

    Fitting into a straight box is going to be very difficult... so play to your strengths.

    To give you something more concrete - I'm 35. I've got 6 months to finish a phd before they won't let me re-enrol. I probably won't because the prospect of spending 6 months procrastinating and not getting anything done depresses the hell out of me. I've had 2 years off from the Phd now. In that time I learnt to program from scratch. Just today I deployed an app that I'm pretty proud of (shameless plug: http://puttheeffortin.com/).

    The app itself is inspired by my very eclectic interests - I wouldn't have come up with the idea - or the motivation, drive without years and years of various aimless flights of intellectual fancy. So for me the PhD won't have been a waste - even if I don't finish it. None of it is a waste.

    Fighting distraction has been insanely hard. I love to write... http://reviewsindepth.com - and when I get an idea I have to struggle hard against it. But when the urge gets too strong I just go with it - because my total productivity in the end is a thousand times higher. And now particularly that I've got a first version of this app out the door I'm going to reward myself with some free-time-madness... Got a couple of reviews to write - and currently have half a song on the guitar that I want to perhaps add a verse to. (I've never managed to finish a song... but a whole bunch of them are getting close).

    And that's what I live for... Have no idea if any of it applies to you... but hope it helps to some small degree.

  1480. Thanks HN 2011-12-12 03:24:26 donald_draper
    To work at Grimm Library, you don't even need an id or anything. Just go there. But they have some rules about main times of the day like 8-19 reserved for actual students - although I never experienced anybody controlling it.

    I go there for anti-procrastination as well, it's great.

  1481. RFC: Blanking all Wikipedia as SOPA protest 2011-12-13 08:02:14 bdrocco
    I can't say I'd mind youtube getting shut down for a day...

    It'd be comical though when a study puts a value to the U.S. productivity increase when youtube videos are an inaccessible distraction.

    Some of those videos have sucked up millions of man-hours of viewing... if even a single digit percent of those views were by workers procrastinating, we're talking millions in lost productivity. (Per clip!)

  1482. Ask HN: How to overcome strong feelings of worthlesness and inadequacy 2011-12-13 12:34:59 dazedconfused
    Thank you.

    Sadly HN has become like a drug to me... I have tried several times to ignore and stop coming back here but it has never worked and when I procrastinate I always end up coming back.

  1483. Thinking time 2011-12-14 02:16:10 eykanal
    From my experience, this is immensely helpful in dealing with the problem of procrastination, which has come up a lot here on HN. I found it to be most useful in two scenarios:

    1) You have a complex problem that will require a complex solution, and you're procrastinating in figuring out how to deal with the problem.

    2) You're coming towards a milestone in a project, and it's time to plan out the next steps and goals.

    For both of those scenarios, just taking a walk with a pen and a notepad can be the most efficient use of your time. Sometimes a bit of fresh air and slow, methodical thinking goes a long way.

  1484. Things Highly Productive People Do 2011-12-15 07:29:52 bluedevil2k
    Though not applicable to every job situation out there, I found the biggest leap in productivity for me was to crate a rule of "write down 3-5 things you must do today. When those are complete, you are done working for the day".

    I find myself completing the tasks around lunch, and aggregately accomplish 2-3x more than when I had fuzzy goals. Procrastination is limited, knowing I can (go to gym/eat with kids/play golf) when the work is complete.

  1485. Things Highly Productive People Do 2011-12-15 14:51:53 aaronf
    This is exactly the philosophy behind LazyMeter. We help people focus on one day at a time and feel accomplished. It's all about working towards a clear goal. http://www.lazymeter.com

    We automatically build your daily to-do list, and we provide the only workflow that lets you clear out your to-do list everyday. We also show you your progress add up. It's very satisfying.

    I was a chronic procrastinator before co-founding LazyMeter. Now, I get more done in less time, and enjoy my evenings without worrying I've forgotten something. We have over 12,000 users so far.

  1486. Things Highly Productive People Do 2011-12-15 14:57:34 aaronf
    Being in the productivity space, I read many articles like this each day, and you're right - it's the same advice.

    With LazyMeter, we sought to build not just a new philosophy, but also a tool that helps you adopt it. Our goal is to motivate you by making your to-do list achievable and showing you how much you've done. We also show you how much you procrastinate - it's amazing how powerful a little awareness can be. Would love to hear what you think. http://www.LazyMeter.com

  1487. Things Highly Productive People Do 2011-12-15 15:02:14 aaronf
    The thing that's always missing from these articles is the definition of productivity. Is it doing more? Is it working more hours?

    What most people don't realize is that productivity is not about how much you do - it's about how you feel at the end of the day. Don't forget why you're working in the first place. Effective productivity is simply doing what needs to be done, one day at a time. The key is turning your overwhelming to-do list into an actionable today list - so you're working towards an achievable goal each day. When you're working towards an end point, you'll get things done much more quickly, and you'll have no reason to procrastinate.

    Productivity doesn't need to be stressful or overwhelming; it can actually be very fulfilling if you look at it the right way. Stop focusing on "work" and focus on progress instead.

  1488. Things Highly Productive People Do 2011-12-15 21:16:19 praptak
    I believe "The Now Habit" book by Neil Fiore covers the level above the good old "practical" advice and it does that pretty well. I mean the top down approach that starts from your psychology rather than buying a planner. The roots of motivation, the roots of procrastination, tricks for managing your mindset and so on.

    On the other hand I have read the book and I still procrastinate (although maybe a little less.) So maybe it really boils down to just getting your ass moving and plowing through. Hrm, speaking of which... it's back to work for me now.

  1489. Technical cofounder lost motivation - what now? 2011-12-17 08:11:01 staunch
    Procrastination is often your gut telling you something is wrong. It very well may be that his unconscious mind knows it's not worth the effort to complete the project.

    Move on to product 2. If it happens again, maybe it's a different problem, but it could easily be that he's right about product 1.

    This is the most important reason why you need to work on things that you deeply believe in. Unfortunately you only find out late in the game how much you really care about a problem.

  1490. Notch live coding for Ludum dare 22 2011-12-18 06:47:22 mechanical_fish
    The best part of a good grad school is that, when it comes time to procrastinate, you'll have a card to a very good library.

    Billiards is actually easy to learn about: Pick up any book by Robert Byrne (the canonical one is Byrne's Standard Book of Pool and Billiards; it can be found all over the place) and he'll be telling you all about it by the second half of the book; he can't help himself. Hoppe got name-dropped in there somewhere.

    I should emphasize that my judgement of Hoppe's stroke quality is entirely my own (though it does jibe with the anonymous editors of Wikipedia) and is based on one or two videos like this one on YouTube. It is entirely possible that Hoppe was exaggerating his sloppy-looking stroke for the cameras; this was an exhibition after all.

    (I can't actually play billiards, by the way, and I'm a bad pool player. You know how there are things which are more fun to read about than actually do? Billiards turns out to be like that for me: I'm not driven to practice. So many hobbies, so little time...)

  1491. San Francisco team wins paper shredder puzzle prize 2011-12-19 14:24:11 otaviogood
    Where do you think I found out about the yellow dots? I was stuck on puzzle four and procrastinating by reading hacker news. Just in time, there was an article here about the yellow dots. I looked at the shredded pieces and they were there in a nice pattern. Hacker news FTW!

  1492. Book Recommendations: Amusing Ourselves To Death 2011-12-20 23:48:05 arkitaip
    Most of us could add HN to the list of deadly amusements ;) Not saying that HN in itself is bad, but if you - like me - keep re-checking the front page for the latest posts, there might be a problem. The root problem in many cases is procrastination and a great book for scientific minds is Procrastination by Burka and Yuen.

  1493. Desingineer the mythical person every startup is looking for 2011-12-21 00:14:15 namank
    Anyone on here have any insights on HOW to get there?

    IME, you need certain attitudes towards life to get good at both.

    You need to be a visionary AND an engineer. Usually people are one or the other and prefer it because they suck less at it. Hence, they eventually get great at it. But this means the other suffers. To be in the designer+engineer category, you first need to figure out what you are good at (essentially what you spend a large chunk of your time on - dreaming or coding) and then what you are weak at.

    Then practice doing the weak thing for a couple of years.

    Pretty soon, you are a designeer.

    Problem is, in the startup world, I still can't figure out WHY you should be both when you can hire people to complement your weakness. Steve Jobs was obviously only a visionary and he, through practice, became great at it. Dennis Ritchie, an engineer.

    Unless, of course, startup is not your endgame. Unless your goal is self-improvement powered by a zesty thirst for knowledge. In my limited knowledge, though Learnado Da Vinci fell into the designeer category, he was still very much an idea person (visionary) than an engineer - mainly because he procrastinated like crazy with his projects (for years, at times). This shows that he preferred conceptualizing the project and loved cultivating the vision rather than actually implement it.

    Thoughts? Please give me some feedback, this stuff is important.

  1494. The Bipolar Lisp Programmer (2007) 2011-12-21 16:07:58 nandemo
    > It's not 'bipolar disorder', specifically.

    Indee it's not about actual bipolar disorder (a.k.a. maniac-depression) at all. It's just a figure of speech. It's describing more a combination of cronic procrastination, unwillingness to do "boring" things even when it arguably goes against their self-interest (e.g. failing Intro to Philosophy), etc.

    (I wish I could make myself clearer but I have no time for that now, as that would be procrastination).

  1495. How To Eliminate Procrastination And Get Shit Done 2011-12-23 10:21:50 billpatrianakos
    You nailed it. A lot of this has to do with bad habits. I know I'm one who will sit in the chair all day long and it really does me no good. Just realized this too! I sat in my chair for 4 days straight and never took a break and got nothing done. I took breaks and accomplished infinitely more.

    But what I wonder about is what if you're not procrastinating and not getting things done? I'm currently in a situation where I work my ass off but somehow nothing is getting done. Progress gets made but it certainly feels like its not nearly enough. I'm wondering how people who work but don't accomplish anything can learn to get shit done.

  1496. StackOverflow also planning to switch from GoDaddy due to SOPA concerns. 2011-12-23 13:31:45 mekoka
    No it's not. Domain name registrars are a dime a dozen, people don't invest hours learning to use their panel, they also don't write "I know how to use GoDaddy" on a resume. As you can see, the switch from one to the next is trivial. People often procrastinate to do it because it's a bit of a pain, but it's simple enough that the motivation to do it is just one frustration away.

    It just shows that if you're about to express your unpopular political opinions as a business, at the risk of pissing off a good chunk of your customer base, you should make sure your product is so damn good and unique, that people will be compelled to use it despite their contempt for you. But in this case, people just went nah, fuck godaddy!

  1497. Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011 2011-12-27 20:31:10 MengYuanLong
    I am loving this thread. There are so many wonderful suggestions.

    My personal additions (though I know they are not obscure):

    Down and Out in Disneyland - Cory Doctorow (This was gifted by a friend and really inspired me to make some significant changes in my life. That includes the decision to learn to code and escape the user end of the spectrum.)

    Procrastination- Jane B. Burka , Lenora M. Yuen (This book has fundamentally altered my introspective conclusions. That is to say, I am now more aware of times when I am procrastinating and the impact it has on my life.)

    This year was a great year for reading and I hope to read even more next year.

  1498. Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011 2011-12-27 22:52:49 pknerd
    Eat That Frog by Brain Tracy. An excellent read to get rid of procrastination.

  1499. Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011 2011-12-27 23:46:32 yummyfajitas
    Eliezer, if you are reading this, please stop procrastinating and finish writing it.

  1500. Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011 2011-12-28 00:54:25 babebridou
    I often got back to Playing to Win by David Sirlin - http://www.sirlin.net/ptw/

    Though it's certainly aimed at competitive gaming, I also use it at times as an inspiration for my business. It helps whenever I need to take a second look and play the devil's advocate about my own decisions. Reading it also earned me an extremely effective weapon against procrastination.

  1501. Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011 2011-12-28 03:10:59 dudurocha
    Nice thread! My favorite books this year were:

    The power of Less: http://amzn.to/t4umWo . It discuss how you can simplify your life. It give many practical advices, and is good for all kinds of people. The message in the book is " be aware and simplify".

    Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky. By Sarah Lacy, former writer fo techcrunch. http://amzn.to/vMJwhR. It show how the entrepreneurship and startups are going around the world. As a brazilian reader, I find the picture of brazil very accurate, so the rest of the world must be accurate too. It's a good resource for anyone wanting to understand and know the startup community in countries like India, China, Brazil, Indonesia and others.

    If you want to write, by brenda Ueland ,http://amzn.to/w5gQyz: It's a nice book about the craftsmanship of writing. It's a bit 'philosophic' book, but also give a little practical advice. It's and old book, don't be amazed when it refer to the typewriter. And it's very cheap, only 3,99.

    And to finish, time warrior, by steve chandler. http://amzn.to/vNBawK If you want a book to beat procrastination, and other modern plagues, this is the book. very practical advice, the book has more then 100 tips. Every should read it.

    Thats my favorite books of this year, apart of the ones everyone has talked about, like Steve Jobs bio, Lean Startup, and others startup world books.

  1502. Ask HN: How can I convince my co-founders not to use a LAMP stack and should I? 2011-12-29 00:07:36 babebridou
    How do you assess the "rightness" of the platform before you even know the order of magnitude of, say, traffic or concurrent users?

    I would love to rewrite my engine if it means I have a thousand times more customers than when I started. I mean, it's a win-win bet I'm willing to take: win now because I know the tools by heart, win later because I'll be making a ton of money later on and I'll be reingeneering a system I know by heart - which is so much cooler than writing fibonaccis in a language I don't know.

    Chances are you're going to rewrite it all anyway for a strategic pivot, so why bother now with problems that you don't even know will ever exist? Just pick your best tool and make the most of it - premature optimization is also a form of procrastination.

  1503. Ask HN: Playing the role of a "jack of all trades" in a self-funded startup 2011-12-30 13:34:25 billpatrianakos
    Thanks! And be careful with all the self confidence. I'm sure you're experienced enough to know already but I know for myself that all the motivation and self confidence you go into a project with is fragile and can easily turn into self doubt and procrastination. But that just means you're probably working hard enough to get something done right.

  1504. Show HN: hnCommentWatcher (useful?) 2011-12-30 19:35:20 iambot
    I'm one of those many people that enjoy/procrastinate-by reading Hacker News. So in a helpless attempt to be productive/efficient I've created hnCommentWatcher. Yet another HN bookmarklet. Currently I swear by @mrspeaker's Hackemup bookmarklet [1], it really is brilliant, but its only for the front page, and I still find it painful to follow the comment threads for each individual post (which I believe is where I get the most use (see: intellectual stimulation) out of Hacker News). So this is my solution.

    What it does:

    hnCommentWatcher is a bookmarklet that you use on individual posts/threads, which then refreshes the page every so often and indicates which comments are new, and allows you to easily navigate between them, meaning you can open a thread read the comments then come back later and follow the discussion without having to decipher which comments are new and which you've already read.

    Other features include, highlighting the original poster of the thread (OP), as well as assigning each user a colour swatch so it's easier to differentiate between them and identify when/where a particular user has contributed.

  1505. The MicroPHP Manifesto 2012-01-04 04:56:17 FuzzyDunlop
    Using the right tool for the job comes to mind here, but half the time you can only see this with hindsight. And the other half the time, I'd guess, PHP is the only tool available. Unless cheap webhosts offer Python, Ruby and Node.js integration to complement the usual feature-set.

    If you have more tools in the box, then you can start to consider whether to go full-stack with PHP (I'd no longer consider this route a viable option), or whether to modularise your project. Maybe for a lot of things that's too much and a PHP framework that does it all is totally fine. No point doing something just because you can, but you have the flexibility to think outside of the box when refactoring.

    This is exactly what I did when it came to generating an image and manipulating the output. In PHP it was convoluted, buggy, impossible to understand the library it depended upon, and offered no flexibility. It took months of procrastination and avoidance before we had to get the feature working, so I ditched the lot and re-did it in Python, using Cyclone and a couple of lightweight libs. It took a day and a half to implement, with no knowledge beforehand, and it does absolutely everything we wanted (without any hacks).

    It was at that point I realised that it was much more beneficial to look beyond the one-size-fits-all solution of a massive framework, which may be appropriate to some, but just as often isn't. And as has been said - very well indeed I must add - I don't want to be a [framework]-developer who knows not so much the language, but an individual or group's abstraction of it; I want to be a developer who knows what to do when that framework doesn't fit.

  1506. Top TED Talks of 2011 To Inspire Tech Startups 2012-01-05 08:13:14 carlsednaoui
    Given all of the distractions we have today, procrastinating is easier than ever. This is why I personally enjoyed this talk about "the battle between your present and future self" - http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_goldstein_the_battle_between...

  1507. Ask HN: What's your experience with remote working? as employees/employers? 2012-01-05 19:26:38 gexla
    Haha, I'm in the Philippines also and I understand the need for two internet connections. Now if only I could hook up two electrical connections. Oh well, I guess I need to pick up a generator.

    I have a fully self contained development environment on my USB drive for when I absolutely can't deal with down time during internet connection / electricity outages. Then I can just grab any computer at an internet cafe and be back at it. Otherwise the outages are just unscheduled breaks. I have also learned to keep ahead of the ball rather than procrastinating because the outages seem to be timed for that last minute when I can't procrastinate any more.

  1508. The one-minute entrepreneur 2012-01-07 21:56:29 vanni
    > If you're the kind of person who prefers to sit back and think about stuff, entrepreneurship will be quite a challenge. The default in the world of... humans... is that nothing happens.

    Some months ago I was thinking exactly about this issue (for more than one minute!) and I started working on an idea to overcome it. Sort of meta, I know :)

    [On topic shameless plug] Result: I'm building asaclock (http://www.asaclock.com), an anti-procrastination web community for startup single founders and people working on side projects.

  1509. How To Work From Home Like You Mean It 2012-01-09 22:43:28 tluyben2
    I have worked from home most of my working life and these things are important, however, I discovered that, at least for me, I have to like the work i'm doing even more than I have to like it in 'an office'. For me it's much easier to procrastinate when I don't like what i'm doing/don't believe in. And really, procrastination can make you hate yourself, so it makes me drift towards things I like and believe in, much more than towards money. This has been working for me for over 20 years now up to a point were I really don't understand anyone doing it differently (most notably, people going to jobs they don't like for the money, as most people do http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/poll_most_in_us_don_li... (there are similar polls in EU countries)). Life is too short for that.

  1510. How To Work From Home Like You Mean It 2012-01-09 23:32:46 ifearthenight
    If you built this while you should've been working on your day job then you are my new procrastination hero!

  1511. How To Work From Home Like You Mean It 2012-01-10 01:00:19 potomak
    Ahaha! Yes I am!

    Well, this tool made me work instead of procrastinate so I think it was kind of "good" procrastination, wasn't it?

  1512. How To Work From Home Like You Mean It 2012-01-10 01:22:16 j45
    Interesting.. I think we might be saying something similar.

    I think I've noticed most people cringe from the word discipline. They feel building discipline like it's some life / breath sucking black hole that kills all creativity and freedom. Maybe to procrastinate.

    Wherever I've found anyone with:

    - academic discipline (brilliant in a field of research)

    - professional discipline (great at their job)

    - social discipline (knows how to get things done with difficult people)

    - physical discipline (exercises)

    - dietetic discipline (eats well)

    - emotional discipline (well balanced)

    - mental discipline (don't suffer from analysis paralysis)

    - spiritual discipline (can take the good from everything, learn how to meditate/focus, get into flow easier)

    I find one amazing thing. We call them successful at what they do. It's tied to their discipline. Discipline of creating, maintaining and building on good habits.

    In a way, discipline leaves you free to create and succeed.

  1513. The $40 Standup Desk 2012-01-10 02:27:17 zerostar07
    My standup desk: Procrastinate on the ipad, walking around the house. Sit only when you write code.

  1514. Lisp as an Alternative to Java 2012-01-11 02:03:20 discreteevent
    I agree entirely. Its a balance, that's why I referenced the qoute from Norvig. Not to show that language has no importance at all but that even in this very particular case the author has a broader point of view than is represented in the article. Anyway even though I don't really miss C++ I was thinking the other day of all the code that I wrote in it when I had no choice but to use it. I got a lot of work done, and it wasn't a mess either. I would say that in my case anyway I tend to think that the language matters more than it does and this (in my case again) is a source of procrastination. So Norvig's qoute is like a kick in the backside for me (focus on what matters) and that's a good thing.

  1515. Bit Twiddling Hacks 2012-01-12 11:47:27 Jach
    Hey, you finally made the leap to HN! Did you independently discover a lot of these things yourself or did you come across parts in books/papers? For me the canonical example of deriving magic numbers is with the fast inverse square root trick (my favorite paper on it is http://www.lomont.org/Math/Papers/2003/InvSqrt.pdf ) but I haven't seen many other instances... I haven't gone nearly far enough yet but I like getting pointed suggestions.

    There were some recent submissions here about related topics like space-filling curves and secret sharing that I've looked at before. When I started looking into abstract algebra and came across finite fields I sort of laughed at the Wikipedia page mentioning right at the beginning "Finite fields are important in number theory, algebraic geometry, Galois theory, cryptography, coding theory and Quantum error correction" with each topic being linked. It's a fun way to procrastinate.

    If your engine isn't part of some secret sauce I think it would be neat to study it. Unless you know of an already existing open source equivalent that's not hidden away in the corners of something like GCC?

  1516. Skyrim and Hackernews are ruining my life 2012-01-12 19:49:00 DanBC
    Here is some information about procrastination. Hilariously, it is too long for anyone who procrastinates to actually read.

    (http://writingcenter.unc.edu/resources/handouts-demos/writin...)

  1517. Using Quora to get customers for your B2B startup 2012-01-12 22:59:40 vanni
    Same experience here: 5% of total sign-ups to asaclock (http://www.asaclock.com), an elite anti-procrastination web community for startup single founders and people working on side projects, come from Quora with a 20% conversion rate.

  1518. New York City gets a Software Engineering High School 2012-01-14 07:44:25 zamansky
    actually, I generally procrastinate until early October and than something hits me.

  1519. Ask HN: You have an awesome product/business idea. Now what? 2012-01-14 19:24:10 sathishmanohar
    I've have many ideas, Ranging from new Operating System designs to Clean Energy to world changing web applications (they are ideas, So, probably many of them may fail ). I don't have a technical education.

    When I started getting these ideas, I was very confused about what to do with all of them. But, Now I have great clarity. I'm starting from the easiest to approach.

    I started doing web design for hire before 2 years. Meanwhile I taught myself, Ruby, Rails and Jquery. Now, I'm building two of the web apps, I wanted to build.

    The biggest challenges I faced were that, there were no immediate technical network for me, to go to. Since, I haven't worked anywhere, nor do I have technical education. So, For every problem, I face, I had to google my way around it, or go in IRCs, or forums. Its not all minus in a way, this self-service style of education, has helped me in some ways.

    Here in India, I don't even know where to start, to get funding. But, I think I won't need it, Since, I value freedom for setting my own pace and control over the products more than anything.

    In short, Haven't launched a product yet. But, will launch one or two within this month. I'm very happy looking forward for that day. (I'm also procrastinating bcoz, of fear of being ridiculed). But, will take a deep breath and hit enter on "cap deploy" soon.

    PS: HN for the past 6 months played a very important role in shaping my thoughts on products, validation, launch etc.

  1520. Wikipedia to Shut Down on Wednesday to Protest SOPA 2012-01-17 03:55:59 DanBC
    No.

    The aim is to get people to contact representatives. Wikipedia is an excellent tool for procrastination. You need to remove Wikipedia (and as much of the rest of the WWW as possible) to ensure people actually follow through and call or write their politicians.

  1521. Ask HN: What's your biggest schlep? 2012-01-17 12:39:51 TamDenholm
    Bureaucracy, i know its rather generic and quite a large subject but i absolutely detest it and i feel its only purpose it to make everyones lives harder. Whether its doing the mandatory paperwork i need to do for running my company (which is always late cuz i procrastinate) or absolutely ridiculous requirements like the umpteen amount of papers and ID i have to provide to get something as simple as a Costco card.

    I do recognise the government is getting gradually better at a very slow pace but it grates on me so much that i will refuse to participate in something unless i really really want it or have to do it by law.

  1522. The "Army of One" entrepreneur 2012-01-17 23:34:47 SMrF
    In theory I like this concept, in practice it blew up in my face.

    After two years and two ideas that failed, (executed poorly, no traction, no market, trouble in cofounder paradise -- you name it, I've failed it), I decided to try a different approach: rapid exploration of niche products. In the course of a year I spun through about one idea per month.

    I got remarkably good at (in)validating my ideas. (Hint: write down who you think your target market is and then pick up the phone. Have a conversation. Ask if they would pay $X dollars for your product where X is something that makes you cringe because you think it's too much. If it's worth pursuing they won't hesitate to say yes. Then tell them if they give you $X right now you'll start building it for them -- if they ask where to send the check you're golden, otherwise you need to rethink your assumptions. If you don't know anyone to call run some ads to a fake landing page, collect emails, then offer an amazon gift card or something for a 30 minute phone call. I wrote about it here: http://twosixes.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/tips-for-talking-wi...)

    I finally landed on something, (and feel free to steal this) -- filtered google alerts for PR agencies. I had customers using the service and waiting for a bill. But I never implemented the billing system, I procrastinated it hard core. It wasn't because I was afraid they wouldn't pay, (they would have). It was because I was afraid of supporting the project. It was like I built myself a job I didn't want.

    So for me the biggest pitfall of this approach was a total lack of vision combined with a drive to pivot to product/market fit at all cost meant I created something I had no passion about whatsoever.

  1523. SICP is being taught again at MIT 2012-01-19 10:24:01 tikhonj
    Here at Berkeley we have the same thing. For example, I had a computer-oriented discrete math course where the professor decided a fun time to have homework due would be 8:00 AM. Naturally, you could pop by the lab next to the turn-in box at obscene times in the morning and see a bunch of people working.

    One benefit of this is that sometimes great discussions about completely random--although usually technical--subjects emerge as everybody is procrastinating. It really makes even the most annoying homework assignment bearable.

  1524. Skyrim and Hackernews are ruining my life 2012-01-19 19:30:14 bkyan
    go into your settings by clicking on your username and turn on "noprocrast" (no procrastination)

  1525. Rekindling (on my experience with burnout) 2012-01-19 21:09:07 alinajaf
    > I already find myself losing motivation and taking 2-3x longer to get anything done.

    > have had maybe 7 days off in 18 months

    For me the most depressing situation is not designating blocks of time as work or play exclusively. It means you end up procrastinating when you should be working, and feeling guilty when you should be having time off.

    I'm speculating based on the above two quotes, but are you experiencing something similar? I can imagine it would be hard to have any guilt-free play at all with the spectre of unpaid bills over your head.

    Still, I humbly suggest that you schedule at least one day off (and plan it, like, 13:00 - 15:00 - play playstation, 15:00 - 17:00 - walk in the park etc, so your mind doesn't naturally wander to work or mire itself in guilt). This won't make you feel any less depressed, but might give you the emotional resources to rambo through any tasks you've been avoiding.

    P.S. Have you considered hiring a VA to send your late paying clients a weekly polite and friendly reminder to pay up?

  1526. Feds, Please Return My Personal Files Stored at MegaUpload 2012-01-21 02:39:34 jsilence
    This is what I usually tell non-tech-savy people to do. "Remember to make backups" seems to be too abstract and thus they tend to procrastinate the "make backup" topic away.

    "Copy your important stuff to at least one other place, be it an external hard disk, a USB-Stick, a DVD or an online storage service."

    And then I usually configure Dropbox for them and show them how to use it. And I tell them not to put sensitive information like online banking PINs on there. And tell them that I can also show them a way to further secure the data with TrueCrypt.

    But some are even resistant to this. I don't bother pushing them, because I know they will lose data at some point. When that happens I "told you so" them once and after having a good laugh at their dangling unmentionables I help them setting up backup/redundant storage.

  1527. The cleanest vimrc you'll ever see 2012-01-21 07:19:03 lunarscape
    I couldn't disagree more. The point of being able to configure tools in the first place is to be able to make them suit the user and enhance the users experience and hence increase productivity. 'Fiddling' around with ones tools and discussing configurations with people is a fantastic way to discover new shortcuts or usage patterns than can make using them a lot more pleasant. Of course people looking to procrastinate can spend hours editing their dotfiles but that's no reason to suggest it's 'net harmful' to talk about them.

  1528. Ask HN: work/sleep/continued productivity tips for new hacker dad 2012-01-23 03:15:47 japhyr
    Our baby just turned 10 months old, and it has been more amazing than I could ever have imagined. Something as simple as watching him learn to walk makes me marvel at how we all learned to use these awkward bodies.

    The clearest effect for me, work-wise, is the fragmentation of time. I am a teacher during the day and a hacker on the side. I have always put in a couple extra hours a day at school, getting in half an hour early and leaving an hour after my official end of the day. Now I have to go in when school starts and leave when school ends, to share the baby load. My time at home is incredibly fragmented and busy, but also incredibly satisfying.

    One unexpected plus is that I am more motivated to work efficiently than I ever have been in my life. I do a much better job of prioritizing my work energy than I ever have, because procrastinating, or focusing on too much low-hanging fruit instead of the schlep that needs to get done, means I would never finish anything.

    My schedule has shifted a bit, and I keep adapting to the baby's changing schedule. For example, he wakes me up around 3:30-4:00 in the morning several days a week, needing about 10-60 minutes of soothing. Instead of going back to sleep, I try to stay up and get a couple really focused hours in. It's pretty awesome to get to spend some quiet middle-of-the-night time with your new baby, thinking about what your parents must have done for you, and then get some really focused work time in.

    In short, be there for mom and baby, sleep when you can, work when you can, and focus on the most important things in each of those areas.

    (By the way, you also get to make fun things like this happen: http://www.flickr.com/photos/erinlandrews/5773878417/)

  1529. Nice guys finish first. Eventually. 2012-01-23 06:54:41 ricefield
    It really depends. You can be forceful in getting your work done. You can be hostile towards procrastination. You can be attacking big problems. Ultimately, its just a characterization of behavior. I think context and where that attitude are directed have more bearing on whether its 'positive' or 'negative.'

  1530. Waking up at 5am to code 2012-01-23 16:44:57 gizzlon
    When writing my thesis I was very productive at night. Guess I was too tired to procrastinate and over-think things.

  1531. Waking up at 5am to code 2012-01-23 17:06:01 alinajaf
    > Enjoying the work is key

    Recently I've discovered that this mindset has been detrimental.

    Sometimes hard work is supposed to be hard. If you rely on passion or some sort of intrinsic motivation, then as soon as you come to a task you don't want to do (i.e. the 90% of any project that doesn't involve coding) procrastination sets in. I worked mornings non-stop on my little side project for around 6 months last year and slowed right down as soon as all the 'fun' stuff was over.

    Accepting that the work is sometimes going to suck is a) more realistic and b) more empowering. If you get used to short focused bursts of work you don't feel like doing, then there is quite literally nothing you can't achieve if you put your mind to it.

  1532. Making universities obsolete 2012-01-24 23:04:45 anatoly
    Say, have you ever deliberately deprived yourself of net access temporarily to be able to focus on something important? Or blocked a site you frequented too much? Maybe deleted a game to stop yourself from playing it? No, never? If you have, then what the fuck were you doing trying to achieve the important thing in the first place, if you couldn't focus on it w/o silly restrictions?

    People, by and large, need artificial encouragement to help them do what they want to do in the first place, but lack the willpower or procrastinate too much. People subscribe to classes so they can learn in a formal setting material they could perfectly well study on their own before, but didn't. People take out gym membership so they have no excuse not to go. People ask relatives and friends to help force them prepare for something important. You may be a champion of iron will (though I doubt it), but most people aren't, and they're still quite capable of learning nevertheless.

    In the recent ML/AI course offerings from Stanford, the exercises were a joke - they were painfully easy. But if they didn't have graded exercises with deadlines, probably five times fewer people would have finished the course. In fact, similar courses with entire lectures and homework have been posted on the web for years, with little engagement, while this new offering, with a formal setting that graded you on exercises, has seen tremendous success.

    Your rhetorical question is exceedingly naive.

  1533. MPAA's Chris Dodd Calls SOPA Defeat a 'Watershed Event' 2012-01-25 01:45:08 drumdance
    Meh. The government also has the power to drop nuclear bombs and has done it twice before. Shockingly, we're all still alive and procrastinating on the Internet.

    The the typical libertarian appeal to fear of tyranny IMO sheds more heat than light.

  1534. To-Do Lists Don't Work 2012-01-25 04:52:55 kls
    I actually have given thought to writing an app that works along the same lines. A shared planner that someones and their groups can use. Take for example a household, everyone in the household can enter tasks, either their own or group tasks. When they do, they place a priority on them and a estimated time to complete. Tasks can have subtasks, this way a group of tasks can be rolled up into a task project. As well, scheduled tasks can be entered into it, that have very specific time requirements. Such as go to the doctor at X time/date. From there they system can generate a calendar of tasks that are to be completed. The user can then mark a task as completed or not, if it is not then the task list is recalculated based on priority and schedule tasks. I saw the same issue as the author, tasks have to transfer to the calendar, if they don't they get skipped. The thing that a system like this would do is show the aging of a task is being procrastinated on.

    The other idea that I had was to have a checkbox on every task that asked if someone could be hired to do a task. If the answer is yes and at a certain aging point, the app would ask if they want to solicit bids on the task, the app would then place the task in a market place where people could bid to perform the work of the task. This way people could hire to complete the task once they realize that it has languished in their queue.

  1535. To-Do Lists Don't Work 2012-01-25 07:22:52 polyfractal
    I forget where I heard this routine (Lifestyle Business Podcast maybe?), but I've found it very helpful. It goes something like this:

    -Write to-do items on a post-it note

    -Scratch them off as you accomplish them

    -When the majority of the post-it is scratched, start a new note, beginning with the few items that did not get finished from the last post-it

    -Evaluate the items that you didn't accomplish from the last post-it. How many times have you copied them from one post-it to another? If more than twice, it is either not important or you are seriously procrastinating. Do it, outsource it or just delete it and move on.

  1536. Show HN: We made an addictive way to browse pictures on reddit 2012-01-25 08:55:15 mwhooker
    Here's a lower-fi version

    http://107.20.224.248:8000/#pics;funny;humor;comics;reddit.c...

    hack the URL to control subreddits

    source here https://github.com/mwhooker/procrastinatr

  1537. Zynga Shamelessly Rips Off 'Tiny Tower' With Canadian Release of 'Dream Heights' 2012-01-25 15:16:22 adgar
    Thanks for posting this - I was having enough nostalgia for Sim Tower that I started looking around for this Tiny Tower. Unfortunately there's almost no information from the developer other than the iTunes download page, so I put it off.

    Now I can properly procrastinate by figuring out how on earth to run Sim Tower on a 3-month-old Mac. Thanks again!

  1538. Netflix Regains 600,000 U.S. Subscribers 2012-01-26 21:02:24 AgentConundrum
    You can't stream multiple things at once, at least not in Canada (emphasis mine):

    > Q : Can I watch movies instantly on more than one PC or Netflix-ready device?

    > A : Your account can have up to six unique authorized devices activated and associated with it at any given time, including personal computers and Netflix-ready devices; however, you may only watch on one device at a time.

    I've heard that there's nothing stopping you from starting a second stream, but that it can cut off at any time when the system notices, and that they're enforcing it more now than they used to. YMMV in the USA or UK.

    While you might find it user hostile, I, personally, don't see anything really wrong with only allowing one stream per account. I doubt you can't understand why it's being done either.

    You have to assume that most people watch a lot more movies via streaming than they did with DVD-Only, both because you don't have the lag time between sending movies back and getting new ones (you just choose a movie and watch it), and because you can't watch a movie then delay the next one by procrastinating/forgetting to send it back (you finish one movie and the next is instantly available without user action). Because of this, there are likely fewer ghost/inactive accounts silently collecting their monthly charge, and content producers probably demand additional funds using the additional viewings as a negotiating tool. Adding additional accounts per household both adds revenue, which is additional funding for content licenses and original productions, and drops the view/account metric, which couldn't hurt when negotiating with content producers.

  1539. Backbone.js localStorage + remote sync 2012-01-27 03:17:44 kylebrown
    Another one here, have been procrastinating adding this capability for a week now.

    Now I just need to find (or write) some php code that will save/serve the fetched json model.

  1540. Ask HN: Webapps you can't live without? 2012-02-01 00:03:35 potomak
    * Gmail (http://gmail.com)

    * GitHub (http://github.com)

    * Tomatoes, pomodoro technique productivity tool (http://tomatoes.heroku.com)

    * Reddit, procrastination (http://reddit.com)

  1541. Why, oh why, do those nutheads use vi? 2012-02-02 22:50:47 babarock
    The Solaris servers I am on all day at my job (when I'm not procrastinating on HN, that is).

  1542. ShareLaTeX 2012-02-04 13:40:56 pbnjay
    yeah I just use vim/git for everything.

    I did write a makefile to do the monotonous stuff for me (create pdf, generate figures with graphviz, fetch bibtex from zotero, etc). one of those instances of procrastination instead of writing which i can at least justify.

  1543. Producer vs. Consumer 2012-02-06 06:52:37 ISeemToBeAVerb
    I agree with this 110%. Starting the day out with productive work was a key element for me moving from a chronic procrastinator to a productive individual.

    I took it one step further though. I knew how weak I was from years of habitual web surfing, so I forced a productive routine on myself by using the open-source app "SelfControl" to actually restrict me from accessing sites I knew were a time sink.

    I also knew that I was unlikely to actually start the app at the beginning of the day, so I scripted it in my calendar to start the app an hour before I get up, that way I have no choice but to work. At the end of my workday, the app quits and I can then surf to my heart's desire.

    So far, I've found this to be an ideal solution.

  1544. Producer vs. Consumer 2012-02-06 11:42:17 prawn
    I think the problem is consuming through addiction, gamification, procrastination, etc. If I spend a day or evening in the garden creating something, designing a new side project or similar, I never find myself regretting that expense of time later. But after any night of trawling crappy news sites, or flicking channels, I head to bed defeated and annoyed at myself for not being able to overcome those things.

  1545. Khan Academy: Its Different This Time 2012-02-06 23:06:25 rklancer
    With respect to video, I suspect that the answer is that video changes with time. If a video viewer's attention drifts off of the video, he or she is likely to notice being slightly behind when he or she does glance back at the video, and therefore promptly return to task. Whereas written material does nothing active to re-attract your attention.

    I hypothesize that the attention-focusing effect of full-screen reading operates via a related mechanism. Online, there are many useful and/or time-wasting attention sinks just a click, or a glance across the screen, away. Normally this kind of task switching is so common you don't notice it, so it's very easy to fall into doing it when your attention drifts. Whereas when reading full-screen, task switching requires a certain amount of effort. Also the full-screened text is a big, juicy target for your attention. Therefore attention drifts are more likely to result in a return to the task at hand.

    To return to mbpershan's great-grandparent post bashing Khan for bad pedagogy and in general dismissing people for not paying attention to the learning research literature, note that I work at a nonprofit that develops well-regarded modeling and simulation based learning activities in science, and we publish in this field. So, certainly I think learning research is important. But I imagine it would be tricky to find the positive effect of video, as outlined above, in "official" learning-science research.

    The effect depends very much on the fact that I sought out the video and was motivated to learn the material, and on the fact that I have the freedom to procrastinate by freely exploring the web (including interesting material I have already saved for later reading), email, twitter, other work I have lined up, etc. (If you're thinking about 14-year old kids viewing Khan videos at home, substitute Youtube videos, games, and Facebook messages as needed.) But in the official literature, often you will find something like, a classroom of kids is given some mandatory curriculum content to study--which they may have no inherent interest in--and some are selected to read paper books while others are given video with a similar presentation of the material. They're pre-tested and then post-tested and the question is asked, "were the learning gains of the video group statistically-significantly larger than those of the control (reading) group?"

    Well, I wouldn't be terribly surprised to find no significant difference for the video group because the video students didn't really care that much (and were therefore happy to "space out" while the video went by, or were willing to make only nominal efforts to keep up) and because the control-group students weren't really being exposed to all the distractions of a teenager's bedroom which might tempt an otherwise-motivated student far off-task.

    This is all speculation, and the whole made-up study design is obviously a straw man. So take what I say with a grain of salt. But nevertheless, learning-science results come from studies in very controlled contexts--which often have to do with mass learning of material the subjects don't choose--and often the result is remembered as a quick shorthand ("so-and-so showed that video doesn't work") that may or may not apply to any specific situation (where the question may not be about the "average" student, where self-selection and motivation may play a critical factor, and where apparently rote learning may be acceptable because the students will contextualize and criticize in later months or years the material they just learned by rote.)

  1546. One should lead a life in which procrastination is good 2012-02-07 06:05:03 khyryk
    Several things:

    "I only write if I feel like it and on a subject I feel like writing about"

    No argument there. The world doesn't need more 500 word articles someone got paid $3 to write. Playing to one's strengths is fairly straightforward, and work that's driven by passion tends to be of much higher quality.

    "Yet psychologists and behavioural economists (these charlatans) seem to think that it is a disease that needs to be remedied and cured."

    Procrastination has certainly hurt me more than it has ever helped. Perhaps I disagree with the author's implied argument that "nonaction" is the same thing or is similar to procrastination. Procrastination for me is something that makes it harder to do things I know ought to be done. "The doctor who refrains from operating on a back" made a choice and went off to do something else; procrastination would've been the doctor lazying around hours before the operating rather than preparing, or something to that effect (I'm not a doctor).

    Anyway, just my take on it.

  1547. Building an App in 30 Days ... Is Stupid [2008] 2012-02-08 00:03:04 tejaswiy
    Honestly, I just published it to the App Store yesterday after procrastinating for a while. So lets see :)

  1548. Ask HN: What is the secret of Reddit's success? Early adopters? 2012-02-12 08:16:53 prawn
    Regular content makes it a daily (or more often) read for procrastinators and people looking to share new links with peers. I think that's a big part of it.

  1549. Are You a Zen Coder or Distraction-Junkie? 2012-02-12 22:29:27 mattmanser
    Compiling's not the totality of the problem.

    I switch between the two modes this article describes quite regularly.

    Reflecting on it other things cause me to go into distraction mode are:

    - Not sufficiently planning out boring changes (That's easy! Get stuck as I realise I've done it wrong. 1 hour later, oh, I'm reading HN, how did that happen?)

    - Having to write large, but simple objects or CRUD code

    - A change or bug that requires picking apart poorly written code. Refactoring helps me stay focused but that often feels like procrastination.

    - Using a library I don't know well but is documented poorly

    - Trying to get OAuth authentication working (every single bloody time, I hate it)

    - Having to modify any existing javascript even if I wrote it, I find js so hard to re-parse. function, function, function, function, function, function. I can't pick out the flow of the code. One of the reasons I've never got on with Lisp either I think.

  1550. Ask HN: What would you work on, if money was of no concern? 2012-02-12 23:55:00 DasIch
    I'd learn AI, machine learning, natural language processing, compilers, interpreters, drawing, playing guitar/violin/piano, snowboarding, martial arts, socializing better and effortless, programming/natural languages and whatever else I can come up with.

    I'd love to come up with answers to questions others have not yet answered and discover questions no-one else has discovered, yet.

    I'd also like to travel the world and get to know as much people as possible.

    However I fear that even with unlimited amounts of money the real problem I will face is time which is why I hate procrastinating and even more the fact that I can't seem to stop it.

  1551. Step 1: give every kid a laptop. Step 2: learning begins? 2012-02-15 00:37:18 peter_l_downs
    My high school lends MacBooks to all of its students throughout the school year. I will say that it is nice to be able to look something up at almost anytime. I have learned a lot from it, but it's nothing I couldn't have learned from using a shared desktop computer or my family's home computer. Still, for students who don't already have computers (the target market of the OLPC project), having an internet connection is really nice.

    I will also say that the first year we were lent computers, everyone procrastinated a ridiculous amount. Games, everywhere, all the time. Very little work was being done. But now, three years later, people mostly just use the computers for work.

    I don't think a laptop in itself is that valuable. Maybe I'm just jaded - computers are pretty fantastic. I'd say that by far the most valuable part of a laptop is being able to go on the internet: wikipedia, forums, google, it's all incredible.

  1552. Why To-Do Lists Dont Work and Done Lists Do 2012-02-17 21:57:52 cammil
    Here's an idea that just occurred to me:

    Todo -> Future

    Done -> Past

    Present?

    Perhaps a Doing list of length 1? Distractions are often the cause of procrastination, and of lack of motivation. The Doing list is perhaps the one we should be referring to most!

    (I'm very much into the philosophy-meta-self-help stuff so please excuse me if this is way out there.)

  1553. Don't put your career in stealth mode 2012-02-18 03:47:18 killnine
    I agree and do not keep a blog, haven't updated my facebook in years, and do not use twitter in this way.

    It is an issue of humble-ness for me as well. I'd rather be queried for data then have the thought/feeling I am forcing it on someone who doesn't want it.

    I think this, and other things read here on HN have got me to accept the fact I need to follow suite.

    Am I correct in saying that another potential benefit of this is that keeping the status of a project public makes it more difficult for the creator to ignore/procrastinate/quit the project?

  1554. Forget Self-Improvement 2012-02-18 08:44:54 karjaluoto
    I've been a partner in our agency for 12 years now. It's been a hell of a lot of work. Additionally, the fun and interesting parts have always outweighed the bad.

    Again, my point isn't to avoid anything uncomfortable. It's to do it for the right reasons, and to ensure that you aren't procrastinating at something you dislike, when you could be getting ahead at what you do like.

  1555. Did You Hear We Got Osama? 2012-02-18 21:32:04 bilban
    You certainly aren't alone!

    Perhaps we sometimes expect too much. You don't listen to music to remember the lyrics, you just enjoy it. And you can enjoy and discard a piece of writing too.

    You can easily idle away time. Right now I'm procrastinating.

  1556. Did You Hear We Got Osama? 2012-02-19 02:45:53 chegra
    Let me see... At first I agreed, then I said no. Even last week, I was lamenting my 14 hour days on HN[1][2]. If I think only for that day, I lost that day, but if I think over my time here, I'm net positive.

    What I was failing to realize was I had the ability, just not the opportunity. Your ability can only be exercise only at max. 8 hrs if you have a job, and for the most parts it plateaus out, ie your first 100 hrs of programming provides more benefit than your second and so on[but not a excuse not to practice, I leave for another comment]. Your first hour of observing opportunity is good as your 10000th.

    The thing about opportunities is that they don't appear to have any meaning at first, only when you go back and connect the dots. For instance, someone ask me how my resume looks so good. I would say I was helping a friend with their programming assignment who introduced me to their flat mate. Said flat mate studied philosophy. I knew a little because I hanged with a guy[while doing my undergrad] who had multiple degrees and he used to talk about guys like Hume and so on. Based on that commonality, we became friends. And what do you know, she was an expert at doing resumes, and helped me finish mines in no time flat.

    I know it just a resume, but other bigger gains follow the same pattern. You only notice them in retrospect. Each time, I think I was goofing off, helping people out with their assignments, sitting with some guy talking philosophy and so on.

    Sometimes, I see people and they ask for help. Why am I so different than them. They think I'm working with a bigger brain. I tell them you need to relax; get your head out of the book. It's non-intuitive. They tend to respond with you don't need to study, you have an in built advantage since birth. But, really is that the truth? If you get your head out of the book, you start doing things you want to do. You become curious, a positive pulling emotion.

    You guys know how it's done. You find something new and interesting on HN, you research it. Then you find something from that new and interesting, and you research it. By the time you would have finished, you would have covered something you needed to study for, all the while remaining curious and looking particularly like a lazy bum. The other way around, things are a drag.

    You add on that, the community has common themes coming through[eg. meditation, stoicism]. Raise your hand if you read "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy." through solid recommendations on HN. And by God, it was a good book. It provides a perspective on life most would never get. With these common themes you can connect with members here, who might not be able to help you directly but indirectly opportunities might come their way that they might not be able to exploit and pass them onto you.

    Also, it is not only about taking. It is about giving. How many times have you read a comment that refined your perspective or perhaps you gave an insight. What about when people ask for help on HN. Even if you just gave an up click, that is a massive contribution if you did it in the first few minutes of a post. If you think hard enough you will know these up clicks save/change lives.

    What I'm basically saying drinking from the firehose can seem like a waste of time, but over the long hall it works out. Working on your ability alone means that you are trying to create an opportunity, and in a weeks period you can only create one opportunity if you work really hard, and it might not pan out. On the other hand, reading one hour of HN provides you with hundreds of opportunity, most you will not explore, but still you know they are there and can share with friends who can thus building strong relationships.

    For instance, you heard it mentioned that one of the ways to create value is to see what opportunities can be exploit from delivering old technology in a knew way. Before, publishing use to take longer. Now, it is short with kindle, people can exploit that. Instead of giving their book one title they can create the same book with different titles and layouts[is this against Amazon policy], maybe even different content to match a different audience to scope a bigger payout. They can now use stuff like A/B testing[looking at paraschopra.] You see what I just did there.

    It's either that or you need to tell me Chester go finish up my weekend project and stop procrastinating. But my thoughts are I'm winning so far for the most parts, and I never change a winning team. We observe it in basketball, there is this one guy who doesn't seem to contribute anything, but you are winning and when he is not there you are not winning[HN/News is that one guy]. Some smartass might look at it and say we can do better; lets cut this loser out, he is not contributing, then you start losing. You got too smart for your own good, never change a winner. Some things might be so complicated that you don't even know what is contributing to your success.

    If you are on HN, and everything is going fine for the most part, don't change it, don't lose your competitive edge you lazy bastard.[Sorry if I sound incoherent]

    [1] https://twitter.com/#!/chegra/status/168805385447284736

    [2] https://twitter.com/#!/chegra/status/168805177523048448

  1557. Apache releases first major new version of popular Web server in six years 2012-02-21 23:19:14 victork2
    You know you have a good software when people begin to procrastinate on your software by comparing the number of requests / second that your server will accept, knowing that 99.9% will never reach that.

    Oh and ... Node.js is probably going to be mentioned.

  1558. How to Increase Your Productivity by 500% 2012-02-22 23:08:45 jmonegro
    I've found that starting the day with work right away boosts my productivity for the rest of the day as opposed to days when, for example, I check out my twitter feed or otherwise procrastinating.

    Try this out: check your browser history and compare the days when the first thing you did was procrastinate on the Internet vs. the days you start with work. You'll likely find that days tht start with work are less filled with visits to sites like twitter, HN, reddit, Facebook, etc. than days that start with those activities. Now try making work the first thing you do in the morning and see for yourself.

  1559. How to find great participants for your startup's user study 2012-02-23 01:48:39 yaliceme
    I think this article's advice applies best to an established company looking to improve an existing product for which you already have a user base that you understand well (i.e. Google developers testing Priority Inbox for Gmail, which is the article's main example).

    I would question the value of this advice for startups, particularly very early-stage startups. If you are idea-stage/pre-launch/pre-seed, I think this process is actively harmful, because it encourages the bias toward over-planning and under-doing that most of us already have (knowingly or not). Defining criteria, writing screeners, and scheduling testers all feels very productive, but in many cases, it is actually a form of procrastination -- avoiding that scary moment when you must expose your project to a true outsider's judgement.

    Margolis writes: "Startups often point to recruiting users as one of the biggest reasons theyre not regularly talking to their users." I would submit that there is NEVER a good excuse to not talk to users, including "we don't have any users yet" and "we're not quite sure yet who our target user actually is."

    The solution to this difficulty is not a 3-step process of screening, recruiting and scheduling testers. It's much simpler, though perhaps more difficult: swallow your shyness and go talk to people as many people as you can. Actually talk, face-to-face, not through a survey. Give your elevator pitch to everyone and anyone, every day, even if it's just to a stranger on the bus or random people at your nearest university campus. You will learn a lot more a lot faster than if you dither around with a more "systematic" process.

    When I first started working on one particular startup idea for an entrepreneurship class, my partners and I spent a few days early on designing a survey that we were very excited about; it was going to help us understand people's habits, behavior, and preferences with respect to the service we were going to provide. The instructor for that class was a serial entrepreneur; I showed our survey to him for critique during one of my first office-hours meetings with him. He absolutely tore me apart (rightfully so, in retrospect). He told us we had no business making surveys at all, this early in the process, and he refused to meet us again until we'd talked to at least 50 strangers about our idea. So I did just that, and it was one of the most formative and eye-opening experiences I'd had up to that point.

    I'm not saying that the process described in the article is always a form of procrastination, and certainly Google is beyond the point where it's efficient to test by interrupting random strangers on the engineering quad. I'm just saying that most startups are, almost by definition, not at a stage where "user studies" is a productive concept.

  1560. Hidden Procrastination 2012-02-26 17:42:45 BerislavLopac
    This is pretty much an ad for the author's software, but it got me thinking about the most defining factor of procrastination: importance of a task. How can one define what is really important?

    For example, I've been working on a project for a few months, with hopes that it might become a steady source of income after it gains some traction. However, in the meantime I need to work as a freelancer, and I'm always facing the dilemma: which is more important for me. Is it my freelance work which pays for rent and alimony? Or is it working on my project which has a possibility (but not certainty in any way) of a large return in a future? Or is it spending time with my young sons? Or is it spending time with my friends, whom I don't have that many any more? Whatever I do of these things, it seems that other stuff is way important and I should be doing that instead...

  1561. Hidden Procrastination 2012-02-26 19:11:05 noidi
    I disagree with labeling work on less-imporant tasks as procrastination. I think it's often (but not always) more effective to breeze through less important tasks that you're itching to do instead of slowly trudging along the highest priority task that you detest. The unpleasant topmost task becomes much less daunting once you've built momentum with a few easy wins and can see yourself as a producer instead of a procrastinator.

    There's also the idea of structured procrastination, [1] which turns procrastination into a productivity tool. It's based on the insight that an unpleasant task may become attractive when seen as a way to procrastinate on something even more unpleasant. For a true procrastinator it means working productively on tasks #2..n instead of reading Hacker News thinking "one last article and then I'll start working on task #1". It's an excellent way to avoid getting stuck in a vicious cycle of procrastination, and calling it "hidden procrastination" is unnecessarily negative.

    http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

  1562. Hidden Procrastination 2012-02-26 23:14:06 Shaanie
    I'm not sure knowing what's most "important" classifies as procrastination. How can one possibly put a value on spending time with ones family?

    To me it sounds like a problem with stress, but I'm no expert.

  1563. 500 Words before 8am 2012-02-27 07:48:54 ofca
    'Start your day with producer, not consumer mindset.' > pure gold.

    Do an 80/20 analisys of your distractions an loop until a few essentials are reached (mail etc). Than postpone interacting with procrastinators until 1-2 pm (that's when most people are sleepy and least productive). Iterate over each nuance,eat,rest and by 4 pm, you should be back to 'killer mode'. If this kind of routine is achieved, you're one focused and unstoppable behemoth.

  1564. My Algorithm for Beating Procrastination 2012-02-27 19:58:02 insertnickname
    My algorithm for beating procrastination: Stop reading about how to beat procrastination and do what you're supposed to do.

  1565. My Algorithm for Beating Procrastination 2012-02-27 20:42:42 epscylonb
    My problem is that I am often tired when I get home from work, not that I am procrastinating as such.

    But there are a ton of things I would like to do, anyone got an algorithm for beating tiredness?.

  1566. My Algorithm for Beating Procrastination 2012-02-27 21:00:30 LefterisJP
    But isn't technically following the multiple step method proposed by the OP not procrastinating in itself? :P I mean if I am procrastinating I would definitely not be in a state to get into a mentality to follow the method since I would be wasting my time in some other non-constructive manner ^^

  1567. My Algorithm for Beating Procrastination 2012-02-27 21:30:40 vanni
    > Motivation = (Expectancy x Value) / (Impulsiveness x Delay)

    Interesting approach to procrastination analysis. I'm happy to see that what I am building goes in the right direction to increase motivation: asaclock (http://www.asaclock.com) is an anti-procrastination web community for startup single founders and people working on side projects.

  1568. My Algorithm for Beating Procrastination 2012-02-27 21:58:40 insertnickname
    It is especially interesting because doing the calculation itself is procrastination.

  1569. My Algorithm for Beating Procrastination 2012-02-27 22:19:20 singular
    I think (I hope!) this was just an amusing reference to procrastination. Meta-procrastination = procrastination on a procrastination tool ;)

  1570. Modafinil and Startups 2012-02-27 22:23:36 Erwin
    I've found it occasionally helpful, but it will in no way fix procrastination -- in fact you can procrastinate (by e.g. reading through top 100 random stories on reddit) more efficiently and with fewer regrets. If you can get into the "flow" (in the psychological sense) you're able to stay there for longer and are less likely to get interrupted, but you're better off starting the day with a clear todo list and by priming things by producing, not consume (as per the recent articles).

    If mixing with coffee, consume both well before you intend to sleep; I've found myself a few times in an unpleasant alert but wanting to sleep state.

  1571. Modafinil and Startups 2012-02-27 22:32:22 alinajaf
    > I've found it occasionally helpful, but it will in no way fix procrastination -- in fact you can procrastinate (by e.g. reading through top 100 random stories on reddit)

    In my (ahem) friends experiments with modafinil he reported the same thing, i.e. that he procrastinated with a vengeance. Last time this happened he managed to get through O'Reilly's _Mastering Algorithms in C_ in a single sitting, though it was completely unrelated to the work he was supposed to do that day.

  1572. My Algorithm for Beating Procrastination 2012-02-28 02:37:30 jonnathanson
    The problem, as you've touched upon, is adjusting the dials between size-of-reward (S) and time-to-payout (T). S and T are, typically, inversely correlated. So we're forced to make a series of compromises in the scale of our goals in order to make them realistic.

    I've found that, while there's no great way to "solve" this problem, there are systems you can use to manage it. Such as breaking down a larger task into increments. Incrementality is about viewing a larger task as the sum of a series of smaller tasks -- thereby allowing you to encounter a payout on a regular basis, rather than going exceedingly long stretches without one.

    Procrastination is really a T problem, not an S problem. Hence, why incrementality really works. (Conversely, increasing S doesn't yield linearly adjusting motivation sufficient to overcome procrastination).

  1573. Modafinil and Startups 2012-02-28 04:43:31 georgieporgie
    Stuff I've tried over the course of the last year or so:

    1) Caffeine pills, 200mg each, around $4 at Walmart. I wrote about this before. The effects are far superior to coffee. More consistent, no intestinal distress. I could take one upon waking, and another around lunchtime. I haven't been taking them daily for a few months now, and my daytime productivity is certainly lower.

    2) Piracetam with Choline Citrate and, sometimes, Centrophenoxine. I would usually take around 2g Piracetam and 1 - 2g Choline in the morning, and repeat the dose in the afternoon. It definitely has some effect, but I can't say whether or not it's really a positive one. I suspect that the key (like what the author of this article mentioned) is to have your tasks laid out clearly. I definitely had a few weeks where I got a tremendous amount done, but it was early on in the project when I knew exactly what to do, and how to do it. Overall, I say the jury is out on whether or not Piracetam has a beneficial effect on me. It might increase crankiness, which I've never read about from anyone else.

    3) 1,3 Dimethylamylamine (DMAA), one of the three primary ingredients in Jack3d (a very popular pre-workout supplement). I settled on 2x20mg DMAA pills and 1x200mg caffeine about 30 minutes before my workout. Initially, I would get a mild sense of euphoria while walking to the gym. After about three doses, the euphoria seems to have gone away, but I am still able to power through my weight lifting routine without hesitation or procrastination. I've done this every other day for about a month now, and as long as I'm getting sufficient sleep, the effects seem consistent. I generally take it at around 5pm, get to the gym at 5:30, work out for 60 - 90 minutes, go home, and eat. By 11pm I'm very sleepy, and I don't have any more trouble getting to sleep before midnight than I normally do. Like most Internet/information addicted people, I certainly have my nights of senselessly clicking until the wee hours, but this seems unaffected by the DMAA + caffeine. By the way, I wear a heart rate monitor when experimenting with this, and I don't think I would do any intense cardio while on it. I don't believe I'm anywhere near a problematic dose level, but I'll err on the side of caution.

    4) Cardio. I started feeling depressed heading into the holidays, so I did 30 minutes of moderate cardio (140bpm heart rate) every day for two weeks (I typically do a lot of cycling in the summer months, but not so much in late fall through early spring). My depression lifted very quickly. In general, I'm of the opinion that 30 minutes daily or every other day will do quite a lot to increase general alertness throughout the day. I'm going to experiment with something even easier: taking a morning walk first thing in the morning every day.

  1574. Modafinil and Startups 2012-02-28 05:41:02 throwaway12315
    I have taken 100-400mg of Modafinil daily for about 10 years.

    I happen to have my 23andme results (thanks for the tip, tene!) and it looks like I'm rs4680(A;A). Despite what the paper in CPT says, it does have a significant effect on my alertness.

    The comments about procrastination and focus all sound familiar to me. So do the comments about addiction: sometimes I'll forget to take it and if I don't have any because I forget to pack it while travelling I don't feel an urge to do anything about it. I only have a few things to add to what's been said already:

    1) Modafinil is not a substitute for sleep for me. I've gone without sleep for days while using it, and I do suffer from the effects of sleep deprivation. I just don't notice that I'm suffering from them. The best way to describe it is that I am alert and thinking, but I am missing half my IQ points and don't realize it unless I'm particularly mindful about how I am feeling. I'm great at driving, working out, the boring parts of reverse engineering firmware, and other mindless repetitive physical tasks, though. A few years ago I decided to spend a lot of time at the gym and was performing at superhuman levels: it's just not normal for a 5'8" guy to feel happy about running 6 minute miles at 4 AM on no sleep. When I did that on no sleep I kept losing my keys and phone, though...

    2) Modafinil significantly increases my ability to get out of bed in the morning. I've never taken a sick day since I started using it. If I don't get enough sleep I still zone out a little during the day, but it makes it so much more pleasant to get out of bed and go through my morning routine if I'm missing sleep. I'm certainly in better shape because I have the energy to go work out, as I mentioned.

    3) I'm quickly approaching the point where I'll have been on Modafinil for more than 50% of my life, and as far as I can tell there have been no long-term side effects. My partner is a MD and although at first she couldn't believe that it wasn't permanently screwing something up, she's come to accept that Modafinil seems to be pretty safe in my case.

    4) Despite what others have said about Modafinil affecting their creative thinking, I have no problems assimilating entirely new concepts or doing other abstract thinking while using the drug.

  1575. Raganwald's "How to Do What You Love" is free today 2012-02-29 10:26:29 zafka
    Thanks for the book. I downloaded and read it this evening. I identified quite well with one of the bad examples, and felt puffed up because your suggestion for learning communication skills was just what I was telling myself to do. Now I just downloaded Ed's book, perhaps it will help fix my procrastination. :)

  1576. 500 Words before 8am 2012-03-01 03:39:44 staringispolite
    In my experience, hyperbole serves me well in my goals. "Produce more than you consume" is more defendable in terms of online critique, and you ARE right. But I have enough forces bombarding me with reminders to consume (advertising, internet, TV, procrastination...) In this tug-of-war, these rules are the only thing pulling in the opposite direction. I want my rules to be strongly worded enough to pull me back to the right mindset/goal.

  1577. Im an Engineer, Not a Compiler 2012-03-09 04:38:24 aboodman
    I prefer it.

    I have experience working in good IDEs. For many years I did .NET development, and Visual Studio is very, very good.

    However, over time I realized that even with all their awesome features, powerful IDEs were a net-loss to my productivity. They work best from a single machine and that made me a lot less likely to work remotely (I have done my best work in the middle of the night, from home). Their less responsive UIs made it easier for me to get distracted. Their slow startup times exacerbated my natural proclivity to procrastinate.

    I realized: My working memory is fine for most projects, and emacs' text-based autocomplete fills in the rest.

    All I'm saying is: don't assume that the way you work, the tools you prefer, or the tradeoffs you make are universal. There are a lot of programmers out there, and a whole lot of tools.

    (If you really care, I have an interview about my setup here: http://aaron.boodman.usesthis.com/)

  1578. Rabbit holes: Why being smart hurts your productivity 2012-03-12 18:29:15 TeMPOraL
    Truth is, most of the things I know about the world in general and programming in particular is due to procrastination and rabbit-holing. Big chunks of my understanding of physics come from randomly reading stuff on Wikipedia while procrastinating in high school. I discovered HN and learned Lisp when shying away from doing an university project in PHP, which in result got me a job in Erlang and also led to being widely recognized at the university as 'the Lisp guy'. Here I discovered pg's essays and LessWrong, both of which helped me grow, and many other things. I owe much of who I am now to rabbit-holing. And also being a person who always has three solution candidates to any problem in 30 seconds ("you know, there was this startup/library/tool featured on HN last month...") is a result of that random learning.

    I do sometimes feel that it's not the optimal way of learning things. I try to find the balance between random-walking and systematized learning, but one thing I'm sure of, it's that the optimum is not on the side of formal education, at least not for me.

    After trying, again and again, to force and fit myself into 'the System' of traditional, formalized learning I discovered that it is almost impossible for me, and it always have been. Learning what I'm told to learn for sake of tests and exams just repells me, causing almost physical pain. So I'm not trying to force myself anymore, I decided to do what I have to do with minimum effort, and spend the rest of the time learning what I want, the way I want, and allowing myself time for rabbit-holing and procrastinating.

  1579. Rabbit holes: Why being smart hurts your productivity 2012-03-12 18:51:08 pedrolll
    So we procrastinate because we're intelligent? This should massage every hackers ego on Hacker News :) "Ah, I see, it is because I'm smart that I can't get things done. It's not that bad after all". To me it seems that most people procrastinate, whether they're are intelligent or not.

  1580. Rabbit holes: Why being smart hurts your productivity 2012-03-13 02:13:43 epo
    "Truth is, most of the things I know about the world in general and programming in particular is due to procrastination and rabbit-holing". Excepting hobby areas (where it doesn't matter) I think you're kidding yourself as without a disciplined framework for learning any knowledge you acquire is at best accidental, there will be too many gaps for you to even comprehend what you don't know.

    Tests and exams are there to ensure you have done the hard non-fun-stuff as well as the fun-stuff and to "prove" you have understood, not just regurgitating half-comprehended factoids. You are advocating the equivalent of a educational junk food diet, the only thing you'll absorb is the superficially interesting and the crap.

    Serendipity has its place but if it is your principal approach then you are delusional.

  1581. It’s time to start paying for Android updates 2012-03-14 23:53:13 saturdaysaint
    This sounds ineffective. To most consumers, a software update is an annoyance whose benefits are often hazy. Look how hard they procrastinate free updates. So expecting money for an update to a device that's often replaced within a year or two is a non-starter.

    The most effective thing Google can realistically do is ship desirable Motorola phones that get updated to the latest Android version the day of release.

  1582. Poll: Do you test your code? 2012-03-15 01:23:17 sunir
    People write and play with test frameworks because they are procrastinating from writing actual tests. Think about it.

    Just use Test::Unit and move on with your life. Write some tests. That's what counts.

  1583. Coding Horror - Welcome to the Post PC Era 2012-03-20 09:52:22 benevpayor
    I hope the barrier to entry to be a producer will stay as low as it is now. I worry that as PC demand goes down, the cost to get started in programming will go up. I started to learn how to code web sites while procrastinating one afternoon during finals week; I discovered Apache on my macbook. The barrier to entry was almost accidental, because I had all this great stuff on my computer waiting for me to discover it. Those experiences will be more rare in the post-PC erra.

  1584. The Starter, the Architect, the Debugger and the Finisher 2012-03-21 01:30:00 Periodic
    This makes more sense. Thanks for the explanation. I like "fastness" and "deepness". I've definitely noticed a difference between people who are best at getting things done under time constraints but procrastinate anything longer (myself) and people who will do a great job if given enough time but which choke under pressure (my wife). I never really tried to name the two though.

    Your system almost sounds like the two sides of two different things. On the one hand you have the ability to get things done: the ability to get a lot done quickly and on-the-spot and the ability to get things done meticulously and precisely if given the time. On the other hand you have the ability to learn things quickly and precisely remember them.

    I might call it velocity vs. precision in the two areas of production and learning.

  1585. Functional Programming For The Rest of Us 2012-03-21 02:47:43 brooksbp
    > Programmers are procrastinators. Get in, get some coffee, check the mailbox, read the RSS feeds, read the news, check out latest articles on techie websites, browse through political discussions on the designated sections of the programming forums. Rinse and repeat to make sure nothing is missed. Go to lunch. Come back, stare at the IDE for a few minutes. Check the mailbox. Get some coffee. Before you know it, the day is over.

    You're fired.

  1586. Heroku Pulls Sponsorship After Boston API Jam Publishes Sexist Eventbrite 2012-03-21 05:31:00 tptacek
    Yep, it was the wrong article. I jumped on you for this and shouldn't have. It's a procrastinatey day for me (finishing reports), but that's no excuse. I'm embarassed and apologize sincerely.

  1587. Your identity Your code 2012-03-21 21:08:49 lince
    The good part: You get more compelled to improve your programming skills and style. The bad part: Lot of procrastination and fear of rejection.

    I think that just loving the process of developing and solving problems is a better approach.

  1588. Ask HN: more sites like HN 2012-03-21 22:12:01 udp
    > Where do you go after you exhaust HN?

    My editor of choice to get some work done. Stop procrastinating!

  1589. Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself? Don't you get tired of? 2012-03-22 10:11:46 tstegart
    I've learned to just let my phases happen. I'll go weeks with amazing productivity and then just hit a wall and all I want to do is game or read. So as much as possible I try and get it out of my system. I find that trying to force myself to do work actually has the opposite effect. I sit there and procrastinate and get mad at myself. Its much more fun to clear out my work and just say, I'm going to game for three days straight. I get the same amount of work done either way and enjoy life a lot more. However, if you need to interrupt your procrastination, I suggest travel. Get out of your routine, go away for the weekend with no electronic devices. Its amazing how much more motivated you are when you come back.

  1590. Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself? Don't you get tired of? 2012-03-22 10:49:31 kappaknight
    You actually sound pretty normal. I find I go through the same, alternating pattern roughly every quarter. I'll have 3 months of all nighters and forgo food and sleep without issues. Once a certain level of success is obtained, my brain and body decides to relax and not let me do anything unless it's an emergency. Sometimes this last for weeks, sometimes months. But I totally get what you're saying.

    For me, inspiration and motivation are tied to my procrastination. I tend to come up with the best ideas and do my best work when hanging off the edge of the cliff.

    In addition to working out (as philip has suggested), I would find a way to either hide or invest your monthly income so you don't have access to it. If you only had to live off of $4500 a month instead of $15,000+ a month, you will get your head back into the game.

  1591. Todon't app 2012-03-23 01:03:03 boofar
    Half-relevant: Funnily, I just arrived at this passage in "Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength"[1]:

    "We devoted chapter 3 to the glorious history of the to-do list, but we realize that some readers might still not feel like drawing one up. It can sound dreary and off-putting. If so, try thinking of it as a todon’t list: a catalog of things that you don’t have to worry about once you write them down. As we saw in our discussion of the Zeigarnik effect, when you try to ignore unfinished tasks, your unconscious keeps fretting about them in the same way that an ear worm keeps playing an unfinished song. You can’t banish them from your brain by procrastinating or by willing yourself to forget them.\nBut once you make a specific plan, your unconscious will be mollified. You need to at least plan the specific next step to take: what to do, whom to contact, how to do it (in person? by phone? by e-mail?). If you can also plan specifically when and where to do it, so much the better, but that’s not essential. As long as you’ve decided what to do and put it on the list, your unconscious can relax."

    [1]: http://www.amazon.com/Willpower-Rediscovering-Greatest-Human...

  1592. How to increase productivity per square inch of your screen 2012-03-24 00:56:05 pcestrada
    14. An interesting and challenging problem to work on. I can have all the above but if the task at hand is the equivalent of shoveling dirt, I will procrastinate the day away in my fancy chair, clicking my fancy mouse, surfing the web on my triple 30" setup.

  1593. Django 1.4 final released 2012-03-24 02:45:18 silent1mezzo
    Here's a good list of changes http://procrastinatingdev.com/django/most-important-changes-...

  1594. Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself? Don't you get tired of? 2012-03-24 15:30:38 itsprofitbaron
    I wouldn't recommend the affair one but, I'm replying to this because regarding the last one:

      put "127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com" in your "/etc/hosts"
    You don't even need to do that if you don't want to completely ban yourself from HN (especially as this site runs on several domains) you can just edit the "noprocast" to "yes" and edit the maxvisit: and minaway: times from the standard 20minutes and 180minutes to help you to be more productive and stop procrastinating.

  1595. Why I decided to skip college, and how I've fared (10 months later) 2012-03-25 19:25:25 fungi
    so i'm basically that kid in 10 years.

    all i wanted to do is code, code and code some more for ethical orgs and thats all i've done for the past 10 years.

    but now (literally now, i'm procrastinating while i should be doing an assignment) i am back doing a degree via distance ed to get a piece of paper... and the only reason i'm doing that is i want to work in japan which is a bit hard without a piece of paper.

    anyway, if you want to code and have the skills and opportunities infront of you then take them, uni will be there waiting for you whenever you want.

  1596. Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself? Don't you get tired of? 2012-03-25 21:05:48 castlerobot
    Maybe you're just burnt out from all the time you spent working on it last year. Since it seems pretty low maintenance right now, try taking an extended break from it totally. When you go back to it, you may feel differently and more motivated to work.

    Sometimes procrastination is a sign that you're unhappy with how things are going. Maybe you miss the thrill of creating something new and challenging yourself. Maybe try recapturing some of that excitement by pushing yourself and your startup further. Try growing it more, make it better, try out a new crazy idea. It could help you ignite that passion again.

  1597. Flexible Self-Control 2012-03-27 07:45:40 dreeves
    This is a thinly veiled pitch for my and Bethany Soule's startup -- Beeminder -- but I think think the Akrasia Horizon idea I wrote about in the article has scientific merit.

    Summary:

    Akrasia -- acting against one's own better judgment -- boils down to this: we make rational decisions about what to do next week and irrational decisions about what to do today. Commitment contracts solve that problem but they're blunt and scary and in fact replace one irrationality with another. They restrict your future flexibility! But there's an elegant way to remove almost all of what sucks about commitment devices while retaining the benefit: a commitment that is fully malleable with a one-week delay. This limits the cost of an ill-considered commitment to almost nothing and yet fully neutralizes the impetuous, procrastinating self that is forever about to get serious "tomorrow".

  1598. HN: Name a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve 2012-03-27 14:59:38 aDemoUzer
    Time Management: http://xkcd.com/876/

    On serious note:

    Problem: Help me manage what I need to do and motivate me to do it.

    Issue with every possible solution: there can't be 1-shoe-fits-all.

    There are various solutions proposed: 1. Have a "done" list - people get motivated by seeing what they get done and feel good about themseleves when they are reocrding what they have done, and feel bad when staring things they need to do .

    2. Pair-wise to-do list. Randomly pair a user to a different user and they both use various means to motivate each other and provide means to help each other. This is social interaction and people feel some responsibility to get things done when they have someone to answer to, while others dont want to expose their private life.

    3. Bombard the user with notifications on what needs to get done or give user with positive enforcement every hour, in order to motivate the user.

    There are 2 issues to be addressed: Motivation and organization. If the data is not easily organizable, user dont feel like vesting. If user does not have anything motivating to do those actions, rather than procrastinating, your system is plain doomed.

  1599. There's no speed limit (2009) 2012-03-27 21:23:50 sivers
    Closest book I've found on the "no speed limit" approach was Tony Robbins' Awaken the Giant Within. It could have just been the timing of when I read it. Tim Ferriss told me the book that changed the way he saw the world was Maximum Achievement by Brian Tracy, but when I read it, it seemed like conventional wisdom. So maybe it's just timing.

    What I liked about Tony Robbins' message was this:

    * - Change happens in an instant. People act like change takes years, but really it's almost always a key moment, an instant where you change the way you think about something, or make a promise to yourself to change the way you act (even though it feels strange at first). It may have taken years of procrastination to get to that pain point, but the change itself is instant.

    * - You can change the way you think, so you can change the way you feel. People say, "I can't help the way I feel." or "This is just who I am." But you were an almost-blank slate when born, and most of what you think was just taught into you by someone, so you can un-do it, and replace it with any beliefs or even emotions that support your goal. He gives a great example of funerals in New Orleans: how they play sad music for a few minutes, then break into celebration. We think that death is universally sad, right? But this shows there's another way to think about it. So you can choose to feel happy about each person that rejects you ("one step closer!"), or choose to feel disgusted by the thought of procrastinating ("it's my mortal enemy!"), or whatever you choose to feel.

    Actually there were probably 100 other things like this that changed the way I think, but just seem commonplace to me now because I've been thinking them so long.

    Grab any of those classic self-help books like "Think and Grow Rich" or "Maximum Achievement" or "Awaken the Giant Within". When read at the right time in your life, it can really change everything.

    (( Oh, just noticed you asked about harmony. All the stuff he taught be was very basic jazz harmony that almost any book on the subject will teach. The key was how fast he taught it. ))

  1600. There's no speed limit (2009) 2012-03-28 02:34:51 felideon
    Hi Derek, thanks for an awesome thread and your many enlightening blog posts. (I'm surprised you're surprised to see a post of yours here :P)

    What advice do you have for a generalist? I feel I can learn things quickly, but I don't get great at anything -- maybe due to a lack of motivation and a surplus of procrastination.

    I'm a back-end programmer who likes front-end development, only because I'm not a great UI designer (but would love to be). I also love playing the piano and singing, but I haven't had a lesson in 12 years. (People tell me I have a nice voice.) I'm bilingual and fluent in a third language, and I could easily learn more if I had more time.

    The path I'm currently on is to keep working and practicing front-end development, and possibly learn how to design. As I hone those skills I plan to start building software to one day quit corporate America. On the other hand, I love the music as a hobby thing, but feel that I'm not great. (I'm surrounded by very talented musicians from my wife's side of the family.)

    I'm not even sure what my question is, but any advice would be s/kind of cool/greatly appreciated/.

    Edit: I think my problem is not knowing what to focus on, and whether or not I should specialize in something or keep learning new things. (And if so, how to choose that something.)

  1601. The Psychology of Tackling Hard Problems 2012-03-28 18:54:23 ArekDymalski
    In psychology this problem is called auto-handicap (or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-handicapping) and generally is a strong force behind any form of procrastination.

  1602. Woodcut Maps: Handcrafted wood-inlay maps, designed by you 2012-03-29 02:44:07 tricolon
    I was impossibly confused until I realized you meant to write "noprocrast". As in "no procrastination".

  1603. Woodcut Maps: Handcrafted wood-inlay maps, designed by you 2012-03-29 15:06:37 asmosoinio
    Thanks for pointing that out! I don't think I have ever written the word procrastination myself, so wasn't even aware of the spelling mistake I made.

  1604. Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself? Don't you get tired of? 2012-03-30 16:25:11 geoffw8
    You my friend need a good old friendly slap in the mush. Because otherwise, you will never be successful. Its as simple as that.

    Over with the harshness, I know what you mean. I used to be self employed and at times I found it tough, I'll use an analogy. I used to set my alarm, and snooze for about 30 minutes, now I snooze once and I'm out of bed within 5 minutes. The hardest part of starting your day is getting your arse out of bed.

    I would recommend two things:

    1) Create a trivial task that just "gets you started". Maybe thats making a list, reading a industry report. Is it lack of inspiration thats failing to get you going in the morning?

    2) Make sure what your doing is right. I have a saying, if something doesn't feel right, something is usually wrong. What I mean by that is, if I feel something is too hard, or making me feel uneasy or - say - I'm not motivated, its probably the sign of something bigger. Maybe I'm working on the wrong thing?

    Additionally, I'm 22. My qualification to write this comment is I am incredibly motivated, I do a 10 hour day at another startup, then I work on my own site which is just finishing. I'd guess your about the same? Actually, I just read, you've a wife, I'd pin you as older in that case.

    You know what, being a senior yourself, scrap all of what I said. You just need a slap in the mush ;)

    If you've excited, holiday. Relax. Do what you gotta do. There's a great saying about procrastination and I forget who said it but its something along the lines of "time worried about procrastination is time wasted, if your going to procrastinate, enjoy it".

    Best of luck man, maybe you should consider getting a hotdesk or something, too.

    Enjoy your day!

  1605. Learn to read a binary font by reading a story 2012-04-01 01:07:39 akavi
    I've put about five hours in to this (The magnificent motivating power of procrastinating on something-else-you-need-to-do), and already I feel like I can identify individual dotsie words from a greater distance than I can the Roman words.

    So I suspect your thesis may not be entirely unfounded.

  1606. Poll: What is your primary operating system 2012-04-02 15:41:35 traxtech
    Debian to work, OSX to procrastinate

  1607. 25 years of OS/2: the legendary failure that refuses to die. 2012-04-04 17:36:28 tzs
    Preinstalls discourage other operating systems for two reasons:

    1. they set a functionality mark that a on-preinstall OS needs to surpass in order to interest someone in switching (especially if the new OS costs money),

    2. they enable inaction. What I mean by this is that you may find the features of a new OS interesting enough to want to try it, but doing so actually will take some effort. If you procrastinate, you've still got the old OS.

    Before Win95, the preinstalls were generally either DOS, or DOS + Win3.

    When Win95 came out, it was an immediate hit via retail sales. On launch day, many stores were open at midnight to sell it as soon as they could, and people lined up to buy it. I don't have the numbers handy, but I'd be surprised if Win95 on the first day of availability did not surpass OS/2.

    This shows that there was a significant number of people in August 1995 for whom an OS of Win95's level could entice them to want to try it sufficiently to get them to actually go out and buy it and install it.

    If IBM had properly marketed OS/2, those people could have been their customers. IBM could have established themselves as the preferred 32-bit PC OS before Win95 got out of the gate, and vendors would have been rushing to sell preinstalled OS/2 systems.

    One can make a good case that after Win95 came out and was getting preinstalls, no amount of effort by IBM could have overcome that--Win95 was good enough that OS/2's advantages probably were not enough to overcome procrastination. But by the time Win95 was getting preinstalls, Microsoft had already won from IBM's indifference pre-Win95.

  1608. Ask HN: Do you use Quora? 2012-04-04 19:31:29 Schwolop
    Yep, it's my main procrastination tool. I like procrastinating in a way where I can at least post hoc justify that it wasn't a complete waste of time. On Quora I do regularly learn new stuff, some of which has even been useful to my life, rather than just trivia.

    I've also come around to the boards feature. I originally hated the whole concept because it seemed like noise in what was a pretty good source of signal, but eventually it settled down a bit more. Most people now seem to use them the way I do, just as a place to dump interesting content or things I want to remember later, rather than a way to spam one's followers with uselessness.

  1609. Inside Aarons Apartment: A Most Amazing Bedroom 2012-04-05 11:49:52 pradocchia
    just seems like epic procrastination to me.

  1610. Bad News: Google Is Doing The Corporate Future-Vision Video Thing 2012-04-05 16:58:03 ralfd
    But always wearing glasses is certainly not more convenient than just using a device when you need it. It is like stripping your Smartphone on your wrist so you don't need to pull it out of the pocket.

    Also I doubt the vision will work that good like in the video. Just a detail: Imagine the battery constraint of an always-on and always-connected device! The glasses would be heavy!

    And second I find the Google googles vision more scary than awesome. Like someone quipped on a former thread "why would an advertising company would want to put a filter between your eyeballs and reality?" And while I understand that many would love a more cyberpunk-like future it frightens me. Imagine the amount of pointless distraction to always have a newsfeed in your visual field! Imagine the procrastination of people always lurking reddit or facebook or hackernews! You know how incredible rude it is when you are talking to people but they are checking their phone? And last not least: Imagine getting used to the glasses and not functioning without it anymore!!

  1611. One-Third of O2 Staff say They are More Productive Working From Home 2012-04-05 19:38:27 ErrantX
    Counterpoint; after some time experimenting, I work much better at work than I do at home.

    Work, for me, is fairly relaxed; I can turn up whenever and leave at my convenience. Attitudes are relaxed and I have my own office.

    At first working at home was great and I was very productive. But then the temptation of procrastination crept in. I slept later because "I don't have to travel anywhere", and that got to the point I would start work at 11 and finish by 3. There were few interruptions to break up my day so I got bored faster.

    I enjoy working at work now; it is much more sociable.

    Just my viewpoint :)

  1612. How to leave academia (for science PhDs) 2012-04-05 22:16:25 yummyfajitas
    1. My work consumes most of my time and energy - how would one find time to work on side projects and build a portfolio, when the academic workload is so all-consuming

    Turn off the TV, close Ph.D. comics stop procrastinating. That's a fairly glib and slightly offensive answer, but it's the best I've got. There are no shortcuts. Getting yourself ready to work in industry will take time and effort.

    I can, however, suggest that adopting a more rigid industry-style work schedule can help. In grad school, my time management skills sucked, and I'm pretty sure I wasn't alone in that.

    One thing you can sometimes do to speed things up is to take pieces of your research and turn it into side projects. For instance, something I didn't do (but should have) was properly package/test my numpy shared memory library.

    2. I felt like I had to apply for industry jobs in my niche, otherwise I would be competing against a much larger pool of general engineers/science graduates.

    You overestimate the number of general engineers who are capable of quantitative work. When I said there is value being the guy in the room who understands regression and confidence intervals, I meant it.

    The much larger pool of general engineers/scientists is the target audience of blog posts like this one: http://www.zedshaw.com/essays/programmer_stats.html

    Do things like Naive Bayes, SVMs and Black Scholes seem straightforward to you? If so, you are a quant. Now you just need to become a developer.

  1613. Experiment: Living Without A Home Internet Connection 2012-04-08 07:01:41 aaronjbaptiste
    Interesting perspective. The problem is what you're spending time online doing. If you're looking at cute cats or on facebook, it's likely you're wasting time. I would also bet that lots of time is spent procrastinating. On the flip side I find time away from the computer to be highly unproductive. It's good if you need time away to relax, but overall there's alot of time wasted drinking beer, socialising etc. It's all about balance and getting important stuff done.

  1614. Instagram raised $50M right before acquisition 2012-04-10 04:42:28 hristov
    My argument is this Series B deal added significantly to the cost of the purchase without adding to the value of the purchase. Since Facebook certainly knew it was happening it is hard to believe they allowed it to happen.

    But I suppose if you do have trust in Zuck you do not have to look too closely at the details of deals like this. In any event, who am I to say anything, I am not in fact a facebook shareholder. I am just your average HN procrastinator. I am sure you know how to look after your own interests.

  1615. Why most people dream and only some do: The Go-Getter theory 2012-04-10 10:26:37 ekianjo
    Well, a team that does not even deliver a product cannot be called perfectionist. That's just procrastination. They only managed to deliver once being bought over by Gearbox and given additional resources and time to just ship the unfinished game. The end product speaks for itself : obviously noone was satisfied with it, not even the ones who made it.

  1616. Waking up early, 10 tips that worked for me 2012-04-12 09:11:37 HeyLaughingBoy
    Um, yeah. Whatever.

    We're talking about getting out of bed without procrastinating. If it's difficult, you either haven't had enough sleep or you're being lazy. Getting enough sleep may be difficult, but it's typically not an insurmountable problem. Being lazy is even easier to fix.

  1617. Dont work. Be hated. Love someone. (2008) 2012-04-15 02:29:05 athoma
    I am about to graduate from college and there are so many people applying to jobs that society thinks are "cool". The great majority of these people aren't doing it because they are passionate about their job, but they are doing it for the money. The author writes "Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you dont, you are working." I am all for this statement however the big question is, how do you find that obsession? I really have no idea. Some people say its what you do when you procrastinate, others say that it comes with time and creating experience "working" many different jobs. I think the biggest sign that you are doing something you love is when you can do it for free but then again, I have to make money to live.

    I recently watched the documentary "Jiro dreams of Sushi". Jiro is 85 years old and still works at his restaurant in Tokyo making sushi. He has won three michelin stars and could retire any day but he keeps coming back to his restaurant. Jiro says "you have to fall in love with your work". This is a statement that one constantly hears and it is so often ignored however I really think its true. I look at Jiro and hope that I also never retire because I am doing what I love.

  1618. Crockford on Bootstrap's semicolon omission: insanely stupid code 2012-04-16 00:46:32 batista
    I said something same-ish, but it seems HN is full of true professionals, with no place for humor in their work --or internet procrastination time--, that never read MAD magazine as kids...

  1619. Show HN: Help me launch a weekly HN podcast 2012-04-17 03:37:38 AlexMuir
    Thanks. I've been doing nothing with this domain for months. This morning I finally got down to something and got this up. So many things that I could have procrastinated on but I thought I'd just get it up and out there.

  1620. I have 404,772 users. Now what? 2012-04-17 15:13:36 Dexec
    Pud, as I said here (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3520013) 80 days ago, the way you keep putting out quality products is great. It's funny that your post on getting users (http://pud.com/post/5239917032/users) isn't even a year old (although you don't seem to be using a lot of those methods for this project).

    Do your project ideas (big and small) just come to you or do you have a process?

    And any thoughts on doing a small post on a day/week in the life of Pud? Like how much time you spend on projects (planning, coding, designing), and whatever else you do like jamming. You clearly know at least a little about time management and/or avoiding procrastination.

  1621. The unforgivable heresy of Sheryl Sandberg 2012-04-17 22:02:57 j45
    Anyone who works mode than 50 hours a week needs to track everything they do for a few weeks. Pay attention to how we slow down the more consecutive weeks we work 50 or more hours.

    I did something in my 20's: regular ongoing stints of 60 to 70+++ hour weeks, sometimes for a few years straight. Worked 7 days a week regularly, zero vacations (except being within a 3 hour flight of home no longer for a day or two at a time).

    I'd hate to say I wasn't productive. But, the long hours blurred the lines between productivity and efficiency, looking back. I am a productivity nut who wants to remain effective.

    I found a clear rested mind sees much simpler and eloquent solutions to things. It's easier and better able to find and connect the dots between things. I'd catch myself once in a while wondering why I didn't see something obviously simpler when I was doing longer hours. Maybe it's a side effect of just wanting to ship, ship, ship.

    Learning to get 70 hours worth done in 40 or 50 hours by truly working my tail off when I was working, helped me learn to relax, rest and recover truly in my time away from the keyboard.

    Changing my routine to sleep lots, especially during the design phase where creativity was beneficial. Coding became hammer and nails, and interestingly something more easily delegated. I still had to do burns, but they were far less perpetual and way more focused. I can still do it for a few months at a time but then I need some down time.

    Lately, my routine more evolves around balance between all the things I love to do, and leaving room to discover new things. I don't need a ton of time to my self, but starting with taking one guilt free hour a day, instead of an hour of procrastination, or one guilt-free day off a week instead of wasting a day doing nothing at a keyboard did more to fill up the tank than anything. Listening to my body needing a walk and some fresh air got me back and focused much quicker instead of trying to ride it out.

    Don't believe the hype. Very few understand the software development world and think more effort is more output. The folks with the money buying the time of others will always want people without money to work a ton because they stand to benefit from it. Ironically more money folks than you'd expect take more than enough time off once they arrive to truly remain focussed. This is especially too often true in consulting, partnerships, and investments. After you have a track record this can change, or you can just get a ton done in a little amount of time.

    When we do something 40 to 50 hours a week we will be making connections not only with ideas, but with people. We randomly come up with ideas just by having the perspective of being away from the keyboard.

    Being in a perpetual cycle of shipping releases for personal and client projects has taught me time away from the keyboard is just as important as time at the keyboard to help me stay in one mindset: always be shipping.

  1622. Why Good Programmers Are Lazy and Dumb 2012-04-18 17:33:41 krollew
    Don't take words so binary. That's the big problem of most languages. That's something like that:

    If I see I have so big job to do I have problem to start, procrasinate. What does it mean? Obviously I'm lazy, isn't it?

    At the same time if I see nice way to make easier some complex stuff I do frequently I do it, find it exciting, enjoyable and I don't procrastinate. So? I'm unlazy at the same time. That's the effect of being inteligent and lazy at the same time.

    Maybe he could have used better words to describe that, but It wouldn't tell the people that lazyness may be advantage as well, because such lazy code is so nice. Time saving is not only thing. Such lazy code tends to be so DRY, as he wrote and as code is DRYer it is more readable as well.

    About dumb, it's very similar. Guy you ask so elementar questions. It's all so obvious. So many people would say he's dumb, even take it personaly.

    If he doesn't use word dumb, that fact wouldn't be emphasized so nice.

  1623. I Guess I'm Not A 501 Developer 2012-04-18 23:04:36 lucisferre
    I can't think of a better person than those who find something they truly love and are passionate about. No one said you should put 80 hours a week into any one thing or for any one company (lets face it no one pays enough to be worth 80 hours of your time). But the 501 manefesto comes across as a whining from the "just a job" crowd.

    I almost never put more than 40 hours a week into my "job". But I love it and I know I do great work. I've never found anyone has judged me for when I go home, but if they did, I'd put them in their place right quick.

    I do put probably another 10h into side projects, maybe another 10h or more reading, being involved in user groups and talking to people (which I love) and blogging whenever I stop procrastinating.

    I love doing all this. I also love my family, I play with my daughter every day and I see my friends all the time. Yet amazingly, in all that I still find an inordinate amount of time to waste watching terrible TV shows.

    The point is there is more time in our lives to do awesome than the 501 developer seems to want to admit. If there is anyone who deserves pity it is anyone who does anything because it's "just a job". I can't say I'll have much regret about all the time I've spent coding, and learning and attending meetups, but I can say how much regret I would have doing "just a job" for 40 hours a week. Exactly 40 hours a week worth.

  1624. Coursera raises $16M 2012-04-19 03:52:30 robrenaud
    This isn't about coursera, but there was some interesting research in presented in Predictably Irrational about deadlines and student performance. Basically, deadlines help a lot, and having many small deadlines to ensure continuous work helps prevent procrastination.

    http://bookoutlines.pbworks.com/w/page/14422685/Predictably%...

    > Group 3 (imposed deadlines) got the best grades. Group 2 (no deadlines) got the worst grades, and Group 1 (self-selected deadlines) finished in the middle.

  1625. The worlds two worst variable names 2012-04-19 04:59:50 Someone
    Oops, hit the "reply" button by accident when trying to dismiss a spelling correction on the iPad, and I do not know how to edit, due to my anti-procrastination setting. Intended was to compare:

      Foreach item in items
    With

      Foreach datum in data
    I also use itemss for a container of containers:

      Foreach items in itemss
    Foreach item in items
    Of course, if the code is less generic, different names are more appropriate:

      Foreach row in matrix
    Foreach cell in row

  1626. Having a cofounder is a blessing and a curse at the same time. 2012-04-22 02:29:41 tferris
    It's choosing between pest and cholera.

    In early stages: With a cofounder you get started, carry on, have fun and soon an MVP. Without you quit days after having a first prototype (due to heavy procrastination, doubts, distractions).

    In later stages: With a cofounder decision-making becomes a nightmareevery other discussion ends in dramas and in grueling deadlocks. Without a cofounder life is a breeze and you can close deals in 48h (i.e. buying a photo sharing app for 1 billion).

    (edited first line: removed chicken and egg)

  1627. The PhD Movie 2012-04-23 21:32:27 lrem
    Would you believe a kickstarter about procrastination to actually deliver? ;)

  1628. Ask HN: How many project have you started but haven't shipped? 2012-04-24 11:30:13 conancat
    I have around 10 here... yeah, procrastination is the root of all unshipped products. :/

  1629. How to Set Deadlines for Your Students 2012-04-26 00:39:23 duwease
    Whenever I hear about instructors complaining about student procrastination, it makes me think back to when I implemented/managed a system for academics to make a certain type of submission.. and over half of the submissions were always after the deadline during the "last second extension". Physicians, heal thyself :)

  1630. How to Set Deadlines for Your Students 2012-04-26 01:41:37 dy
    Besides procrastination, is there any reason why having deadlines later would be beneficial for students or the teacher? It seems that you can almost make a universal law that shorter feedback cycles make for better course correction in almost any type of system.

    I agree that the classes I've taken where there has been significantly shorter feedback cycles I've always felt more engaged.

  1631. Show HN: Track and analyze your daily activities (side project) 2012-04-26 19:22:12 1p1e1
    I do procrastinate and I have the feeling I'm "wasting" lots of my time. So I decided to make a tool which helps me track my daily activities and then analyze how much time I spend on them, in what time frames, how many times per day and all those geeky stuff that includes numbers and graphs. It's been already a while since I use the developer-release and I can state that it did help me. You might find it surprising but seeing how much time you spend on certain activities is a great motivator in helping you re-evaluate what you do and when you do it. I though some of you might find it useful so there it is - I present you Timepi.

    I would love to hear what do you think about it. What works for you? What doesn't? What can I do to make it better?

    Cheers.

  1632. Show HN: Sink or Ship - ship your project in time, or else... 2012-04-27 23:50:55 its_so_on
    First, I agree with "partially", since the authors should be reimbursed for making this, probably took some time, and the payment is so small.

    As for the charity, it should obviously go to further research into procrastination disorders :)

  1633. GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism 2012-04-28 00:21:59 forgotusername
    Keeping the old interface was a good move, although it only (at least for me) leads to procrastination. The same problem exists, which is the mental adjustment that you need to make at some point.

    Another interesting angle is that in the new interface, they had to add a dropdown menu to control the amount of padding used on UI elements (compact, cosy, comfortable). Had they gradually moved from compact to cosy, then to comfortable over a longer period, the need to provide an option might have been removed entirely. So some of the complexity avoided in having incremental changes over a fixed term has instead become software complexity needing maintained over a potentially longer or indefinite period.

    In either case, a gradual transition would avoid the need for all this. For me, the two biggest gotchas with the new design was the text->icons change and associated relocation of some buttons, and the border change. Had the text->icons change been introduced distinctly, and allowed to stew for a few weeks - months, then the border size changed from compact to cosy for a few months, I possibly would have had no reason to complain at all (the amount of adjustment/effort required for each individual change is amortized over time, and by the time a new change appears, my comfort level has already returned to maximum for the current state of the UI).

  1634. Show HN: Sink or Ship - ship your project in time, or else... 2012-04-28 09:09:05 ulugbek
    We did a startup that used the same model in stopping online procrastination: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2268710, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuc0_ZMQ4P8 and our competitor in productivity space blogged about us :http://blog.beeminder.com/timecarrot/. My experience is that, it is really hard to build a business model around behavioral economics, be it weight loss, quitting smoking, or anything else. Based on the data I have seen, people who will think they need commitment device are also sophisticated enough to know that they might fail, hence won't signup. In the end, you always end up serving significantly smaller number of consumers than you have initially assumed.

  1635. Brydge, the iPad Keyboard, Raised Over $200,000 on Kickstarter 2012-04-28 15:43:03 tferris
    I know I gonna be downvoted for this, maybe I am wrong but I dare to say:

    The success of this kickstarter project shows that there's no real use case for tablets except surfing/reading/consuming/procrastinating on the sofa and thus, people want their keyboard backanything else can be done more effectively with a computer/notebook and/or a smartphonethere's just no room for a third device between notebooks and smartphones. Don't get me wrong I appreciate all the innovations in application and OS design (iOS and the lean ARM architecture could replace x86 designs) which came with tablets but I doubt that tablets with their clumsy form factor will take over the world.

    I still don't get the success of these devices. It's so much more convient to type, to keep the finger movements small (with a mouse or trackpad or a small touch screen in devices like smartphones), to have the right viewing angle without holding anything warm or using ugly extra stands. Only when surfing around and reading sites I see a real benefit but then again: moving fingers to 'click' links or to go back is so much more work compared to a small notebook like the MBA and I spend the entire day with the Internet anyway, I have to force myself to do something else in the eveningI don't want to meet again the Internet, Facebook and Google when I should go out, meet friends and family. Or I just want to watch a movie and even this is totally cumbersome with a tablet (compare this use case again to a notebook like the MBA, I just put it on my lap lying in my bed and that's it: no stand, not getting warm, always the right viewing angle, I don't have to hold something).

    Again: if you disagree reply instead of voting this post downthis isn't gonna be a flamewarI just want to question, is there really a post pc era coming where tablets replace computers (I would rather guess that smartphones and not tablets will fill the gap and could get the main distribution channel for software).

  1636. Brydge, the iPad Keyboard, Raised Over $200,000 on Kickstarter 2012-04-28 17:37:37 forgottenpaswrd
    "The success of this kickstarter project shows that there's no real use case for tablets except surfing/reading/consuming/procrastinating on the sofa..."

    Surfing, reading, consuming and procrastinating is 95% of the time normal people use a computer, and there is nothing wrong with that.

    I have news for you, before you are able to write you have to read, a lot. Surfing, consuming and getting in touch with other people is also part of the creation process for a lot of people, maybe not for the isolated geek who has no friends and believes that real work is working on problems without interaction with people(as if their work were going to be used by androids).

    There is more consumers than producers, this is expected. It is a tool, like a car is used for transportation, and not for changing parts of it like a lego.

    I am a vim user, I know how to compile the linux kernel, disassemble anything and create super complex and amazing programs but when I want to plan where I am going to be the weekend I love the Apple multitouch tech so much on the map application. I prefer browsing web pages and watching educational videos on a tablet.

    I can tell my parents or grandpas or a kid how a tablet app work in 2 minutes, impossible to do with a pc because interface is seriously wrong. I repeat, is totally wrong if people that are not geeks can't use it.

    Some geeks hate it because it removes the "guru aura" they have over their family or friends as the only one that knows how to use the "broken machine".

    I want it all, the power of a linux or mac machine with the intuitive interface of tablets. In the future you wont have to choose, you will be able to use ubuntu(or other distros, or windows, or macOSX) on tablets.

    "clumsy form factor"??? You really hate those that do not believe in the same things you do, you are blind from your hate. It is agile form factor, I touch it moves, instantly. PCs are the clumsy ones. You want to zoom, you search for an icon, then click on it, then it zooms stumbled like an octogenarian.

  1637. Brydge, the iPad Keyboard, Raised Over $200,000 on Kickstarter 2012-04-28 18:42:25 chucknelson
    > The success of this kickstarter project shows that there's no real use case for tablets except surfing/reading/consuming/procrastinating on the sofa and thus, people want their keyboard back

    I would say that a little over 1,100 backers for some iPad keyboard does not say much when you consider the tens of millions of iPads out in the wild.

  1638. When Will This Low-Innovation Internet Era End? 2012-04-29 09:24:07 gbog
    > I cant imagine any other period of time being more exciting to live in.

    You must be very much lacking imagination. Greek philosophers century, Chinese warring states, Italian Renaissance, French Lumieres, Worldwide exploration, all off them must have been much more exciting time. Discovering a new country with unknown people and animals, risking your own life and your team's every single day... Don't tell me it compares with inventing yet another way to procrastinate on the Web.

  1639. Theres No Trick To Being Awesome 2012-04-30 00:07:14 warmfuzzykitten
    There may be. This piece is a reaction to another in which the writer explains a simple trick - blogging every day about something he wanted to learn - that has allowed him to write several books on these subjects. The reaction, essentially, is "life hacks considered harmful." Not the hacks themselves, but the pseudo-computing jargon that implies that humans have the ability to program themselves like robots. This, the author decries, sets up a harmful body vs. mind conflict.

    Let's assume, for the sake of discussion, that body and mind are one. But there are many commonly observed ways in which they work together against their own interests. Why do you get fat and not stay slim like you want? Why do you procrastinate? Why don't you give your full attention to your work? A life hack does not divide mind and body, a hack is a technique that allows you to do what you perceive to be in your best interest without trying to do it all at once. All such hacks I am aware of involve concentrated attention to specific, short-term goals that can be accomplished without reflecting on the big picture.

    Yes, there's a lot of blather about "programming" especially among those ignorant of actual computer programming, but the notion that it is possible to do things you would ordinarily not do through the application of some technique, or adoption of some meme, did not originate in information science. It has a long history. The more recent term "hack" certainly comes from computing, but it is used as a metaphor to describe a workaround that allows you to do what you want without requiring you to change your basic nature. It's hard to see this as a problem. You are what you are. For most people this means we tend to be lazy and complacent and get stuck in a groove, even when we can see our current path is not taking us where we want to go. If a "trick" is needed to move in a better direction, it's a good thing.

    More specifically: I am currently reading Thinking: Fast And Slow by Daniel Kahneman. With solid science, the author describes how the fast parts of our brains deceive us with quick, easy, illogical answers, while the slow, logical parts are lazy and accept most such answers without reflection. Occasionally, he reflects on ways he tries to force himself to avoid common errors. It isn't easy because there are things we know by science that are hard to accept personally, and in any case, you can't really change how your brain works. The techniques he describes are mental hacks - tricks he uses to reframe his thinking to allow him to get better answers. Surely knowing your own nature, and working around it at times to do a better job of thinking, is good for you.

  1640. Watch me work: Video of me building a new Rails app from scratch 2012-04-30 14:18:02 platzhirsch
    Is this the new trend of overcoming procrastination? I like it!

  1641. Watch me work: Video of me building a new Rails app from scratch 2012-04-30 15:53:35 nulluk
    I'm doing something similar with all my personal projects, but not quite a live video, more a time lapse style so a picture every 30 seconds. It's not for overcoming procrastination for myself, but to focus me & stop me instinctively browsing my regular sites when a difficult section arises.

    It's also prompting me to become more efficient as I know when the project is finished & the video compiled it will be watched by my peers who will hopefully provide some insightful feedback!

  1642. Getting Beaten By A Voting Bot In 50 Minutes 2012-05-01 08:04:59 sunir
    Procrastination. The contest deadline could have been a motivator.

  1643. Getting Beaten By A Voting Bot In 50 Minutes 2012-05-01 08:08:03 ChuckMcM
    That is a great question. One could speculate, last minute idea "Hey this is close enough, I bet we could win it with ..." or a feint of obviousness, or any number of things.

    The OP speculates a voting robot, however if you did it with Mechanical Turk which uses real people you might find that they procrastinate and only pick up tasks that are about to go off the lists or something. That would be especially true if price per hit went up as it approached the deadline, one could arbitrage the value vs the number of hits you could do in time to meet the deadline.

  1644. Ask HN: Advice for those with poor discipline? 2012-05-05 12:11:37 graeme
    1. Completely eliminate the source of distraction. This can be temporary, with essential things. The separation can reset habits. With lesser things, remove them permanently.

    2. Try to procrastinate with activities that are still productive. Don't feel like working on your major project? Complete some chores.

    3. Create names for bad habits. Then, when you notice you're doing the habit, say "oh, I'm doing X again". Often naming something is the first step to beating it.

  1645. People are losing trust in all institutions 2012-05-05 15:37:07 mayanksinghal
    I don't think that most people here would want to replace their college education with self-learning because the latter is inherently harder. I agree that one can learn nearly everything on his/her own but that takes a lot of willpower and motivation which would result in higher dropout rates.

    I am , in fact, going to graduate in a few months and cannot think of a better place I could have spent the last 4 and a half years. I could have spent it in a better way: read more, do more, try more and procrastinate less, but there is no way I could have learnt as much as I have (educational things as well as life lessons) so easily.

  1646. How text editing on the iPad should be 2012-05-05 19:00:59 batista
    >To even bring up the baby and lizard argument is hilarious, it's like commenting on a baby learning to walk falling and say: Look! He/She just figured out how gravity works! The lizard probably appreciated the IPS panel

    What I was saying is that lots of iOS functions are so intuitive --more intuitive that in a PC-- that even toddlers can "get" them. It's not a unique insight I had, UI experts have praised the exact same interaction models, and some even gave the same examples. Mouse use has to be learned, touch interaction is a concept we are "wired" for.

    That doesn't make touch interaction better for all kinds of complex workflows, but it does make it more obvious and intuitive. I you want to argue against that, well...

    >and couldn't have been fooled by any other technology than the all mighty retina display, it's nothing but a marvel and the peak of the human civilization, each ipad are most likely followed by an angel that lifts it up so that it can be carried easily in your hand. In all honestly, and I can not stress this enough, that's how you sound.

    I lost you there. Maybe you smoked something heavy before writing this part? (for medical purposes of course, I wouldn't suggest otherwise).

    >You really don't need an ipad to get rid of distractions but for those that take that route I'd hope they would try to work on the problem and not the symptoms. No need to sacrifice their working environment.

    Them clicking and being distracted is not the "problem" if that's what you imply. It's like blaming the victim. It's only natural in a environment with tons of options, distractions, alerts, etc, to get distracted. That they should change their character (or human nature) instead of the all-too-cluttered computing environment is absurd.

    So, that's exactly what they did: they treated the problem (the presence of distractions) and not the symptom (their clicking on them every other minute). Thus, they started using a machine with less distractions. Hell, even on PCs distraction-free software is on the rise the last 2-3 years, as is GTD/stop-procrastinating apps (not to mention that 1/10's articles on HN is of the "how can I be less distracted/do more/avoid procrastination" etc variety.

    >I couldn't care less about how people use their ipads, there are probably someone writing essays on his/her phone too - is that proof that it works well?

    Given that they use a keyboard --so your stated reason against using an iPad for writing is obliterated--, I'd say, yeah, it's a proof that it works well. If you continue to rant against using an iPad for writing even WITH a keyboard, well, then maybe you are acting a bit irrationally?

    >There have probably been more people drying/killing their dogs in an microwave than there are professional writers that do their majority of writing on an ipad.

    I seriously doubt that.

    I've read at least 6-7 accounts from prominent writers, and no accounts from people drying their dogs in a microwave (now, the latter is illegal, but people write about doing illegal things all the time. I would expect at least someone in 4chan to profess his killing dogs in microwave habbit).

    >You said it yourself, writing is not its target use - then don't try to adapt your writing so that it works on the ipad.

    >Yes, if all you want to do is stream characters from your conscious to a device then yes of course a keyboard works fine with the ipad. But if you want to do anything more than that (highlight a word perhaps?), I sincerely hope, that you would realize its limitations. And most physical keyboards for the ipad that focus on mobility are just pathetic, there's another invention that might be more handy - a laptop.*

    "Most" leaves a few that are decent. I also fail to see how a laptop would be more suitable. Yes, it has a keyboard built-in, but it also has less battery life, higher price, more weight and more distractions/maintenance. If you value THOSE things, a laptop is a non starter. If you don't, by all means, get a laptop.

    >But then again, ergonomically, laptops are of course not the ideal writing machine either (can't believe I really feel the need to point that out).

    Really? I'd argue that 90% of professional writers use laptops just fine. Desktops are a dead category, laptops have been overselling desktop machines for several years now. I fail to see how "ergonomically" a laptop is not the "ideal writing machine" [citation needed]. Actually, you keep using this word, ergonomically. I don't think it means what you think it means.

  1647. Firefox finally plugs the leak 2012-05-09 08:23:34 srean
    Yes I am as bad as you are with tabs, possibly worse cause I have hit 800s once in a while.

    Just like you said, for me tabs are my "volatile" bookmarks and a TODO list. The upside is that it automatically records the history of the browsing session a call/cc if you will. It is also in my face, reminding me about it. It has a tiny cost associated with keeping it open forcing me to not procrastinate on it for ever. Many a open tab graduate into being genuine bookmarks.

    I have tried FF4 and without add-ons it does not do everything that I do with 3.6 with add-ons. The critical part is unloading the content of the tabs when it has not been viewed in a while. The other feature I like is the ability to search through the content of the tabs.

    With the add-on set that I have, I leave my FF open for months on a 512Mb box with no issues. So I assume all the leaks have been iron out of 3.6 by now or the memory fox add-on does a good job of garbage collection.

  1648. Miso pays disputed $10k referral bonus to ex-engineer, apologizes 2012-05-11 21:09:06 felideon
    This is all sorts of wrong. Miso should have paid the referral fee (let's stop calling it a bonus as another commenter pointed out) as soon as the referred employee hit 6 months. Why are employees forced to beg for their money? For most of us, it's awkward to have to go to 'the man' and ask for our money. So we procrastinate and 'forget' about asking for the money, all while working hard anyway.

    Switching jobs is an excellent time to have $10k handy.

    And for them to say "no sorry, you screwed up at the end" shows just how much they valued that employee's contribution to the team for an entire year.

    This reeks of Big Co. incompetent management mentality. Sad to see startup founders power tripping and not realize it.

  1649. Miso pays disputed $10k referral bonus to ex-engineer, apologizes 2012-05-11 21:14:47 felideon
    > Any employee who leaves 10k behind didn't care enough about it in the first place. The fact that he forgot is huge.

    No, it's not huge. As I said in another comment, it's always awkward for me to have to go to a 'manager' and ask for money so I procrastinate on such issues. Maybe it was similar for him.

  1650. Miso pays disputed $10k referral bonus to ex-engineer, apologizes 2012-05-12 02:42:01 silentscope
    it's business brother. you're not asking to date his sister. you earned the money, go ask for it.

    and procrastinating is just fine. but you don't QUIT without getting that kind of dough.

  1651. Gamification is not entirely bullshit 2012-05-13 23:47:53 brandall10
    In a more meta way, just about any innovation goes through a 2-steps forward, 1-step back cycle. The 1-step back is always due to wide-scale adoption where the original message is somewhat lost in translation, but as a whole actually moves things forward (ie. agile 'methodology').

    I think when it comes to gamification it's perhaps better to reframe it as a more targeted engagement structure. If you think about how big the actual video game industry is, how much people are _paying_ to solve problems, that there could be a better way to flip that script, because they are in fact doing work in the guise of entertainment.

    Right now the whole concept is in its infancy, but I imagine five years from now it will be prevalent in most everything we do, perhaps in a very indirect manner. It might even be the perfect cure for procrastination (ducks :)

  1652. 30 minutes a day 2012-05-14 01:41:15 leoedin
    If you want to write a novel, most of the advice I've seen is essentially "do it". Almost any project will benefit a great deal from dedication. Procrastination is the real cause of most things that don't happen.

    Saying that, I take real offense at the equation given in the article. "Focused energy + xx minutes + once per day = idea manifestation"?

    Should it not be (focused energy + xx minutes) * once per day... Or perhaps even focused energy * xx minutes * once per day.

    If you set any of those variables to 0, the outcome is 0. It's clearly a multiplication problem.

  1653. 30 minutes a day 2012-05-14 01:56:09 mrschwabe
    Nice call, equation updated. I'm a designer not a programmer :)

    Regarding your point, I completely agree. And is why I shared this little strategy. I suppose its a form of scheduled anti-procrastination.

  1654. 30 minutes a day 2012-05-14 20:21:31 lusr
    Can't speak for the parent but I think I understand where he's coming from. For me, it was reading the section on procrastination (which requires reading the preceding sections on dysfunctional thought patterns) in David Burns' "Feeling Good" that did the job.

    Once you see all the possible reasons people procrastinate listed in front of you, and a plan of action for each scenario, it's pretty difficult to procrastinate because every time you find yourself in a potential procrastination scenario your brain goes "oh hang on, I know what I'm doing, it's X from Feeling Good". At that point you can execute the anti-procrastination plan, or, as in my present case, I don't even bother any more because I've done it enough to know I'll invariably end up getting to work and so I just go right ahead and do it.

    The key thing here is you need to (a) be committed to change and (b) you need to study the book and do the exercises. Refreshing my procrastination pattern matching memory from time to time by rereading the section is critical. Many people aren't ready to stop procrastinating because they're not ready to take action. But just like debugging code, you just have to follow the chain of dependencies until you deal with successive root causes. Prochaska's "Changing for Good" put me on the path of awareness in this regard. Once you know what your brain is doing it's pretty difficult not to make progress.

  1655. Focus.py 2012-05-15 14:49:05 Bjoern
    I wrote myself a similar thing a couple of years ago but just leveraging the /etc/hosts file with some scripting.

    https://github.com/rennhak/ProcrastinatorsHelp

    But believe me, if you want to doodle there is nothing going to stop you.

  1656. Focus.py 2012-05-15 17:09:03 goblin89
    According to temporal motivation theory (TMT), perceived utility of a task diminishes with growing temporal distance to the reward. [0]

    The reward of working is usually distant and sometimes low in expectancy, as is the punishment for not working. At the same time, rewards of socializing (as one example) are almost immediately available anytime. The value of working is originally higheryou get paid for that, after allbut its utility after expectancy and time discounts may well be lower. It would rise as potential reward or punishment gets closer, but we will procrastinate until it beats the utility of posting comments on HN.

    So, in order to fix that, we would like to reverse the ratio of utilities.

    One solution is to artificially restrict access to distracting activities. In terms of TMT, their utility would be lowered because of some effort necessary to overcome the restrictions. However, over time we need less and less effort, and the utility is up again.

    Conversely, ideamonk's suggestionenjoying the process of doingeffectively raises the utility of the task so that distractions can't compete. It might take effort to learn that, but the effects are arguably more pleasant and permanent.

    [0] Utility = (Reward Expectancy Value) Delay. See Integrating theories of motivation by Steel & Knig and The Nature of Procrastination by Steel.

  1657. Please Learn to Code 2012-05-15 23:43:29 ralfd
    I think everybody should visit Reddit, for one simple reason: knowing how to make a meme is hugely empowering.

    I cant think of many other skills that enable you to create something from scratch and reach as many people as knowing how to set up a simple rage post.

    Just last week, I was able to come up with an idea and then photographed my cat in 2 ways. That photo was then seen by about 10,000 people in a couple hours and I got 2000 karma points.

    Think about it: something I did reached 10,000 actual living people and had an impact(however small) on their life. That would never have been possible if I didnt know how to procrastinate on the Internet.

  1658. What my 11 year old's Stanford course taught me about online education 2012-05-16 01:41:23 ntoshev
    Sync deadlines help with at least two things:

    - motivation (helps with procrastination)

    - discussion (others are on the same stage)

  1659. Turkey kills school books, moves to tablet in all schools 2012-05-18 17:59:19 goblin89
    Exactly. During traditional class, as I recall, your options are roughly these: 1) mess around with something, 2) study or make it look like that.

    In terms of temporal motivation theory, the utility of messing around is much higher than the utility of boring study. Two ways to fix thiseither lower the utility of messing around, or raise the utility of actual learning.

    A punishment by teacher (with high enough expectancy) for messing around with classmates or cellphone does the first. Obviously, a book is too boringbut replace it with an iPad and children can now play games while no one notices[0], which makes the utility of messing around go up again.

    Another, arguably better way would be raising the utility of actual learning relative to messing around with stuff. In other words, make so that children would like to do it themselvesthrough some psychological reward (valuable and close enough temporarily), or by making it an enjoyable process (i.e., immediate reward). It means fixing the system though.

    [0] Like many of us, in regular day job environments, can (and do) procrastinate with the help of our fancy devices.

  1660. SMT Soldering: It's Easier Than You Think (comic) [pdf] 2012-05-20 21:02:35 AnthonBerg
    The editing of the jumble up above was precluded by the HN anti-procrastination feature kicking in. Here it is - along with my apologies - in a more presentable form:

    41Hz Amp32, energy-efficient 2x25W hifi amp, sounds amazing, 17 grams, fits in a matchbox with room to spare: http://shop.41hz.com/shop/item.asp?itemid=38

    41Hz Amp4, similar but higher power and sounds ridiculously good - looks like a hard SMD build maybe, but absolutely isn't: http://shop.41hz.com/shop/item.asp?itemid=6

    41Hz PS4, tiny switching voltage regulator - modern 780x/LM317 replacement that is ~90% power efficient and can handle a ~90V in/out tension differential: http://shop.41hz.com/shop/item.asp?itemid=317&catid=

    GrubDAC, pretty small and nice usb powered audio output: http://diyforums.org/GrubDAC/GrubDACoverview.php

  1661. From Cubicles, Cry for Quiet Pierces Office Buzz 2012-05-21 05:35:55 danneu
    Yeah, it's purely a different-strokes sort of thing.

    I hated the monolithic campus library. It was less lively than a mausoleum. Low ceilings and the agony of a thousand procrastinators. The quiet was unnerving and I had trouble focusing in there.

    I instead opted to study at a noisy on-campus coffee shop environment. Most of my friends seemed to need dead silence though, so asserting that either one is the "best work environment" is rather self-centered.

  1662. I took Scott Hanselman's advice on productivity, and now look at me... 2012-05-21 07:12:22 astrofinch
    I worry that those who successfully stop their Internet procrastination will no longer be around to tell the rest of us how they did it.

  1663. Please don't let gaming consume your life 2012-05-22 08:19:26 swah
    How a procrastinator faces a todo list: you read the first item, realize that its a hard one and you should game for a little while so your subconscious can work on the problem and generate creativity.

    (But I always end up realizing that conscious effort/thinking about the damn task gives better results).

  1664. An alliance of creators who stay accountable and support one another 2012-05-22 21:28:21 tocomment
    Would there be interest in doing this more informally? Just match up people here and holding us accountable to our projects? It might help beat procrastination?

  1665. Facebook is People: Why I Quit Mark Zuckerbergs Online Collective Data Farm 2012-05-23 23:40:53 TazeTSchnitzel
    I quit for two reasons,

    1) I didn't want Facebook mining my data, and

    2) It was dull and a waste of time. It doesn't help my procrastination, and the only things I used it for were the occasional IM, and... investigating people I was interested in getting to know

  1666. This is why learning Rails is hard [graphic] 2012-05-24 06:05:50 jdlshore
    It's a cute graph. But not really specific to Rails. Programming is hard... let's go shopping:

    Starting at the top-right, and comparing to other professional web development languages, we have:

    RUBY. Well, yes, you need to know a programming language in order to program. Ruby does some things well (closures!) and some things poorly (monkey patching!). Overall, it's no harder or easier than most OO programming languages. Price relative to Not-Rails: 0. Let's move on.

    RUBY / GEM MANAGEMENT. Ruby is crap at versioning and isolation. So is nearly everyone else. (Ever heard of DLL Hell?) And at least gem downloads, installs, and handles dependencies for you. Overall, it's a bit better than average, but not great. Price: 0.

    RAILS FRAMEWORK. You know, I've programmed a fair amount of Ruby, but I've never used Rails. Most of the stuff listed inside that section seems fairly typical to me. But let's take the article at its word and assume it's kind of hard. Price: 100.

    GIT. You gotta use version control if you wanna be a real programmer someday. Git's a brain-bender, but you don't have to use it. Next! (Price: 0.)

    TESTING. From what I've heard, Rails doesn't have the greatest support for good TDD. There's a lot of integration testing needed, which is slow, which necessitates asynchronous integration, which leads to automated build servers, which lead to people ignoring broken builds, which lead to bugs, which lead to pain, which leads to suffering, which leads to... <gasps for breath>... er, sorry, you pushed one of my buttons. Let's just say that testing could be better, although, in fairness, the other frameworks are probably worse. Still, in Rails you're actually expected to test. Good on them. Price: 1,000.

    AGILE PROCESS. Hey, it's my favorite poorly-defined marketing term. But let's say you're using a rigorous approach to Agile... say, practicing Agile the way I think you should [1]. That does take some work. Incremental design, in particular, takes real practice. I don't think it's actually harder than any other rigorous software development approach, though. I mean, seriously, compare "face to face communication" with "requirements phase gate documentation and sign-offs." Yikes. Price: 0.

    IDE/TEXT EDITOR. Really? REALLY? Any pain here is of your own making, Mr. vimacs. Price: 0.

    COMMAND LINE. There was a day in which every real programmer knew how to use the command-line. I've been dismayed to discover professional programmers who can't, and instead use Visual Studio or Eclipse for everything. Shocking, I say. Kudos to Rails folk for bringing it back. Price: 200.

    DEPLOYMENT. Meh. Someone's gotta do it. Doesn't always have to be you. I doubt Rails changes this. Price: 0.

    SQL: Object-relational impedence is gORMless. (See what I did there?) Price: 0.

    OPERATING SYSTEM: Umm. Really reaching on this one, aren't ya. Price: 0.

    WWW: That shit be hard, man. Really fucking hard. I don't know half of it half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of it half as well as it deserves. Half of it doesn't even work half the time. And... that's not really a Rails thing, is it? Price: 0.

    Final bill: 1,300: a bit harder than other web programming, but only because the Rails folks actually do testing, despite Rails not being great at it.

    I'll let you decide what the exchange rate is.

    PS: Yes, I know this rant is barely related to the point of the linked article, not nearly as funny as I wish it was, and really a giant waste of time on my part. Allow me my procrastination.

    [1] http://jamesshore.com/Agile-Book/

  1667. The Art of Stealth Studying: How To Earn a 4.0 With Only 1.0 Hours of Work 2012-05-25 00:52:16 joshma
    I'm sure this is true of other schools too, but I can confirm that some psets at MIT can take upwards of 12 hours. It's not even a matter of organization at that point - the amount of thinking and planning to just come up with the idea can take a long time.

    But of course, there are also classes in which I spend way more time than I should, simply from procrastinating or not paying attention in class. So I guess the original advice is sound ("be organized", "study early") but the reality is much more difficult than the article makes it out to be.

  1668. Stop Taking Yourself So Seriously 2012-05-28 05:12:03 Random_Person
    I'm a procrastinator, yet I get a lot of stuff done. So much stuff, that people ask me how I get so much stuff done. Remember, I'm a procrastinator.

    How? I take on too many things. Invariably, I procrastinate doing whatever by doing something else. As long as I constantly have a revolving list of "something elses" that need done, stuff keeps getting done. Sure, some things will never get done, but I find that when I have a big list, I am able to prioritize the level of procrastination I apply to each item. Thus, the things that never get done are things that I don't really need to do anyways. I try to force myself to work on those things... then I start procrastinating and I get all sorts of other stuff on the list done.

    Maybe this doesn't work for everyone. That's fine. But not having enough projects is a terrible fate for me... because then nothing gets done.

  1669. Remind HN: If you want feedback, add an email to your profile 2012-05-28 06:32:19 kaybe
    notifo is a notification service that you can link your account to.

    showdead gives you the option to see posts of hellbanned users (which are usually invisible).

    noprocrast and the following two are a neat feature to lock yourself out of hn after maxvisit minutes for minaway minutes (to stop procrastination, as the name says).

  1670. Ask HN: Does lucid dreaming help for people in (y)our line of work? 2012-05-29 15:02:50 benwan
    Lucid dreaming and related out of body experiences have made me realize that the universe we're in is likely an elaborate illusion. That's because the dreams/OBEs are just as real as here, at least while they last. If you can't distinguish between two things then go ahead and call them equivalent.

    I'm not sure this aids me though. On the downside I now think of my existence as eternal (we'll always be experiencing some kind of reality), which promotes procrastination. On the upside I don't need many material things to enjoy myself.

    About the lack of evidence of lucid dreaming: you know what they say about absence of evidence. When one has had a full-on lucid dream, no more evidence is needed. It takes only one scientist to do good science. Corroboration isn't a real scientific requirement.

  1671. Stuck due to knowing too much 2012-05-30 01:38:03 joshklein
    This is one of the most pernicious forms of procrastination, because it's hard for smart people to accept that perfectionism is a negative trait. The more self-worth you derive from your previous successful outcomes, the more susceptible your ego becomes to fear of future failures. Your amygdala is telling you that you are successful already, so don't shake the boat. Tread carefully and you'll always have an excuse for why things don't work out. You'll never have to admit you just couldn't do it.

    The solution is to divorce your self-worth from outcomes. Instead, derive self-worth from the process. We can have complete control over our actions, but never complete control over our outcomes.

    This is far easier said than done.

  1672. Show HN: movies.io torrent search like it should be 2012-06-02 15:48:02 laughinghan
    Wow, finally a thoughtful, non-knee-jerk response. Thank you for taking the time to write this.

    I don't feel think something being 'socially acceptable' in a group is a good way to measure if it's good.

    I agree with that, I was more trying to say that I don't really choose my actions based on whether I think they're "good" or "bad". In fact, when I chide someone, I tell them what they're doing is "uncool". This made me realize I'm actually choosing my actions based on social acceptability, and I felt like, doesn't everyone? In fact, e.g. bus driver segregating the bus, we as a society even consider this ok.

    If the existence or state of things is determined by groupthink in different circumstances the world is in a lot of trouble and doesn't have a strong foundation.

    My impression is that throughout human history, the "state of things" has been determined by groupthink, and it will be basically until the Singularity (but that's any day now, right?). Now don't get me wrong, it's lead to all manner of problems (Godwin's law is relevant here), but it seems to me to be a fundamental element of the human condition.

    We live in a strangely retarded relativistic and selfish world where everything is everyone's and nothing is anyone's.

    Care to elaborate on "retarded"?

    Do you not see this new relativistic, cosmopolitan world as an improvement over when people had absolute convictions? I was taught that they used them to justify what we now consider heinous crimes.

    "selfish" being good is a capitalistic idea, but "everything is everyone's and nothing is anyone's" sounds quite socialist, so this seems contradictory.

    silly rant about police making money

    While I agree that a lot of people have an unfair bias against the police, it's not silly to be worried about unnecessary laws motivated by government revenues, do you think this never happens?

    The rest of your comment:

    Why do you avoid jaywalking, and why did you refuse to copy her answer? What do you think of people who jaywalk, and who copy other people's answers, and who pirate movies? Would you say what they're doing is unethical, or even "clearly unethical"?

    I think the copying answers thing is especially interesting, because while there's controversial arguments about the hurtfulness of jaywalking and pirating, copying someone's answer to a problem you know how to do, with their permission, is the ultimate example of a victimless, but apparently in your eyes, unethical act. Is it just the principle of the matter, because you feel like you'd be presenting her work as your own?

    There was a class at university I took where my friend and I would pair on working through the problems on the whiteboard, and she would write the solutions down, and I, who always procrastinated way more than her, ended up regularly copying her solutions (not verbatim, heavily paraphrased, but definitely not working it out on my own again). Would you do that? If not, would you judge me for it?

  1673. GTD sucks for creative work. Heres an alternative system. 2012-06-03 23:25:02 dwc
    Excessive reviewing can be from lack of trust in the system, or pure procrastination while appearing productive.

    Nobody starts out trusting. You have to see it work before you can stop worrying.

    The busywork aspect can be mitigated by allocating the daily review time and then refusing to fiddle with it. You might still procrastinate in other ways, but one less way is still good.

  1674. GTD sucks for creative work. Heres an alternative system. 2012-06-04 02:47:59 pirateking
    Just get it over with quickly, or procrastinate. Doesn't sound like a great solution, but the necessary and urgent stuff always gets done, and the stuff that gets procrastinated sometimes turns out to be not that important in retrospect. To be fair, this system is not ideal for deadlines or urgent projects - those usually require switching to a more rigid alternate system to ensure timely completion.

  1675. Ask HN: I'm writing my first book ever, on HTML5, do you have any advice? 2012-06-05 20:43:23 jnorthrop
    I just finished up my first book and while it is much shorter than yours will be (18k words) I'll share what helped me:

    1. Write how you want to write. In other words write in your own style. If you are funny, that's fantastic, but if you prefer to present things in a straight-forward methodical fashion then do that. You will be spending a ton of time writing and re-writing: It will come much easier if it is in your own voice.

    2. Don't be afraid to jump around. You do not need to start writing with chapter 1, then on to chapter 2, etc. Write whatever you are inspired to write at the moment. You can always go back and fill in the hard stuff later. You should do everything you can to make the process enjoyable, so, with that in mind, procrastinating frustrating parts is OK.

    3. Write on a schedule and stick to it. If you don't feel like writing but it is the time you've scheduled, do it. I found on a number of occasions that even if I didn't feel like writing, once I started my mood shifted. Although sometimes I just failed to produce anything.

    That's just off the top of my head. I'll come back and add more if I can think of worthwhile stuff to add. I will say though that the act of writing and completing a book was tremendously empowering and fun.

  1676. Scaling PHP Book: I will teach you to scale PHP to millions of users 2012-06-06 03:20:59 rlander
    This fetishism with scaling... to me it's just procrastination. It feels like work because you're doing something technical but, in the end, you're adding very little to your product.

    Yesterday I had a meeting with a potential customer and I hated it. I hate to try to explain my SaaS software to non-technical people who treat me like some 17-year-old webmaster. I'd much rather be refactoring Clojure code. But I got out of my comfort zone and this client will probably add hundreds of thousands to my bottom line. And I'm glad I was at that meeting while my competitors were fetishizing about non-existent scaling issues.

    It's 2012 for god's sake, you can rent a 32GB server for less than $100.

  1677. John Carmack is making a virtual reality headset 2012-06-07 04:27:57 dmarcos
    Lots of procrastination :)

  1678. Ask HN: Would you pay for an mobile/web app that tracked your goals? 2012-06-07 17:52:13 arkitaip
    [devil's advocate] I don't know - is this something I need? Aren't there thousands of apps like this? Don't they all suck?

    But if you find a way to solve my procrastination related problems, I can imagine paying you $10-20 per month.

  1679. How to overcome resistance to work 2012-06-10 19:05:15 jwdunne
    I know what you mean. Most of the time such advice like this makes sense, and some of it is indeed backed up by psychological research, but it's hard to see that unless you know of the research yourself. A lot of the time what seems like common sense is actually contrary to findings in psychology research. The book 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman is a good starting point here and it offers lots of advice which is backed up with research and data. For example, the book talks about how smiling can make you feel happier, which I had discovered to be true for myself on my own accord.

    One thing I'm looking into is using self-administered Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) to overcome various problems, such as procrastination. I have found this, which I posted on HN earlier:

    http://www.threeminutetherapy.com/chapter6.html

    This uses REBT, or Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy, which is a form of CBT and, apparently, the most extensively researched form. See here for more details:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_emotive_behavior_thera...

    CBT has been proven effective for a number of psychological issues such as anxiety and depression and I'm really interested in its potential applications to other problems. There's more info here with a ton of citations:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy

  1680. How to overcome resistance to work 2012-06-10 20:26:44 xSwag
    Programmer here, I usually start to procrastinate when I find something difficult/too tedious to do. Whenever something like this happens, I find that taking my dog out for a 20 minute walk really refreshes me up and motivates me to do the task!

  1681. How to overcome resistance to work 2012-06-10 22:52:21 einhverfr
    My approach is horribly more complicated and involves a set of two TODO lists. The first is my immediate list, and always has 12 items on it (4 harder ones and 8 faster tasks). 3 tasks (1 hard and 2 fast) are always marked as current works in progress. 3 more are listed as next up. The next six I choose freely from to promote when I complete a task.

    Then I have my mid-range to-do. Tasks usually stay here for days to weeks (my short-term I get unhappy when something is there for more than a few days). Items here are coded with a * for a bigger item and a % for an item I think I can do quickly. The % are moved to my short-term list in chronological order (with some exceptions) while the * ones are moved in based on what I think i can tackle next.

    This gives me some variety and some freedom to jump around between tasks and stay productive. I have ADD so thats a good thing. It also lets me set goals that I can usually meet and procrastinate constructively. More than once I have had tasks I really had resistance to starting become trivial after thinking about it for a day or two. But yea part of that is breaking the task down, thinking about it, maybe making a couple abortive attempts to complete it.......

  1682. How to overcome resistance to work 2012-06-10 23:08:39 barik
    This is great advice for overcoming procrastination and I use it daily. It has significantly improved the way that I work. I think I learned of the trick from GTD, or possibly Pragmatic Thinking and Learning. A TODO list by itself isn't helpful for me -- in fact, in can increase my procrastination by seeing a giant list of tasks because it's just so overwhelming.

    What has worked is coupling the task with the next immediate action. Depending on the level of procrastination, this next immediate action does not have to be a grand vision. It is often as simplistic as "open the lid to your laptop", then, "open a text editor", then "think of the file you need to edit", then "type hello world three times" (just to get me to start writing __something__). Passing that initial hurdle usually gets me to the desired state of flow.

    Similarly, I now have the following written at the top of my TODO list at all times: "Direct the Rider. Motivate the Elephant. Shape the Path." This psychology comes from Switch by Dan Heath and Chip Heath, and it's hugely impacted my outlook on work, especially as a researcher.

  1683. How to overcome resistance to work 2012-06-11 07:51:57 einhverfr
    You know, if a task isn't particularly urgent, I have no problem with procrastinating for a couple days on it (and working on other things in the mean time) as long as I keep coming back to it.

    This resembles the Feynman method of how to be a genius, but sometime if a task is hard, and seems insurmountable, sometimes all you need is some time for your mind to grasp the task. I have occasionally tackled a problem, given up as it seemed hard, come back a couple days later and discovered a trivial solution, completing in half an hour what I figured would take me 3. So I call this "productive procrastination" and it's a good thing. Another function of my complex to-do list is that it gives me a chance to think about tasks before I start (again, I don't worth through it sequentially). The difficulty is in figuring out when to procrastinate and when not to. There are a lot of things you never want to procrastinate in doing (if you take a long time to bill your customers, they will usually reciprocate when it comes to timeliness of payment, for example). But there are a lot of cases where procrastination can be helpful. So the challenge is when to and when not to.

  1684. GNU Emacs 24.1 released 2012-06-11 16:26:10 unhammer
    I'm looking forward to trying ELPA (my .emacs.d is so full of stuff I've not yet gotten around to trying it).

    bi-di support is also really nice, I've been copypasting into other programs until now.

    Also always nice to get a new org-mode version (though I'm never quite sure whether using org makes me more productive, or whether playing with new org features makes me procrastinate more).

    Favourite feature that makes you go O_o : "`nato-region' converts text to NATO phonetic alphabet."

  1685. How to Be an Indie Game Developer 2012-06-14 00:31:15 alanfalcon
    How To Be an Indie Game Developer:

    - Make a game, release it

    How To Stop Being an Indie Game Developer:

    - Procrastinate, ever

    - Let the marketing "take care of itself"

    - Have poor version control, then "take a break"

    - Finish only one game, ever

    - Let someone else handle your finances and shield you from the sense of urgency you should feel as you approach the end of your runway without taking off

    - Fail to realize that games are mostly a hit-based market, and plan accordingly

    - Sell your one non-hit game for 99

    - Never update your one game

    Anyway, an anecdote is just useless data with a sample size of one, but I'm pretty sure I read this story plenty of times before I went and lived it myself.

    Still, in my case it's kind of nice that Blizzard left my name in the Diablo 3 credits. I can pretend I spent the past year being a part of something productive!

  1686. The Gmail Zero project: commitment device for Inbox Zero 2012-06-14 02:14:18 robertpateii
    I just star anything that needs response and leave everything in the inbox.

    If you need it, you can add different color stars to represent whatever you want.

    I don't understand why people feel the need to archive. Seems like procrastination through over-optimization to me.

  1687. Ask HN: I am lazy and cannot focus but I really want to learn new things 2012-06-14 07:51:08 jp
    Headphones, music and write code ? Then write code, write some more code and then rewrite that code ? Basically, code.

    Procrastination is often a sign of not being interested in the topic.

  1688. Ask HN: Recommendations on a simple static site generator? 2012-06-16 03:49:05 rprospero
    Dammit. Your gugodoc is so close to what I need that the Hacker instinct is taking over and I'm thinking about how I could modify it to give me the rest (e.g. no frames, HTML for the header and footer). However, that's probably just my mind finding another glorious way to procrastinate on my thesis, so I better not.

  1689. How Depressives Surf the Web 2012-06-16 19:11:30 agumonkey
    Something around this. Procrastinators, depressed, escapists, there's common trait. Internet is such a wonderful constant stream of more-distracting-interesting things.

  1690. How Depressives Surf the Web 2012-06-16 20:16:39 DanBC
    I agree with you until you say that "depressed" is normal. Really, it isn't, it is abnormal. It is also treatable. People who eat better, get exercise, and regulate their use of stimulants / sedatives tend to do well. Adding in a course of cognitive behaviour therapy (from an experienced practitioner) effectively cures many people. Adding medications helps lots of people too.

    Perhaps you're saying that modern life pushes people away from healthy eating and exercise and sensible worklife balance and towards alcohol and caffeine, and that depression is the natural result of that. In which case, I agree.

    You mention information overload. Here's a nice example of sub-optimal advice about procrastination. It's too long for anyone prone to procrastination to actually read.

    (http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/procrastination/)

  1691. How Depressives Surf the Web 2012-06-16 21:09:58 TazeTSchnitzel
    Some cast doubt on this, but as a teenager who is partly depressed... it sounds about right.

    Procrastination, multi-tasking, frequent email checking, lack of focus. It all sounds very familiar.

  1692. Ask HN: Why do you disable JavaScript? 2012-06-17 06:25:42 aw3c2
    i find it highly annoying if pages show different content on the same url. many bad sites with javascript do not update their url.

    javascript is often used for no apparent benefit. my favourite (or shall I say anti-favourite) are websites that, when I click on an image thumbnail darker the main site, show some animation and then showing the bigger image. I have experienced it many times that disabling js would directly serve me the image and do so much quicker.

    some online store I use pops up details for items when I mouse over. each time changing mouse focus. I can not get a simple list with all the details to use my browsers search function with. it also has no pagination but autoloads more items on the bottom. if I revisit the page (eg after looking at an image) I have to start at the beginning again.

    javascript allows website to screw with my copying. hover the mouse on a Google result, the status bar shows the proper target. rightclick and copy to get some redirection shite instead.

    phew, where do I stop...

    disabling js also implicitly removes a lot of advertising, pop-up windows, always scrolling bars. when I have to use someone else's computer I often cannot understand how they stay sane.

    Google steals my focus, I use backspace to navigate "back". on Google that leads to me removing characters on the search and the search automatically updating and adding more pages to the history to navigate back through.

    javascript often leads to sites eating my CPU. I value my battery life and CPU temperature.

    I use reddit a lot on a unreliable connection. I often happily vote, just to see later that javascript pretended my votes counted while in reality they never arrived at the other end.

    javascript can be great for thing but it gets abused so much that disabling made me enjoy the web much more. if something does not work, well, chances are I was procrastinating anyways and won't miss anything important by closing the tab. I did not install flash for the same reasons.

    if I have to enable js for something it is two keystrokes (in opera). I can also enable it per site very easily.

  1693. Ask HN: How to start iOS development ? 2012-06-22 23:11:26 programminggeek
    Is your goal to ship apps or is your goal to learn Obj-C?

    If your goal is to just ship apps, pick a framework or tool that lets you get your app out there as fast as possible - PhoneGap+Sencha Touch/Kendo Mobile for informational apps or something like Corona for games.

    If your goal is to learn Obj-C and build apps using it, you should just pick a basic app like a todo list, twitter client, whatever... and just solve the problems one at a time until you have a working app.

    Books and tutorials are fine, but they're also a great way to procrastinate building the app that you are trying to build. If you are trying to build something, just build it.

  1694. Beat procrastination with Kaizen 2012-06-24 22:34:08 vitomd
    I knew how kaizen gave great result to japan industry, but in this book it tell you how to apply the same concept to your daily life. It's great to beat procrastination and really easy to follow. Give it a try

  1695. How we chose and furnished an office the Y Combinator way 2012-06-27 03:47:50 iuguy
    > We decided to build instead of buy

    Meaning they decided to procrastinate instead of working on their product/service.

    > we instead chose to purchase solid core doors from Home Depot (~$40 each)

    Meaning they instead chose to spend more on something that wasn't designed to be a desk than an actual desk.

    From [1]:

    Ergonomically, door desks leave a lot to be desired. Keyboards were usually too high. Typing for hours could be uncomfortable. And those angle brackets have sharp edges; accidentally scrapping exposed flesh against those was a mistake that wouldn't be repeated.

    [1] - http://glinden.blogspot.co.uk/2006/01/early-amazon-door-desk...

  1696. How we chose and furnished an office the Y Combinator way 2012-06-27 04:35:32 roc
    > "Meaning they decided to procrastinate instead of working on their product/service."

    If they were truly procrastinating, you've got a point. But that's hardly implicit in having spent time and energy on a desk. You can't work productively 24x7. You need downtime.

    And those desks, not to minimize the effort they did put into them, don't look like a huge time investment to me.

    As to the ergonomics, sure: ideally you want adjustable desk height and some way to get monitors to a comfortable height. But how often have you found those qualities in the sub-$40 desks you'd have them buy?

  1697. How we chose and furnished an office the Y Combinator way 2012-06-27 05:27:06 karamazov
    Setting up a good work environment is a worthwhile investment. When you're going to be working somewhere for 8+ hours a day for the foreseeable future, setting it up to maximize your productivity is not procrastination.

  1698. Sublime Text 2.0 Released 2012-06-27 14:07:52 tzury
    dude, consider setting procrastination.

    It will send you back to work after the forth refresh.

  1699. Steve Jobs on Average vs Best Software Developers 2012-07-04 18:56:51 vrishabh
    > I believe that the top trait in A players is the same as in the top founders, which is determination [1].

    Another important trait in the A players is that they are good procrastinators. Or as pg says it, they procrastinate to do "something more important."

  1700. All the Ganglia. The Nerves. On leaving a programming project unfinished. 2012-07-08 06:09:54 blu3jack
    And a great way to procrastinate from tackling the next leg of the project is to blog about it, post a link to that blog on hacker news, and then obsessively watch yourself bounce around the hacker news front page on a slow Saturday afternoon.

  1701. On Configuration 2012-07-10 02:35:00 soonerjm
    This echoes what I've come to believe over time. I used to spend a LOT of time tweaking my environment, and searching for that magic productivity-enhancing utility that was going to make me super-productive and optimize my time.

    I've gradually come to realize that most of that time was just a way of procrastinating, and that I was better off just taking what's there and getting on with it already. I'm amazingly more productive now that I've freed up all that extra time to actually work :)

  1702. On Configuration 2012-07-10 03:27:45 to3m
    I've never been convinced by that! Procrastination is procrastination. If you weren't tweaking options, you'd be staring out of the window.

  1703. Face.com API Alternative Beta Sign-Up 2012-07-10 09:59:16 treelovinhippie
    Face recognition - attaching a facebook profile to a face. I was planning on building an entire business on top of that API feature. Luckily I'd procrastinated in this instance.

  1704. The Crazy World of Code 2012-07-11 18:41:21 gaius
    The issue is as much psychological and cultural as it is technological.

    The 80s were a period of great diversity and hence progress. In that decade I used 6502 (BBC Micro), 68000 (ST), ARM (Archimedes), there were also Z80 and early x86s. There were many approaches to systems design, many competing ideas, what you might call a Cambrian Era (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion).

    By the 90s, things settled down. People (as in, "end users", the people who ultimately pay for software) had figured out what they wanted to do, which is forms (screens for entering data into a database) and reports (screens for getting it out again, nicely formatted). Messaging, as in email/IM, is just a special case of this (and today, FB et al are just forms and reports). What was "good enough" for this was an x86 (which happened to be running Windows, but that's irrelevant IMHO) and that became the lowest common denominator. The diversity was still there in the form of the Unix workstation market but they spent all their strength competing with one hand and trying to standardize with the other. Meanwhile the relentless march of hardware continued on, Intel was swimming in cash and none of the Unix vendors noticed, they were all preoccupied. Now there is one architecture to rule them all (tho' ARM still clings on).

    And we the developers are to blame. We fell into a comfort zone. The users wanted forms and reports, and that's what we gave them. Then the hardware gave us more power and we gave them bells and whistles too. But really, that is solved, has been solved for 2 decades now. Nearly everything we do with computers now, could have been done in 1990, and what they did then, we do the same now, except arguing over syntax, which of a dozen functionally equivalent "frameworks" to use, which ALGOL-derived language to use, which desktop to use with slightly different-looking widgets that do the same thing, etc etc etc. All this is just procrastination. None of these things matter. But comfort zones are, well, comfortable. It's like we climbed a small hill and stopped to enjoy the view because we are afraid of the mountain we have to climb still.

    There are a few tantalizing glimmers now, of the "next level". But we wasted 20 years dicking about.

  1705. Entreporn: Learning vs doing vs wasting time 2012-07-11 19:53:39 TazeTSchnitzel
    Also, remove Hacker News from your favourites/homepages/pinned tabs. You'll procrastinate here less.

  1706. Entreporn: Learning vs doing vs wasting time 2012-07-11 20:48:18 zerostar07
    But you will probably procrastinate regardless.

  1707. John Resig: Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja Update 2012-07-12 04:22:54 javajosh
    I really admire Resig, and this post contains a few gems:

    1. Knew about PPK[0], didn't know about JZ[1]

    2. Feature detection came about from writing this book! Which generalizes too: writing is a great way to innovate (something pg has said, too).

    3. A nice little jab at GRRM, who thoroughly deserves it.

    4. An exciting glimpse into the future of computer science pedagogy by way of JavaScript in the browser. (And I can't help but wonder if this is an oblique response to the recent Alan Kay Dr. Dobbs interview, where Kay asserts, "The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs."[2])

    5. Points out that even the best of us can get stuck in a procrastination loop.

    6. Resig is going to finish a JavaScript book [3]

    [0] http://www.quirksmode.org/

    [1] http://perfectionkills.com/

    [2] http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/interview-wit...

    [3] http://jsninja.com/

  1708. Today, a homeless looking man handed me $50 and this note 2012-07-12 12:37:34 rwhitman
    In order to further my procrastination this evening, I Googled the OP's username found a Twitter account that synced up with the OP's reddit interests (seems to be obsessed with magic the gathering), except that he's located in.... New Zealand. Not NYC.

    Neither his Twitter or blog talk about this incident. Interestingly enough his first reddit submission was an AskReddit with a type of challenge/riddle. So its possible he just likes fabricating riddles for karma

  1709. Vim Creep 2012-07-13 03:49:45 SwellJoe
    I'm not trying to tell you anything about the codebase, vim plugins, or vimscript.

    I'm trying to tell you that it's probably a waste of your time to agonize over text editors, when there are two very powerful editors available to you, with decades of development and refinement, millions of active users, hundreds or thousands of contributions of plugins and scripts and support tools, copious documentation and examples, and the tools you need to embark on any text editor task you may have without ever feeling limited by the editor (assuming you have learned your editor).

    Do you want to work on your software, or do you want to work on text editor scripts? Sure, sometimes you need to write a macro or script or something...but, I can count the lines of vim code I've written in my entire 20+ years of programming on my fingers and toes (if I count vimrc stuff, it'll require a few other people's fingers and toes, but it's still statistically zero compared the amount of code and docs I've written in that time).

    I'll leave it to Bram Moollenaar figure out how to improve vim. He's added Python support to vim years ago. Is Python really insufficient for you? I've never needed it, but if I were making something big for vim, I'd probably look into it. But, again, I'd rather be working on the stuff I'm passionate about. Editing text is not a problem I'm excited about; if it's your bag, that's great. But, for the rest of us, it's just a form of procrastination to fiddle and futz around with new tools when the old ones are more than sufficient (and probably superior, on the whole, to new ones...sure, TextMate is super-badass and awesome; but it's missing tons of capabilities that vim and emacs have, and you'd probably be better off learning how to maximize your efficiency in those more powerful editors, than learning new tools which will come and go).

  1710. Read the masters 2012-07-15 01:02:13 DanielBMarkham
    I can't agree enough with this, except the part about staying with it. I think sometimes we have to come at the same material from several different directions before it actually makes sense to us. Perhaps it's our preferred mode of learning, or maybe just how old we are and our personality types. Don't know.

    So for a long time I avoided a lot of the literary masters. As a programmer, I thought they were way too artsy and "fluffy" for my tastes. I wanted something with hard science and boolean logic in it, dammit.

    But around 40 I listened to the Learning Company's "Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition." It was like a guided tour of a huge amount of masterpieces. From this overview i could pick and choose what to consume. As I read each work, i had already been "prepped" by listening to a lecturer describe what made the work so outstanding.

    So I picked up "Anna Karenina" Wow! Tolstoy could sketch a character like nobody else. I read some Dickinson. What a great, simple, yet complex way she had of describing inner emotional states!

    Still couldn't get all of it. Joyce is on my list, but I procrastinate. I had another go at Melville and loved it, but I couldn't generate enough momentum to make it through Moby Dick. Both writing and reading styles have changed. I'd love to learn Greek and have a go at the true classical works, but I will never have the time, sadly.

    I'm hoping to get another overview or introduction and then make a go at some of the rest of the material. I've loved reading the literary masters.

    What I find is that you need a preparation or background to really absorb and appreciate the masters. This is the same as having to have a background in baseball to understand a baseball game. Otherwise, without context, it's very difficult to understand what parts work, what parts don't, and where the beauty is. (This is called a liberal education, by the way). The more broad and deep background you have, the more you can appreciate the masters in many fields.

    Also I'd separate cargo cult liberal arts with actual understanding. To me there's tons of venues that exist to convince you that you're smarter than some other slob. They pitch quite a bit of snob appeal. I'd avoid that. You end up thinking you have class when all you're really doing is running around in a mob consuming whatever was on NPR last week. To me developing a sense of what the crowd thinks is beautiful versus truly coming to a personal grip with the masters is completely missing the point. I'm sure there's a social aspect to art consumption but to me a true master spans the test of time. While it's possible that something can be popular today and 100 years from now, for me using social proof as some form of merit for masterworks is almost diametrically opposed to the entire concept of what makes art truly great in the first place.

    Fair warning, however: once you start consuming works from the masters it makes mediocre works hard to stomach. Oddly enough, bad material is fine. I still love me some pulp fiction and trashy pop music. It's the stuff that tries to be highbrow but you know is going to be gone with the wind in ten years that's impossible to take.

  1711. Show HN: Block yourself from the Internet until you write or code each day 2012-07-18 01:47:58 minikites
    I agree with you. I've been listening to Merlin Mann's podcast Back To Work and he talks a lot about things like this and things like "distraction-free writing environments". His philosophy (that I tend to agree with) is that if these tools work for you - great. But you might be solving the wrong problem. Procrastination might be your brain telling you something about the task you're putting off doing.

    http://www.43folders.com/2010/02/05/first-care

  1712. Show HN: Block yourself from the Internet until you write or code each day 2012-07-18 02:14:36 yoasif_
    I expected something interesting or insightful from your link, but it just completely seems to sidestep the idea that procrastination exists.

    The Wikipedia definition is "act of replacing high-priority actions with tasks of lower priority, or doing something from which one derives enjoyment, and thus putting off important tasks to a later time".

    This clearly exists, and completely disavowing it with some (semi)feel good idea about how you aren't caring enough, implicitly linking it to low willpower is way too simplistic - and totally not insightful.

    My own experience has been that even when I know that the task needs to get done, even when it is enjoyable, it can be hard to get started.

    Once started, everything flows as you might expect, as the author says "How many things do I need to shed ... with extreme prejudice in order to singlemindedly focus on this one thing that I love?"

    The post also neatly sidesteps the idea that even if you do not care, you may need to get things done.

    The attitude probably appeals to some libertarian philosophy/Protestant work ethic, but even those people will freely admit that doing beats wanting to do something -- it's the doing that counts.

    If people cannot get themselves to do something, even if they want and care to do it, telling people to care more isn't very helpful, especially when pooh-poohing the very things that work for some people to do what they want to do!

    "If that sounds fancy and oversimplified, then you "care" about too many things. Period."

    What if you really do not "care" about the things that you are doing while procrastinating? What if you are simply avoiding the anxiety of starting to do what you care about?

    There are serious psychological questions here, and this blog post just ignores them all.

  1713. Show HN: Block yourself from the Internet until you write or code each day 2012-07-18 02:40:36 minikites
    Part of it might be a confusion of terms. I would argue that if you really wanted to do something you'd be doing it or it would already be done (by definition of the word "want"). Same with "care". The very first episode of the podcast I listened to was Merlin and his co-host discussing the word "priority". He was giving a talk at a company and someone in the crowd claimed to have "27 high-priority items" which Merlin thought was completely insane. He says you can tell something is a priority in one of two ways: you're doing it or it's done. Calling something a priority when it's not obscures the real problem. I think it's the same here. Calling something a thing you care about but never do doesn't solve anything.

    I wrote down Merlin's definition of procrastination: procrastination is what happens when you temporarily forget who you are, what you should pay attention to, and what your options are for doing something about it.

    Do you need an alarm to remind yourself to play video games? Do you need a "distraction-free gaming environment"?

  1714. Show HN: Block yourself from the Internet until you write or code each day 2012-07-18 04:58:28 Scottopherson
    Do commitment devices like this actually work for anybody? I've never known anyone who struggled with procrastination or any other vices that prevent them from getting work done and had their problems solved by a tool like this.

    The pomodoro technique seems like it would be more effective for motivating you to work since it immediately rewards your efforts with a short break from your tasks.

  1715. Ask HN: What one thing would you tell your younger self? 2012-07-19 05:06:46 TwiztidK
    (Some of these are specific)

    - Stop wasting time watching TV.

    - Instead of taking BS classes in highschool, go to a CC and get some college credit so you don't have to kill yourself taking 18 credit semesters just to graduate in 4 years with two majors.

    - Stop procrastinating. There are things you'll have to do and doing it sooner is almost always better than later.

  1716. Ways startups get screwed 2012-07-20 01:02:43 madmax108
    " I was socializing" is one of the most common excuse people use when they procrastinate, be it socializing with family, friends or like-minded people. As Ray says:

    >> WHY THE HELL ARENT YOU BUILDING YOUR PRODUCT AND TALKING TO CUSTOMERS?

    When you have a startup in it's initial phase, it's like a baby. It requires your sole undivided attention. I've seen way too many startups die because the founders spent more time trying to make their product popular rather than work on a good product first.

    As a hacker, I completely understand what Ray means in pt #10. There are times when all I want is to code straight out, no distractions, no relaxation, heck, no contact with the outside world. It's just a hacker thing. :)

    Work-Life balance is important, but sometimes(esp. when you are a core member of a startup team), my work is my life! :)

    Well written Ray, and best of luck with Wigwamm! :)

  1717. HN, I need to learn how to ship 2012-07-21 16:13:48 eddy_chan
    Some general advice that's helped me improve productivity since I started working for myself rather than for the man.

    1) Don't "multi-task" ever. Make a plan and then do everything on the plan in serial and make sure you focus 100% effort at the task/project at hand. My immediate to-do list is only ever 2 items long. 2 items only because I am working on #1 and when I finish #1 I need to know that #2 is the next thing that needs to be done. When #2 becomes your focus you move it to #1 and add a new item.

    I do this at the macro level i.e my startup has 2 big projects to be shipped, I'm not going to put any effort/thought into anything that comes after, only what I need to finish right now. I also do it on the micro level, each feature has X user stories, I only have have 2 of these on my daily to-do list at any time.

    2) Use timers like Pomodoro technique - I don't subscribe to the whole philosophy, I just enjoy the fact that a physical 25min timer gets me over the 'procrastination hump' for getting started. Keep working in 25 min chunks till said task at hand from (1) is done.

    3) For pesky ongoing stuff add some rules to your life e.g I must publish a blog post every Wednesday (and I'm not going home till I do)

    4) Whenever you finish a large project that might've taken you a few weeks to complete, give yourself some time to decompress and admire the work you've done.

  1718. The "Just look at it" hack for problem solving 2012-07-21 18:50:23 linker3000
    It's amazing - you get organised and focus on a problem and somehow you are better able to work out a solution.

    This is a 'hack'? Looks more like common sense and avoiding procrastination to me.

    I know this sounds snarky, but attributing the word 'hack' to this is just sexing up something people have been doing since forever.

    Edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic

  1719. The "Just look at it" hack for problem solving 2012-07-21 22:44:05 bgilroy26
    I agree that the practical steps the article proposes aren't mind-blowing.

    On the other hand, if you look at the title of the post and the way the issue is framed:

    >In fact, it was painfully difficult. And I was struck with a flood of emotions: fear, anxiety, despair, etc.

    I just wanted to sleep and not deal with it.

    I think it's pretty clear that what you're "hacking" isn't the task, its the anxiety. Sure, there are people out there who don't get overwhelmed by the challenges that they face.

    But if you've ever spent time tutoring, you know that it is remarkable how often your charge has not presented his or herself with the facts of the matter at hand and reviewed what they already know. If you're in a frame of mind where you are procrastinating out of anxiety, telling yourself "just look at it" can lower the bar and make it possible to move forward.

  1720. Mac OSX Hacker News Y Combinator Menu Tab 2012-07-23 06:11:47 st3fan
    Nominee for the procrastination award!

  1721. Just pay me. 2012-07-25 04:56:48 swdunlop
    I whole-heartedly agree with the terms, if not quite the tone. I've had to chase companies that had the cash to waste visibly for late payment. I've had to chase companies that wanted to change terms after there was acquisition interest. In both cases, I had to waste time chasing them down and I feel that the usual "net 30" scheme was to blame. The companies see the 30 days as a way to procrastinate after the purchase and the opportunity for a situation change to make things weird creeps in.

  1722. OS X Mountain Lion available on the Mac App Store 2012-07-26 00:53:19 wonderzombie
    Software updates would be it. What's not to like about getting back to work (or uh web browsing) that much faster? Myself, I'd be that much more likely to install security updates sooner rather than procrastinating.

  1723. How I hacked my brain with Adderall: a cautionary tale 2012-07-27 02:06:25 drewonstuff
    agreed, very well written. I love when he talkes about the signs of procrastination (like what I'm doing right now).

  1724. Ask HN: Have you pair programmed? 2012-07-27 02:50:35 michaelpinto
    Well think about it -- this can only come down to three factors:

    1. How good the other party is when it comes to collaboration. Some coders work well with others, and some are lone wolfs.

    2. If you have complimentary strengths: One programmer is strong at X and your string at Y.

    3. The energy from both programmers makes each party proactive and thus avoid procrastination.

    I also think there are the larger questions of if you're using a spec, etc.

  1725. The Linux Talent Draft is On 2012-07-27 22:28:56 slurgfest
    Procrastination means absolutely nothing if there is good output. If you are not on the floor of some factory sweatshop, it isn't necessary to have continuous even output.

    Procrastination can be managed. One can procrastinate on one task by carrying out another.

    If I do not work for an hour and then make the perfect change, that's better than floundering for six hours.

  1726. The Linux Talent Draft is On 2012-07-27 22:46:48 praptak
    What draws people to Linux is the possibility of tinkering. It's not like tinkerers are always procrastinators but they prefer tasks that engage their "tinkerer sense": trying out a new API or maybe doing something unusual with an old one.

    Doing something mundane with a known API is something they will avoid. Such tasks are probably in the majority of those found even in the most exciting jobs. This is what I believe to be the cause of the association.

    Source: generalizing my own experience to the whole population of Earth. Btw, I gotta get back to work too.

  1727. The Linux Talent Draft is On 2012-07-27 22:52:17 dsirijus
    Usually, when I do feel like not working on what I need to be working atm, I work on something else I DO feel like working on. Even when it costs me a deadline miss, I end up with something tangible in the end.

    That's my best yet strategy against procrastination.

  1728. The Linux Talent Draft is On 2012-07-27 23:58:34 polynomial
    That's not procrastination, that's push-back. ;-)

  1729. The Linux Talent Draft is On 2012-07-28 01:46:14 wpietri
    You are not alone. Consider the art of structured procrastination: http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

  1730. Why procrastination is good for you 2012-07-30 03:13:12 chimi
    After first reading about the benefits of procrastination a year or two ago, I made a conscious effort to delay decisions and actions that previously seemed to need immediate resolution. I found that I rarely encountered a situation that I delayed action on, even when it felt like I needed to act immediately, that ended up being a mistake to delay.

    Since then, I have noticed countless examples where delaying action benefited me. I have wanted to implement features in my software that I knew would take a long time and much concentration, but wanted, only to stumble upon an open source library or tutorial or new standard in the browser that made it easily. These include jsPlumb, jsdiff, encryption algorithms, and more.

    There are also other countless times that I have acted too quickly. Writing code to generate images to create rounded borders that are now handled natively via CSS's border-radius. Lots of jQuery functionality, ajax and more.

    The point is, it really does help to procrastinate. It's not just lip service. I have extrapolated this to really move away from deadlines. All deadlines have either already passed or do not need to be met. I create no deadlines for myself. I leave to the universe more deadlines -- working on other people's schedules or those set by the weather.

    I have found myself much more at peace. I live a better life now and am a lot happier since I stopped rushing through everything. As I look back on my life, I tried to move deadlines forward, get out of classes, pass milestones quicker and so many times I remember whatever task it was I wanted to hurry through taking longer than had I just gone at the regular pace.

    Procrastinate. It's good for life.

  1731. Why procrastination is good for you 2012-07-30 03:18:11 mnutt
    The problem I see with this is that humans are really bad at estimating how long tasks are to complete. So while perhaps procrastination isn't inherently bad, in the world of poor estimation it means things don't get done on time.

  1732. Why procrastination is good for you 2012-07-30 04:32:06 dictum
    I have a love/hate relationship with books that capitalize on a counterintuitive notion, and that includes Malcolm Gladwell, mentioned in the article. While they're good reminders that many societal preconceptions are incorrect, too often they just replace one misconception with another.

    Procrastination is not good. Procrastination is not bad. It's a question of when and why. Perhaps intentional procrastination on some tasks and plans is good, but when you procrastinate on everything, things don't magically become better and you don't get any special insight: you just stop doing what you wanted to do, and over time you end up lagging behind people who don't share your love for procrastination.

    Not all advice is good for all people. For entrepreneurs, procrastination is a terrible suggestion. In a small business, if you don't go after opportunities, you may forget about them; they won't come for you. Of course, a good entrepreneur should distinguish between a worthwhile endeavor and a dead end... but someone who adopts procrastination as a principle will leave the trouble of distinguishing between work that's worth doing and work that isn't for tomorrow.

    A bad idea doesn't become better when you decide to sit on it and only implement it a few months later. A better advice would be: stop having bad ideas, and shoot dead a bad idea when you see one. This is hard work, and hard work doesn't get done when you procrastinate.

  1733. Why procrastination is good for you 2012-07-30 04:43:31 Mordio
    Some days are so hectic you have no time to procrastinate.

  1734. Why procrastination is good for you 2012-07-30 06:12:35 kqr2
    "Structured procrastination" is another attempt to use procrastination in a positive way:

    http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

    It utilizes the principle:

      ...anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't 
  the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.
    Robert Benchley, in Chips off the Old Benchley, 1949

  1735. Why procrastination is good for you 2012-07-30 12:30:35 mnutt
    "On time" would be any externally imposed deadline, and I would say it's completely the fault of imperfect estimation practices.

    If we could estimate perfectly, then deferring all work until it needed would be uniformly good. But many times the true size of the work is unknown and we procrastinate on estimating, and we only figure out how much work is involved until it's too late.

  1736. Codecademy now has Python lessons 2012-07-31 06:47:47 samstave
    I like that phrase: "increasing my intention" -- :)

    Is that like "reducing the duration of my procrastination"

  1737. Titan, one of Saturn's moons, has an underground ocean 2012-07-31 12:09:05 Synthetase
    We've taken the probe launching approach for the last fifty years. Besides SpaceX, launch tech hasn't really advanced since then which really disproves your thesis.

    We must stop our collective procrastination. Human spaceflight is the ultimate forcing function.

  1738. A Better Way To Learn Code 2012-08-01 19:43:07 brudgers
    I'm skeptical of the idea that watching a video is an efficient way to learn how to write code. This seems like a clear case where "youtubing" is a procrastination technique. Watching a video is not a substitute for solving an exercise problem.

  1739. Productivity Porn 2012-08-01 22:58:42 Jun8
    The danger of the idea posted here is that (i) it sounds very logical and authentic and (ii) it's sort of true. The idea that "If you really deeply care about something, you will do it" is such a simplification that it borders on misleading.

    A typical example is literature. Check out Bukowski's "air and light and time and space" (http://hellopoetry.com/poem/air-and-light-and-time-and-space...): I've always loved this poem for explaining succinctly (and artfully) the problem with general procrastination and excuse making:

      ...

  you're going to create with part of your mind and your
  body blown
  away,
  you're going to create blind
  crippled
  demented,
  you're going to create with a cat crawling up your
  back while
  the whole city trembles in earthquakes, bombardment,
  flood and fire.
  baby, air and light and time and space
  have nothing to do with it
  and don't create anything
  except maybe a longer life to find
  new excuses
  for.
    This definitely has the ring of truth. But in reality neither novelists and ports work this way. Many writers concede that an important part of the trade is teaching yourself the discipline to write N pages a day (google "writer discipline", you'll be amazed, these guys work harder than coders!)

    So let me rephrase: Choosing what to do, e.g. coding instead of being a marine biologist is an act of love; consistently doing good work requires discipline, whether you love your profession or not.

  1740. Productivity Porn 2012-08-02 00:41:46 DenisM
    The rubbish like "If you really deeply care about something, you will do it" is quite representative of this armchair psychology type of thinking. I file this right next to "if you didn't want to be fat you would eat less, so you just want pig out and harm yourself", "if you did not want to be an alcoholic you would stop drinking alcohol, so you just want to live the life of an outcast", and "if you didn't want to be poor you would just be rich".

    For a more rigorous exploration of the matter I suggest reading someone who spent decades studying the subject or procrastination, and not on his own person, but on the persons of thousands of people so afflicted - "The Now Habit" book by Neil Fiore. As it turns out telling someone "oh, you just don't want to do it, that's why you procrastinate" is more likely to hinder progress than result in change of behavior. However, there are plenty of other things that do change behavior for the better.

  1741. What if Facebook charged $1/year : Would you still use it? 2012-08-02 02:21:28 baritalia
    No. Speaking for me personally, times of procrastinating because of Facebook are long gone. After some time, you realise there are clearly no benefits. Hell, I'll say it, I think Facebook has reached its peak already (maybe not in number of users) but definitely in other areas. There are healthier alternatives to almost every service at Facebook.

    And as somebody else mentioned, if Google wanted to charge $1/yr for all their services, I'd be glad to pay it. Same goes for iCloud and other Apple related services.

  1742. Why Programmers Are Bad at Estimating Time 2012-08-03 00:22:27 brudgers
    I've been estimating my time as a designer in the AEC industry since my first job more than 20 years ago.

    The only reason I did was because Greg, the VP of Engineering, said doing so was the only way I would get better at it. And the only reason I got better at it was because I've tracked my actual time against my estimates on many occasions over the years and been burned by bad assumptions from time to time.

    At this point I have a process which produces a fairly accurate range of "billable time" based upon an important recognition: a list of tasks with assigned times doesn't account for flow nor does it account for the efficiency experience brings when dealing with "known unknowns." My first estimates tend to be wildly pessimistic (the opposite of what the author observes in the estimates of others).

    On the other hand, one of the ways I evaluate my initial task list with assigned time estimates is by chunking the work into half days, because I've found half-days to be highly accurate across a variety of project sizes...at one point all my proposals were written as $xxx.xx/half day.

    One of the useful features of the half day is that it is vague. Maybe it's three hours and I can go for a walk, maybe it's five and I'm at the computer a little longer. Either way, it doesn't have much impact on my day or productivity.

    Another useful feature is that it allows chunking multiple small tasks together intuitively.

       > (equal half-day (add-hours .25 1.0 .25 .5 .75))
      T
   > (equal half-day (add-hours 1.25 1.0 .25 1.5 .75))
      T
    But the half day doesn't try to force the unrealistic optimism of large time spans downward - what does it mean to estimate something will take a week? Billable time does not translate directly into calendar time because of flow and the productive use of procrastination.

    In other words, a forty hour project doesn't mean I will be done in a week (unless the work is entirely rote, and in that case I am probably going to be too expensive anyway). From start to end, a forty hour project probably takes at least two months - which is about the same amount of calendar time an 80 or 120 hour project might take - because a 40 hour project tends to have a higher proportion of creative time (in my case design) than a relatively larger project.

  1743. Fasting & Programming 2012-08-03 00:33:49 sharjeel
    On the other hand, I find myself a lot more focused and productive in Ramadan.

    Knowing that I'm not supposed to eat or drink, I don't have to think every other hour what should I gulp down my stomach. This is a distraction which is a bit difficult to get rid of in normal days.

    Also, meal timings become strict which automatically instills disciplines. In normal routine I would adjust the meals by few hours just to get some part of code done. Having such flexibility also allows some buffer to visit Social Media or Hacker News. However with empty stomach, one stays relatively bound to complete the work rather than procrastinating.

  1744. Ask HN: How can I start executing on side projects? 2012-08-03 13:29:00 joeld42
    I have completed three apps under similar circumstance. It's tough. It's really tough. Here's some stuff that helps me:

    - The hardest part for me is getting started at night when I'm already tired and brain-drained from a full workday. Once I'm working it's ok. It takes habit. Such as, every day at 9pm or whenever you start just sit down with xcode and built clean five times without changing anything. Then you can go play games if you want (but I find I usually don't if I can get that far).

    - You can't do it with just small blocks of time alone. You can do most of it, but you HAVE to have a few eight or ten or sixteen hour marathon days in there to tackle the big parts. This is especially good when you're running low on motivation. It doesn't take a lot of these marathon days but at least for me I can't finish anything without a little bit of self-imposed crunch.

    - Don't start small. That's aiming low and for me that kills my motivation. Start with a impossibly big idea and then when you start to get overwhelmed cut features until you end up with something small.

    - Don't tell people what you're planning. Only show them what you've done. For me, what worked was not allowing myself to tell them about the app (not even mention it) but I could demo it to people to show off what's completed.

    - Work in the mornings if you can. I can't do this at the moment but I was getting up at 6 for a while and working on projects until 9 and that really helped.

    - Only work on one thing at a time. If you start getting sick of it, too bad. Cut features until you can ship it. This is brutally hard to do because you're trading the potential for what it could be and what you see in your head for some crappy half-baked version. But what's hard to realize is that other people don't have that same vision of it as you do. The "half-baked" thing might be pretty cool to them. When I'm at this point I make index cards on a corkboard with the features I want and then cross them out (if I implement the feature) or remove them (if I cut it). I don't allow myself to add any cards until I've shipped an update. Ship it.

    - Never rewrite your bad code (well, if it at all works). Do it right next time, live with your mistakes.

    - Find others. It's really helpful to have others to talk to and share progress.

    Also don't get your hopes up about making lots of money. It can happen but most apps don't make much. I'm making just enough to pay for my apple gadgets, and since it's kind of a hobby that's OK. But you're right in that it's a good skill to have and in high demand right now.

    I'm procrastinating working on something like this right now. Sigh.

    Good luck.

  1745. An Unexpected Ass Kicking 2012-08-06 20:14:21 statictype
    That wasn't rhetoric. I actually want an app that can do these three things:

    1) Let me work with custom fonts

    2) Let me import images and cut them and place them

    3) Export the whole thing as pdf

    (Bonus points for handling svg and clip art)

    I have not found one that does. I didn't try Pages - I assume it's a word processing app like Word and not a page layout/design/typesetting app like In-Design.

    Have you tried it? Does it let me do these things?

    I've often toyed with the idea of writing it myself. But I stop at point (1) because loading custom fonts that don't ship as part of the app bundle doesn't seem to be supported by iOS. (And also because I tend to procrastinate)

  1746. How a Single Oxycontin Pill Nearly Ruined One Man's Life 2012-08-07 04:12:51 tptacek
    My thesis has more to do with _Reason_ than it does with drug laws. In fact, I'm not sure my thesis has anything to do with drug laws. Our drug laws are transparently retarded.

    The guy who called me hateful also wrote a haiku about me. Think of that whatever you will. I'm just procrastinating on HN (I a client meeting today that keeps getting delayed, so I can't sink my teeth into anything). I do not see this thread as any kind of epic battleground in which social justice issues are going to be resolved.

  1747. What I've Learned About Learning 2012-08-08 01:56:10 slurgfest
    This isn't an overfocus or overstudy problem, it is just a fancy way of getting distracted or procrastinating. You can learn at least as much by diving in to make an 80% solution and then polishing it up - as you can by deferring the work for more study. Maybe more, because there are some things you just don't learn until you actually have something and until you actually finish something.

  1748. Please turn on two-factor authentication 2012-08-08 03:45:32 Johngibb
    I think having a second gmail address just for emailin yourself files for public computers might work for you. Keep your personal email safe, and forward what you need to the other address. It's a good compromise.

    Don't underestimate how vulnerable you are when your email gets hacked - virtually every service you use can be accessed by the forgotten password mechanism when your email is breached. I'm pretty lazy and have procrastinated for a long time, but with the recent attacks and realizing what a mess I could face if hacked I finally implemented two factor auth and I have no regrets yet.

  1749. What I've Learned About Learning 2012-08-08 17:49:33 jartur
    I agree completely. When I find myself in such a situation I usually try to slap myself mentally and go on and actually do something. And from experience I know that I will actually learn more through doing. There is also matter of interning some things through actually working with them. That's why it's important to actually solve differential equations when you are studying them and not just read the theory. And yes, I am a procrastination champion alright.

  1750. Responding to Wired's ad hominem hatchet job 2012-08-08 23:18:57 franzus
    Well, maybe not irrelevant but way more less relevant than it was. Back then it was something I read regularly. But now it's the place where I go to on lazy days when there's no other action on the internet and I'm too procrastinate-y to code :)

  1751. Ask HN: Do I really need a nontechnical person? 2012-08-09 03:30:48 klein0891
    If he's pretty much a drag, I'd say drop him. Your partner must share the same vigor as you do in building up a business.

    Edit: I remember partnering up with a close friend of mine to build a website. He kept procrastinating simple tasks which got me frustrated. It was even hurting our friendship. I finally worked on the tasks myself and never brought up serious website discussions with him again. We are still good friends now, though.

  1752. Brainpad: How I get stuff done using Trello 2012-08-13 02:46:07 arkitaip
    I've been using Trello for a couple of months and so far I've been impressed just how flexible its underlying metaphor is. The implementation itself is easy to use and surprisingly fun. I love the fact that very few things are actually deleted, instead they are merely archived and can be searched, unarchived, etc.

    Stuff that I miss:

    * Filtering cards based on tags. Once you have a couple of dozen cards on a list it becomes increasingly difficult to get an overview of what you're doing, what you should do, etc. I use tags like DO THIS, DISCUSS THIS, INCOMING and would really like to filter lists so they only displayed, say, DO THIS cards. Right now I find myself fiddling around with the lists far too much, trying to figure out what I should do next. Not good if you're a procrastinator.

    * Universal markdown support. Sometimes you can markdown, other times you can't. Confusing.

    * More than 5 tags on a card. I think this limitation is arbitrary: Trello uses a color bar for each tag on a card so there's a limit to how many colors, i.e. tags, you can display. On the other hand it forces you to be more disciplined with your tagging, which makes organization and collaboration more streamlined.

    * Trello doesn't do traditional, calendar centric, planning too well. Sometimes I just want to move around cards on a calendar (day, week, month). My current solution is to create a card for each week or month but it strikes me as unnecessary manual labor.

    * Card comments should be editable once added. Currently, if you discover an error in a comment, you have to delete the comment and re-add it.

  1753. Brainpad: How I get stuff done using Trello 2012-08-13 06:12:34 nkabbara
    > * Filtering cards based on tags. Once you have a couple of dozen cards on a list it becomes increasingly difficult to get an overview of what you're doing, what you should do, etc. I use tags like DO THIS, DISCUSS THIS, INCOMING and would really like to filter lists so they only displayed, say, DO THIS cards. Right now I find myself fiddling around with the lists far too much, trying to figure out what I should do next. Not good if you're a procrastinator.

    You can do this now in the "Search and Filter Cards" menu. Just click on the label and it'll only show you cards with that label. You can also rename labels to Incoming, etc...

  1754. How to Be a Better Procrastinator 2012-08-14 22:41:59 anusinha
    Another relevant article on procrastination: http://lesswrong.com/lw/9wr/my_algorithm_for_beating_procras...

    This is one of the original sources on structured procrastination: http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

  1755. How to Be a Better Procrastinator 2012-08-14 23:30:45 vectorbunny
    It isn't procrastination if by putting it off you might get out of doing it entirely.

  1756. How to Be a Better Procrastinator 2012-08-15 00:14:02 pav3l
    Procrastination seems to be a hot topic on HN lately

  1757. How to Be a Better Procrastinator 2012-08-15 00:14:16 rdudekul
    I liked the advice: First, don't listen to most of the advice offered to procrastinators. Second, don't sit around feeling bad because you lack willpower. Third, avoid perfectionism.

    Sometimes procrastination happens because you are not prepared enough to do a specific task or achieve a goal. The article has some concrete suggestions to address those situations as well.

  1758. How to Be a Better Procrastinator 2012-08-15 00:28:40 RyanMcGreal
    My thoughts on procrastination: http://quandyfactory.com/blog/1/productivity_and_procrastina...

  1759. How to Be a Better Procrastinator 2012-08-15 01:10:38 arscan
    Talking about procrastination is my favorite form of procrastination :)

  1760. How to Be a Better Procrastinator 2012-08-15 02:14:28 nydev
    Maybe people who get around to publishing articles in the WSJ aren't really procrastinators.

  1761. How to Be a Better Procrastinator 2012-08-15 02:25:38 itmag
    Has anyone here had success with reducing procrastination using Neuro-Linguistic Programming?

  1762. How to Be a Better Procrastinator 2012-08-15 14:26:05 se85
    Wow,

    The whole article read like a description of my day to day life.

    I'm a procrastinator and didn't even realize it till now!

  1763. How to Be a Better Procrastinator 2012-08-15 22:48:50 dkarl
    Yeah, the universality of certain experiences can tempt people to think they're afflicted with something when they just have a normal human allotment of it. Things like procrastination and anxiety may not be (or may be) distributed according to a perfect bell curve, but they are distributed on a continuous distribution. Advice from one part of the continuum isn't necessarily helpful on to people on other parts.

    The most helpful and self-aware non-advice I ever got was in Little League. I asked an older kid how to remain calm when batting in a crucial situation. He said, "Just think of all the home runs you've hit, and how good people think you are. They don't think that for nothing. Think of how nervous the pitcher must be to be pitching to you. If he's scared, why should you be?" He was a wise-ass, but he had a point. Why should I expect him to have answers that were applicable to my (very different) situation?

  1764. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Mediocre Entrepreneurs 2012-08-20 01:18:18 ams6110
    he is using the term "mediocre entrepreneur" to mean not Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg

    Yes, I agree. There are always a few outliers who by combination of luck, skill, and hard work (mostly luck though) hit a home run their first time at bat. "Mediocre" can mean "ordinary" or "unremarkable" and a history speckled with failures is pretty typical of most "ordinary" entrepreneurs. I find it actually encouraging, that someone with the admitted faults of procrastination, poor networking/social skills, and poor negotiating skills can still, eventually, find success.

  1765. Your Words are Wasted 2012-08-20 05:24:04 huggyface
    Blogging is dead.

    I ran a fairly successful blog (front paged here a number of times). I recently cut the cord and abandoned it. The blogging tail is getting shorter and shorter as more and more people move to the closed and walled gardens.

    I shut it down because it was the illusion of accomplishment: every time I got a hit entry I would assure myself that I've moved forward in some way, achieved something, etc. Whenever I thought about doing something actually beneficial, the easiest procrastination was to just go do a blog post instead, imagining that every hit actually meant something. That I was somehow accumulating assets in something worthwhile.

    It achieves nothing, at least if you're already established. If you're new to the industry and unproven then it's a good way of trying to fake it before you make it, but if you're professionally grounded, it's a liability as much as a benefit.

    Worse there is a tendency for readership to start to control what you write about, which is one reason I moved to more free-form content on a walled garden: I'll write about a caterpillar in the yard, my new lawn tractor, and some new development in Android, all because I no longer fool myself into thinking the blog is a business. It's just some random thoughts, whether read or not.

    The time spent writing it -- even if you're pretty successful at it -- would almost always be better spent on other endeavours. To bring up some examples oft cited on here, John Gruber is one of the most successful bloggers, as is Marco Arment. They're reduced to trying to pitch t-shirts and affiliate links. Neither of them -- despite volumes of words spilled onto epaper -- change anything in the industry through their respective blogs. A lot of words evaporating into the ether, the converted incited into a chorus of the echo chamber.

  1766. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Mediocre Entrepreneurs 2012-08-20 07:16:23 aik
    I appreciate the attempt at trying to instill some realistic expectations, but beyond that I'm not sure if I'm missing something -- I find this article to be toxic for multiple reasons:

    - The thought that "superstar"/top entrepreneurs "never fail" is ridiculous.

    - The idea that anyone other than the top 1% can't have an "original" idea, have vision, or have any sort of competency period.

    - The examples of his failings sound incompetent to such a ridiculous degree. Again this reinforces the previous point.

    - After reading this, I have the impression that "luck" is all there is unless you're in the "top 1%".

    - The idea that procrastination is a positive force and that it means you need to step back and think about "something". There may be some truth in that, however I find it dangerous to accept it as simply as this.

    I'm reminded of the below two sayings. There's probably some truth in them:

    "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw

    "Fake it till you make it."

  1767. Things I do to be consistently happy 2012-08-20 08:10:18 dkarl
    Have you ever helped someone figure out how to do something with their computer by just asking them questions? "What program did you use to do this last time? Good, start that program. What do you mean what do I.... [sigh] Okay, where do you go to start programs? Great. Yes, go there." They know everything but sometimes they seem incapable of putting it together. Life's like that for some people. You make a pot of coffee at 8pm, you skip a workout, you work when you should relax and relax when you should work. You avoid activities that make you happy and spend your time on things that just make you tired. You procrastinate paying a parking ticket (non-negotiable, takes five minutes) because reloading the national news seems more urgent. In some sense you know everything you need to know. You're like a befuddled computer user who seems completely helpless but who only needs a couple of simple reminders to get back on the right track.

    There are many ways to characterize or explain why people who can describe a clear path to a better life have trouble following it. One way is to label it a deficit in executive function. To me it doesn't feel right to call it a deficit. I think of it as chronic interference with or co-option of the executive function by other factors. But either way, whether you think of it as weak executive function or a normal executive function overpowered by interference, the inmates are running the asylum, and your executive function is the asylum director cowering in his office mumbling, "I am in control. I told them to set the mattresses on fire; that was my idea."

    The purpose of self-help writing is to put the executive function back in charge. For a lot of people, all they need is a brief reminder and a little injection of optimism, and a five-minute read like this blog post is useful for that. It's also important to grapple with the psychological factors that hijack your executive function in the first place, but if a few minutes of fluffy reading can do the trick for right now, there's no reason to say no to it.

  1768. The "Work" Trap 2012-08-20 16:57:50 tsotha
    This isn't really about work, but rather procrastination. But you don't actually have to have work to be "to busy" to do whatever. I once rented a room in a house where the landlady was divorced and living off of alimony (this was a few years ago). She didn't have any hard demands on her time (like employment), but whenever she didn't want to do something she would tell other people she didn't have time. Funny thing was I think she actually believed it.

  1769. The "Work" Trap 2012-08-20 17:08:51 netcan
    Incidentally, I find it very interesting how differently you , the NYT article & dsirijus (top commenter paraphrasing but also interpreting you) are describing what is going on when people are "busy".

    NYT: Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand..

    You: I call it The Work Trap. What is it? Its both a procrastination technique and a way of staying in your comfort zone while feeling or seeming productive.

    dsirijus: procrasinating makes you fail to deliver, guilt stops you from doing anything else (hence, "busy"), and not doing anything else makes you unproductive. Rinse and repeat..

  1770. Legal myths about the Assange extradition 2012-08-21 02:22:38 thro936287Waway
    Wrong. I already explained that the press always reports the context (e.g. spouse rape), but you ignored this. I have particularly observed this in a case that received a lot of publicity last year in Germany.

    Please look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_rape

    (I've just created this account in an incognito window, because my procrastination filter blocked me. ;-) Got to go now and won't able to answer again.)

  1771. Believe you can change 2012-08-21 04:01:58 salemh
    The creative process of writing, which trends to anything creative which needs "shipping." The difference between an "amateur" who dabbles at writing, and a professional, the power of pushing through and consistency to complete projects (ship). Additionally, a theory on why we try to hard to procrastinate away from the things we either know, or want, we would do.

    Very direct, a bit of "muse" hokiness which most readers I've given the book to can deal with or understand (it is a foil for the author, not a belief). He was a man who failed until his late 40's? or some such, and it is extremely motivating and direct in its instructions.

    from Amazon:

    "Drawing on his many years' experience as a writer, Pressfield (The Legend of Bagger Vance) presents his first nonfiction work, which aims to inspire other writers, artists, musicians, or anyone else attempting to channel his or her creative energies. The focus is on combating resistance and living the destiny that Pressfield believes is gifted to each person by an all-powerful deity. While certainly of great value to frustrated writers struggling with writer's block, Pressfield's highly personal philosophy, soundly rooted in his own significant life challenges, has merit for anyone frustrated in fulfilling his or her life purpose. Successful photographer Ulrich (photography chair, Art Inst. of Boston; coeditor, The Visualization Manual) explores the creative impulse and presents an approach to developing creativity that, like Pressfield's, will be relevant to artists and others. He identifies and explains seven distinct stages of the creative process: discovery and encounter, passion and commitment, crisis and creative frustration, retreat and withdrawal, epiphany and insight, discipline and completion, and responsibility and release. He also develops his view of the three principles of the creative impulse, which include creative courage, being in the right place at the right time, and deepening connections with others. Rooted in Eastern philosophy, Ulrich's fully developed treatise nicely updates the solid works of Brewster Ghiselin (The Creative Process), Rollo May (The Courage To Create), and Julia Cameron (The Artist's Way). It also supplements Pressfield's inspirational thoughts on overcoming resistance through introspective questions and practical exercises that further elaborate the creative process. Both books are recommended for public libraries needing additional works on creativity."

  1772. Why I released a crappy todo app that no-one will ever use 2012-08-21 04:25:46 orangethirty
    A lot of the programmers/devs/engineers I talk to don't ship much code. They just re-work some existing code base to add X or Y feature. These people don't have a clue to what it takes to design something from the bottom up and hammer it into something that resembles the original idea. Shipping code, which is my favorite passtime, is just damn difficult. Not because the code itself is hard. No. Its because we procrastinate, change our minds, focus on early optimization, decide to to talk to others about it, and just do everything expect shipping the damn thing.

    That is why you shoul dno tcall your project crappy. Hell no. You went ahead and shiped something. You started a project and saw it through. You know how many people go through life without ever finishing something? A lot! But you managed to do something. And to be honest, it is quite handy. Its is a nice project that could be setup on an intranet so people would stop using email attachments to keep track of their todos.

    Keep hacking and shipping. Good luck.

    edit

    Do you mind listing your email on your profile? I'd like to get in touch with you.

  1773. The Bozo Event Horizon 2012-08-21 07:10:55 dudus
    In my personal experience being a bozo or not has less to do with the technical/non-technical skill and more to do with motivation.

    Motivation is what drives people even dummies to excel. And that's sometimes a coin flip. You will see stars perform poorly because they don't enjoy the environment or the specific task they are given.

    When there's no motivation even a "star" will just procrastinate and be unhappy until he either quits or conform. When conformed unmotivated people outnumber the motivated ones that's when you are doomed.

  1774. The "Work" Trap 2012-08-21 11:13:49 001sky
    Great comment. This is an insightful summary & juxtaposition.

    Would also add: mental frame.

    Some people may decline to play checkers (too busy) even though pieces on their chess board are not in motion (not apparently busy).

    This is distinct to social signalling (NYT) and its not procrastination. Its meta productive (rational) if playing checkeers will decrease my focus and odds of winning at chess.

  1775. Show HN: A small hack for browsing HN faster (Chrome users) 2012-08-22 00:59:15 skidding
    Hey guys, quick intro.

    I was procrastinating heavily these days and reading HN more than usual, and the listing > article > listing > comments flow started to become kind of frustrating. I would sometimes go to the comments page and then the external link from there, just so the BACK action would take me to the comments page.

    But this was not ideal for two reasons: 1, if I got to read the top comments first I'd probably already be biased by the time I got to check out the linked page (I guess that also says a lot about me); and 2, I don't always want to go through the comments page at all, but I can't really know this up front, without visiting the link first.

    So, since I never got to make a Chrome extension before and because there's never a better time to experiment with new stuff than when you're avoiding 'real' work, I tried to create one to fix this. With only a few coding hours this evening, it already works great for me. Here's the flow:

    - Install the Chrome extension (find link in github README)

    - Click on any link from the HN listing normally

    - If you decide to comment or read comments after visiting the linked page, press SHIFT+BACKSPACE and it will take you to the comments page on HN

    - But wait, if you do BACK now, it takes you back to that page and you want to go to the HN listing instead. Do SHIFT+BACKSPACE again then

    PS: Let me know if you also find this flow helpful or if you have ideas for different shortcuts.

    PPS: I'm not tracking anything or doing anything malicious with your browser, but since it's my first extension, let me know if you see any fishy coding logic in there.

  1776. Ask HN: Where would you go if HN shutdown for 1 month? 2012-08-23 17:54:59 tzaman
    Keep lying to yourself, I bet we'd find another distraction to justify procrastination :D

  1777. Why I am tired of writing pull requests 2012-08-25 01:10:55 oogali
    Maybe he wants some constructive criticism?

    But does he get that a) people are short on time, b) if your code looks/feels like it's too much work to review, the reviewers may procrastinate, and c) no one is actually obligated to accept your unsolicited contribution?

    I feel like, pre-Github, this anger would be happen of the course of a few e-mails on a mailing list, and then instantly put in check by a more mature person. There would be no misconceptions in your feelings toward the project, and vice versa -- you could either take it or leave it.

    Now, it just builds and festers, until it comes out in a blog post, where probably zero of the original parties even see the concern.

    Can we bring back mailing list flames?

  1778. Once a somebody, now a nobody: Starcraft 2 has destroyed my life 2012-08-25 01:28:23 herval
    What symptoms do you get that make you think you're bipolar?

    I'm asking because most people diagnose themselves as being either bipolar or ADHD, and it's almost always a bogus diagnostics based on very common personality aspects that everyone has, such as some level of mood swings or tendency to procrastinate...

  1779. Whatever you like doing, do it 2012-08-26 07:51:15 peteforde
    I disagree with the Rand-ian outlook that some people should stick to working at McDonald's expressed by some other commenters. As humans living in the developed world, even the laziest person has enormous advantages. The real question is whether they are nurtured in an environment that tells a person that it's up to them if they are miserable, average or excellent humans.

    http://www.humblepied.com/jessica-hische/

    I really liked typographer Jessica Hische's outlook: "the thing that you do when you procrastinate is the thing that you should do for the rest of your life".

    I don't have room in my world for people that would deny someone the shot at being happy doing what they do.

  1780. Whatever you like doing, do it 2012-08-26 09:04:19 fingerprinter
    > I really liked typographer Jessica Hische's outlook: "the thing that you do when you procrastinate is the thing that you should do for the rest of your life".

    This is hideously shallow and shortsighted advise. The stories of people "making it" are always inspirational, though for every one of those, there are thousands of people toiling away in obscurity with nothing (material) to show for those efforts. If people blindly followed the above, the world would literally be filled with people attempting watch TV, play video games, read books, nap, or just plain do nothing for a living (for example). And, yes, people can try to turn all those into different forms of livelihoods, but how many would actually manage to make a living wage doing that? Less than 1% at the most extreme? Probably.

    Further, sometimes you have to do what you like rather than what you love. Or maybe even what you need rather than what you like. I get paid a very nice salary to do something I quite like, but don't necessarily love. The thing I love to do, on its face, pays 10x-15x less than what I do now. I am working at creating a venture that includes what I love and hopefully could ramp up to my wage now, but that takes time and I need to do it smart...because people depend on me.

    I do encourage people to take chances when they are young, or when the kids are out of the house, but there is a window of time when your dreams and aspirations are LESS IMPORTANT than the people who depend on you. This is just part of being a mature, non-selfish adult.

    So, if you want to chase your dreams and only your dreams (re: happiness), do it in such a way that others are not impacted. If you have a family, or kids, my advise is to not be selfish. If you can do it in such a way that you are not putting them at risk, great. If not, I believe you should wait until such a time that they are self-sufficient.

  1781. Whatever you like doing, do it 2012-08-26 09:09:56 personlurking
    Although I'd guess you're saying that in jest, it seems what the OCP (original comment poster) is getting at is something that happens to resonate with me. Almost any chance I get, I'm reading articles, thinking about how one thing relates to another, trying to pick up a few more phrases in this language or that, etc. Therefore, I should have, or create, a job where I can share what I know or where I'm looked to for answers (since that's a symptom of my habit). Come to think of it, I wouldn't call what I do procrastination, since I'm rather quite addicted to learning and it really would be a dream job if all I was expected to do is keep learning all day, every day.

    The phrase in question reminds me of another that basically says something to the effect of "a person should be judged on what they do when no one is looking." Though, I'm not sure I'd like to know, among possible Redditors, what that is.

    edit: As for fingerprinter's response, there are some good points in there (like sometimes having to do what you like instead of what you love) though your argument in general seems dependent on if you have a family to take care of.

  1782. Whatever you like doing, do it 2012-08-26 09:10:46 elliott99
    Obviously she didn't mean the type of procrastination wherein you are on blogs/reddit/HN, watching netflix, etc.

    I suppose it's the type of inter-project procrastination wherein you focus on the part that you 'like' while avoiding the part that you don't like.

  1783. How Long Do You Want to Live? 2012-08-26 14:08:21 JoshTriplett
    > Are you saying you don't ever want to die at all?

    Emphatically yes.

    > That's interesting because there are some people who feel very strongly that they should die

    People often accept what they feel they can't change, more because they don't see any obvious way to change it rather than actually liking the situation they find themselves in. That can lead to rather impressive rationalizations of why we "need" to die, but that seems like sour grapes to me. I think a majority of that set of people would choose to live forever if they actually had the option. If the option actually existed in practice, rather than in philosophical conversations, intentionally choosing not to use it would amount to suicide. I'm not suicidal, so I want to live forever; I really don't see a middle ground there, other than indecision and procrastination.

    Frame the question inductively instead, to help people think about it less abstractly; I bet you'd get an almost universally positive response to "do you want to live at least one more day?". Or phrase it negatively and count the "no"s: I doubt you'll get many positive responses to "do you want to die tomorrow?", and the ones you do get probably indicate a need for immediate psychological help.

    > Some people faced with certain death will go to very extreme lengths to prolong their lives by the tiniest amount. Others will accept it.

    Depends on whether you think of "dead" as the absolute zero point on your value scale or not. If you don't, you can imagine scenarios in which you'd prefer death. Personally, I do see that as the zero point, so no scenario exists for which I'd consider death a preferable alternative.

    > There's a sort of "natural way of things" mentality that is very pervasive.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy Also called the "is-ought" fallacy, or biasing towards the current state as somehow more optimal than a different state.

    I think almost all instances of this argument would very quickly dissolve in the face of an actual option to live forever, leaving only a few random fanatics who really believe that they "should" die.

  1784. "True Do" - An idea. 2012-08-26 22:37:00 veyron
    If you are really trying to solve procrastination, you have to address the distractions.

    Now, here is what I would like to see: the OFF switch. Hitting a button that would block all electronic distractions (turning off television etc) and block distracting sites (like youtube/reddit/HN) and disable distracting apps (like iPhone games) for half an hour.

    This most likely will involve special outlets or plugs that can be turned on/off via wifi.

  1785. "True Do" - An idea. 2012-08-26 23:58:55 honzzz
    Off switch did not work for me because I could not switch off staring out of my window or biting my nails.

    One day I watched a talk by Tim Ferris and he mentioned the so called flash diet - in order to lose weight you take a picture of every meal you eat which is supposed to make you aware of your decisions that were previously habitual or subconscious and change your behaviour.

    I realized this could also work when you are trying to fight procrastination. I created a little anti-procrastination tool based on that idea: http://www.simplyeasy.cz/war-on-procrastination. It's dead simple to use... all I have to do before I start wasting my time is to press the "pause" button. To my own surprise it really works for me. Tim Ferris might be on to something.

  1786. Whatever you like doing, do it 2012-08-27 00:48:08 runawaybottle
    I think you might be misleading yourself. Sitting around, reading articles is easy. Everyone does it when they procrastinate. In fact, when I procrastinate, I do the easiest stuff possible. Read an article, think about it, watch videos, write posts, play around in GarageBand/photoshop, look up unrelated programming projects and think about doing them, etc.

    Show me a person that writes a chapter for a novel when they procrastinate, or creates nearly finished pieces of art, and then I'll agree that person should reconsider what they are doing.

    Everything that happens while you procrastinate is more or less a much easier activity. Don't sell yourself short.

  1787. "True Do" - An idea. 2012-08-27 04:21:49 adrianmn
    The problem with procrastination is not the todo list software/system but the procrastinator.

    Also a huge flaw of online task managers is they are rigid(just a list where you can mark things as done). Freeform task management makes organization easier.

  1788. "True Do" - An idea. 2012-08-27 04:36:10 ComNik
    A bit off-topic, procrastination vs. focus is a very different problem (imo), but try the "Strict Pomodoro" Chrome Extension, has helped me improve quite a bit.

  1789. Why do we procrastinate so much? 2012-08-27 19:49:20 lumberjack
    Little anecdote here but I find that whenever I'm procrastinating it's because I'm not sure what to do next. I know that I need to keep working on my pet project but I don't know what I should do exactly.

  1790. Still waking up at 5am to code? 2012-08-28 17:00:17 kamaal
    I used to work at a call center around 5 years back here in Bangalore. I reported to office around 2 AM in the night. I would leave home at around 1:30 AM. I loved the shift. Reasons:

    1. Travel time was down to nothing. Like totally an hour because I traveled at odd timings, when most of the traffic was off roads.

    2. I would come back to home by 10:45 AM in the morning sleep till 5 PM next learn coding and prepare for software interviews till like 11 PM in the night.

    3. Nobody disturbs you as you sleep when they work and you work when they sleep.

    4. Practically zero meetings in the call center, Coupled with 5-10 mins of 'coffee grab' Aux breaks given throughout work timings between uninterrupted sessions of work. Somehow this is more productive. I don't know how but it works. And colleagues are generally helpful, if you need a sandwich and someone is out for their 10 min aux break- They get you one.

    5. Work 'flow' is maintained as you go from a call to another without distractions like blog reading, meetings, tweeting, facebooking and other stuff.

    These days I miss all these. When I look back at my call center days I just thank myself to have gone into that industry first before software. None of colleagues I know ever managed to miss their targets back then.

    Software world is plagued with desires for lesser meetings, distraction and helps to beat procrastination.

    Back in my call center days I didn't even know the words 'procrastination', 'distractions' etc. My mom was a teacher and Dad a cab driver- Incidentally I've never seen them talk about things either. I hardly remember my mom taking any work back home.

  1791. Bringing Google+ to work 2012-08-29 22:28:34 darklajid
    Thanks for the reply.

    That is done today already. Ignoring SharePoint: Many companies I know of deploy wikis internally (for content) or just have shared network drives (for pictures, movies).

    Why should that leave the corporate net? And what feature is G+ offering? That thing is about social interactions ('share content', 'chat', 'follow news').

    So I have some issues here:

    1) Mixing a type of site that is mostly for procrastination (FB, G+, this site) into the company culture doesn't seem a smart move

    2) All the useful features of G+ are probably already deployed internally (which company doesn't have a way to share documents/news?).

    3) What kind of (business) and size of (numbers of employees) would ever go for this thing? For lots of businesses storing stuff in the cloud is a no-go. For small-to-mid sized companies this seems .. laughable. Posting on G+ to your circle of co-workers sitting behind you/on the same floor, connected to the same network?

    I'm sure I'm extra harsh because I don't even see the benefits of (some/most of) these products in general, but at work? There's just no way that I can see any added value.

  1792. The Money/Time fallacy 2012-08-30 02:40:03 maayank
    It's a good guidance but I think it's more complicated. We would all like to have a zen-like efficiency at all times and do such projects whenever we have free time, but in reality it is usually far from that.

    I think most people would agree they have a bulk of time where they procrastinate and it would've been more helpful (even on a strict financial level) to just do the chore yourself at that time.

  1793. Why I dropped out of college for Y Combinator 2012-08-31 02:37:35 kmfrk
    It's great if Brandon got into the YC batch and can pursue his interest in the way he thinks is the best way possible, but I don't see anything in the article that people should use as an excuse to drop out of college for.

    I'm happy for Brandon, and it's a fine personal story, but the article made it sound like "I kept procrastinating and getting bad grades, so I dropped out".

    There are other ways to address a problem like that. :)

  1794. Predicting Churn: When Do Veterans Quit? 2012-08-31 20:54:25 GFischer
    The problem is, at least in my experience, the ratio of people who would use it for good vs those who would misuse it would be very bad.

    Of course, it's also the employee's fault for getting into such an environment in the first place, but sometimes you just need the job.

    I use ManicTime Tracker, if my boss got hold of all the data contained in there, he would probably consider firing me - I average more than 2 solid hours of surfing the web on any given workday... wait, I have the exact data :) , that's the point!

    I was at my work PC for 1059 hours so far this year.

    Of those, I spent 325 hours on Firefox and 95 on Chrome, that averages about 13 hours a week of web surfing (probably 10 hours procrastinating or reading and 3 actually researching problems).

    I also spend a shocking 8 hours a week reading and replying to mail (to be fair, we don't have any bug tracking or project management, so mail becomes both), and 5 hours a week on SQL (I do a lot of querying and reporting).

    I'm less than 4 hours a week actually on a development environment, split between VB6, .NET and Forte4GL (our ugly legacy system).

    And I was hired to be a "systems analyst"... And that's only time spent at the PC, it doesn't count time wasted on meetings and stuff.

    This is a real-life example of why they say that on a large corporation, you only do actual work 1 or 2 hours a day (as opposed to a startup where you might do code or programming-related stuff 6 or 7 hours, I hope :) ).

    It's really depressing to put it in numbers. Fortunately, I'm going to quit next year and dedicate full-time to my startup (which is just getting started right now :) ).

  1795. Stop producing shit 2012-08-31 22:59:07 brandoncapecci
    I think I'm going to write a counter-opinion post sometime called "Everyone poops" about how the advice given here scores an 11/10 on my trite-meter.

    Readers have by now heard their start-up isn't solving an important problem by now - that doesn't help them start something that does. "Advice" of this nature is just the author procrastinating from solving the same ambitious problems he seems so enthusiastic about. If your going to change the world, you need to stop giving a shit about the inevitable dogdating sites of others and just do it yourself.

  1796. Show HN: my weekend project, whatsnerdy.com 2012-09-02 22:28:29 eatitraw
    Added to bookmarks! It may become my favourite website for procrastination. :)

    What I don't like is two-column layout: it makes title boxes have uneven height. Even both columns have different weights. It would be nice to see numbered list for sites with numbered postings - like HN(of course, if it's not by design, for example, if your project uses custom ranking and selection systems for publications).

  1797. Ask HN: Smart people sleep late? 2012-09-04 18:43:39 zura
    Not sure about IQ, but I remember when I had to prepare for some exam, in a subject uninteresting to me, I was procrastinating a whole day and only starting to study at 00:00 midnight till 3:00-4:00.

    For me, it also depends on where I am. In the city - get up late, go to bed late. In the village/farm house - get up 5:00-6:00 morning, go to bed earlier, usually 21:00-22:00.

  1798. Lean into the pain 2012-09-05 03:28:27 suyash
    In my opinion, there can be another argument: Preplanning carefully and doing things when they are less painful but in advance, we can avoid huge last minute pain and thus less prone to procrastinate. But if you fail to preplan and execute, you have to go thru huge amount of pain to achieve success.

  1799. Lean into the pain 2012-09-05 04:45:45 sirmarksalot
    And what I read was "quit procrastinating just because something makes you uncomfortable."

    All the strategies you've described require you to face the problem head on and make an informed judgment about it, instead of just keeping on doing whatever you were doing. They're better strategies than the example that the article came up with, but they still require you to think about something that you've been avoiding.

  1800. Study: Intelligent Cars Could Boost Highway Capacity by 273% 2012-09-05 07:26:56 001sky
    I'm not following those edge cases at all

    Understood. So I will explain a bit more in depth. But, the things I laid out are pretty basic. The dynamic responses of a vehicle under motion works something like this.

    (1) Balance. The car is never level. As you accelerate, there is inertia. The drive train and the chassis do not move in unison. They are connected by "Springs". This is like an airplane: attitude. So, the forces on the car and the road are different, but related. And there is a lag.

    (2) Dynamics. Accelerate, nose up + ass down. Decelerate, nose down+ass up. The road is not straight? Similar for a turn (tilt left, tilt right). Now, combine. What happens? There is a dynamic weighting applied to all 4 corners. Go into a rt turn? Weight front left. Unweight rear right. etc. So, the point is that the friction is changing in each corner as you drive. The friction must exceed the energy of the car, or you will slide like on ice, etc. But, for the reason you brake in a turn, this is not always guaranteed, etc.

    (3) Topology. Now, add some complexity: The road is not flat. This changes the calculation of the weighting for each tire. A tire on a 45degree incline is not holding as much friction as on a 2 degree one. This is like standing on a sand-slope, etc. Just basic idea. Now, The traction is a function of the weighting of each tire, plus the relative position of the tire to the road surface.

    (4) Environment. Also, you have to consider a few other things: Do you know the co-efficient of friction of the road surface? Clean? Dry? Wet? WIth autumn leaves? What tyres do you have? What is the friction curve with relation to the rubber type and the ambient air-temperature? Oh, and by the way where is the tread depth? Today? Yesterday? These are all things that go through the mind of a trained driver and are not un-common knowledge (think: f1, rally). Same thing with left-foot braking, not using ABS, non-abs brakes on snow/ice/dirt/ etc.

    (5) Complex System. If you cannot predict any part of this, you run the risk that the inertia of the car from speed etc >friction => loss of traction, accident, crash etc. This means: If you don't know the "camber" of the turn, your math is a problem. You might know that you are turning right at x degrees, but what will the turn be in 100m? constant radius? or not? What if you change lanes in the turn? etc. Now, you can topo-map solve this at high enough resolution. Eg., something akin to a race-track, in a video game. Go to Laguna seca, and put that in a computer. Problem here, though, is scale: like 1 inch topo variances or something, but that data set for CA state? Is huge. You don't have it. How would you even get it? What is your other option? Terrain acquiring radar? That might work. There is probably something in 60ghz and up that in theory might work. But you are line of sight constrained and now how far out can you look? 10m? What is the system's reaction time? How fast are you?

    (6) Road hazards. Similar problem here. If there are abrupt changes. How do you acquire them? A sinkhole. A pot-hole (might break your wheel, etc) These are things not on a map-set. A live person just drives around them. But, what about a freeway? 6 Lanes, everyone is packed in like sardines. Does the guy in lane 6 know the guy in lane 2 is going to swerve? If he doesn't swerve (an breaks his wheel) what happens? The bridge failures are an example similar. If you are driving, you just look and see: no road. But, what if you are on auto-pilot? Who tells the computer there is no road? Same thing flash flood. Even worse, is hydroplaning risk (like 1/4 inch of standing water, say). If you are not driving are you paying attention? If you don't feel the steering wheel, how do you know? Can you put that into the computer?

    That being said, they are doing amazing things with traction control systems on motorcycles right now. So some of this may get figured out. But you will not see a guy with all of this tech riding no hands/no brakes, etc. This is strictly in addition to user input and continual monitoring of the controls.

    ____________________________

    The Interstate System

    Do you have experience actually navigating? Like, say long stretches accross the USA? At continental scale? The Interstate systems is what it is. Its "90%" done. There is not 1000 mile segments being built. Max is 100 miles, and even that is incredibly difficult (permits, etc). Also, those are not "capacity" related build outs, you are talking only a couple of missing geographic links. New lanes/etc are a different animal (thats maintenance, for the most-part). Put another way, US is not going to rip out 2/3 of the roads and put 3x the traffic on the smaller footprint, to get to a break-even case. Now, you want to increase by 278% more cars/hours on the system? OK fine, but it will cost you. Its basic math, no? Also, the economics of construction don't work out that you save money by only "fixing" half the lanes or whatever. Lastly, consider the purpose: more capacity? History shows, no matter how many lanes you put down, the 405 fwy will be in Jam at 4-6pm in LA. Its not just rubbernecking. It is a larger social issue: people will procrastinate. Now they are in a "hurry". Oops. [As the saying goes, sometimes there is no engineering around stupid =D.]

    Other Safety cases.

    The point of these cases is not that they are per-se fatal. It is that they require real-time rapid-terrain-acquisition to avoid making the problem worse. Deer is similar. I doubt a basic Lidar is going to acquire a deer in the brush that jumps out in the road. It might, with thermal imaging, make it possible to see hiding off to the side. But, the calculation would need to be predictive in a what which is pretty amazing.

  1801. Show HN: MAC Address Vendor Lookup 2012-09-06 04:03:23 stanmancan
    This is the first project of mine I have actually launched. I'm a huge procrastinator and am prone to leaving projects half finished but pushed through and got this one live. Hopefully others can find it useful too!

  1802. Your Goals Are Holding You Back 2012-09-06 08:54:56 lnanek2
    > And so the biggest part of Step One is not to get better at doing, its to start doing.

    Agreed. I see so many people just taking class after class when they could be coding their own project instead of stupid homework assignments. I think they are just procrastinating.

  1803. Show HN: Tampon - an open source Buffer app 2012-09-07 00:18:55 loumf
    Sure, it's useful -- in fact, I really need to schedule tweets, but have been procrastinating in finding one. This post made me do the 3 second google search and I chose http://twuffer.com -- not a great name, but free, easy and has the features I need.

    There are a ton of products (free and commercial) that do this -- but only one had a name that made me not even want to find out if it would be useful to me. No comment on this page discussed anything about whether it was good (in fact the non-name comments I see are negative) -- my guess is that, like me, no one is really giving it a serious look.

    I think it's legitimate to factor this reaction into your naming strategy.

  1804. The 2 Biggest Mistakes I Made When Learning to Code 2012-09-08 00:07:37 sunraa
    As much it pains me to admit it, Nikes' "Just Do It" applies here (and in life) as the author has learned. The procrastination and anxiety that comes with tackling something new can be overwhelming. The task oriented approach narrows focus and makes you think about what you need to learn. Fear is also a great motivator especially when your lead is breathing down your neck with a 'JGID - just get it done' attitude. :)

  1805. Visual Programming and Why It Sucks 2012-09-09 23:53:45 undantag
    Yep, for this "pipeline/processing" type of workflow, I've seen several good examples of visual editors. It feels like it should be possible to implement most of the standard unix commandline tools in this kind of environment. With a system like that, you'd be able to let users create essentially shellscripts, but with a lower barrier of entry.

    I'd really like to see that project. Time to stop procrastinating, I guess :)

    Edit: This kind of system would also facilitate having multiple inputs/outputs and typed data - stuff that's fairly complex to get right in the actual commandline.

  1806. Applications Open for Winter 2013 YC Funding 2012-09-13 02:56:08 wheels
    For such things I invariably use WriteRoom. I find formatting and futzing with a web app to be built in procrastination mechanisms. It's generally trivial to spend a few minutes copying and pasting once the actual text is done.

    http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom

  1807. Will Go be the new go-to programming language? 2012-09-14 01:09:46 realrocker
    The following features make Go as the "go-to" language for me:

    1.Coroutines, Channels and Select: Concurrency with built in synchronization and communication is accessible(especially if your are new to concurrent programming) enough to handle "most" of the grunt work. 2.gofmt: Formats your code for you. No more debates(procrastination) on that. 3.godoc: Generates documents. No more looking for the best 3rd party tool and wasting time. 4. Defer and Close: Helps you to do better post-operation tasks i.e better resource management. 5. Error Handling: Multivalue returns. 6. Type Hierarchy: No type hierarchy exists in the conventional sense. 7. Slices & Maps: Just two of them, and that's why I love it. 8. Brevity and Readability: Clutter free syntax. WYSISWYG language. 9. Philosophy of Exclusiveness: This is most important non-feature which makes Go different and exciting. Go's vision is to be an exclusive programming paradigm rather than being an inclusive one. In this Google I/O video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sln-gJaURzk, Robert Griesemer speaks about an incident that how in a "D" programming conference, the developers intended to include a new programming paradigm in the future. This is what sold it for me as I care more about how the language will grow instead of what new cool features will come in.

    Performance is a contentious issue. In an ideal world, performance would just depend on the platform and the language, but in reality it also depends on the skill and idiosyncrasies of the programmer. For me, that is a non-issue.

    Quick Reference to Go talks: http://code.google.com/p/go-wiki/wiki/GoTalks

  1808. The 7 Deadly Sins of Startups 2012-09-14 04:57:04 jiaaro
    "Sloth: The lazy shall languish in obscurity. Toilers triumph."

    As far as I can tell this mainly applies to marketing. Haven't seen startup founders being lazy about anything more than they are about marketing procrastinating here will kill you.

  1809. The UK has an entire IPv4 /8 that it isn't using 2012-09-15 04:12:57 Zenst
    Very valid point - especialy given that many text-books and other Ip education material would tend to bias you to use 10.0.0.0/8 as that is what you do, remember many companies who used the old SCO IP range as there `network chap` learned IP from a popular book that used SCO IP's in there examples.

    Thing is though, if a pretty compitent company like IBM who know how to do IT have not moved to IPV6 and use public IP ranges for there internal networks albiet router blocked. Well, it just don't bode well for other less technicaly compitent people to move now does it and the cycle of procrastination with IPV4 carry's on :(.

  1810. The power of ignoring mainstream news 2012-09-16 02:24:23 goldfeld
    I think news and several other activites can be grouped under the "will this have made any impact in my life within 5 years?" good procrastination umbrella.

  1811. Things I've quit doing at my desk 2012-09-17 02:48:24 praptak
    Ad procrastinating: I remember someone (Paul Graham?) reporting that he configured a separate machine for procrastination-inducing activities so as to avoid the "just quickly check my feed while this is compiling" syndrome.

  1812. Things I've quit doing at my desk 2012-09-17 03:03:33 cstejerean
    Yep. I first switched to a standing desk at work, and later got one for home as well (built from IKEA parts). I've found that I'm a lot more productive with a standing desk, mostly because I procrastinate less.

    Adjusting to working while standing is difficult. Adjustable desks that can go up and down, especially at the push of a button, only make it harder to actually get used to it. You'll get tired quickly from standing, switch to sitting, and then forget to stand back up (because sitting is a habit, whereas standing is not yet).

    I've built a standing desk that does not adjust. When I get tired of standing I'll grab my laptop and go to the couch for a bit, and then get back to standing. This might not work for every setup, but it's great for me.

  1813. Things I've quit doing at my desk 2012-09-17 05:17:18 jakejake
    I knew before I clicked that there was going to be something about a standing desk. I feel a subtle smugness coming from the standing desk crew that irks me a little.

    But, as far as procrastinating I have definitely been slipping lately and need to lay off facebook, reddit, and (gulp) HN as well. Wait... what am I still doing here..!

  1814. Things I've quit doing at my desk 2012-09-17 06:32:26 mijustin
    For me it's looking for the reason behind the procrastination that works. If I'm procrastinating because I'm tired; my best bet is to get some rest. If I'm procrastinating because I'm trying to solve a problem; I need to think get away from the computer and go for a walk.

  1815. Qt5's Linux Requirements Cause Problems 2012-09-17 17:40:17 stevenlstarr
    "I don't want to bug the devs, they have better things to do than writing docs for noobs."

    11 years of procrastination nice no wonder half your dev team left to go work on wayland with an attitude like that.

    Hay did you know wayland has docs for noobs http://wayland.freedesktop.org/docs/html/

  1816. How I Learned to Defrag My Brain 2012-09-18 01:52:46 tedmiston
    I experienced similar "panic scheduling" with (2) myself. I'm trying to forego due dates and deadlines except when completely necessary (often because of procrastination).

    I'm trying to take a low-tech approach to my system as opposed to having more tech. It's easier for me to ignore the list of "random things to research someday" when it's on an index card at home than on my laptop and phone everywhere. At the same time, I rarely find myself missing lists like these.

    My own sketches tend to pile up physically with the eventual goal of being scanned in and named with the date drawn.

    Thanks for sharing.

  1817. Ask HN: Self-employed - How do you keep a normal schedule? 2012-09-19 16:17:54 gexla
    Everyone is different.

    I have found that I can hold laser focus for four hours. After that, I start to melt down. You might be similiar, if that's the case, then try to set your max hours at 4 hrs per day for client work and then set your rates accordingly.

    If you find yourself working insane hours because you are getting a lot of demand, then raise your rates.

    If you find yourself having to work insane hours because you need that many hours to pay your bills, then raise your rates.

    That's the secret of being happy as a self employed developer. The less hours you work, the more productive you can be for those hours and the easier it is to stay disciplined. Otherwise you just become a overwhelmed, burnt out, procrastinating mess.

    Imagine disappearing into a coding loop at around 8:00 AM and then emerging with a ton of stuff done at around noon. You have the entire rest of the day to do whatever you like and you were probably more productive than an employee chained to a desk for four hours.

    An office is great for a change of scenery, but it's tough to justify the extra expense. Better to get out to co-working spaces or similar for that change of scenery. That means you are going to be working from home at least part of the time. Setup a desk in a quiet area which you only use for work. Don't use it for browsing, personal use, games, etc. Only for work. If you want to do personal stuff, then grab a tablet and step away from the work computer. When you are done for the day, then shut the computer off and forget about it until the next day.

    As an entrepreneur, you should be spending some time working on business strategies. Take some time for some fun stuff which could also make you some money on the side. After your four hour grind, perhaps you can kick back a bit and work at a slower pace on alternative income streams. Make progress every day, but don't allow the side project to drain you (which will then affect your client work.) Rather, the side project should invigorate you. Hopefully it will also bring in enough extra money so that you aren't 100% reliant on client work and perhaps even allow you to further reduce the time you have to spend doing that work.

    Not all of these are practical for all situations. Sometimes you just can't get away with only doing 4 hours per day of client work. Sometimes the client demands more time than that. Sometimes you have to work longer for financial needs. But I think these points are what you should strive for.

  1818. The Lost Chapter 2012-09-20 07:06:34 2pasc
    Agree with all of you who say it is all about execution and timing. Zuckerberg had the right vision for what he wanted of Facebook though: a casual place to procrastinate. That is something that nobody else saw as clearly as him...and that's why his product won.

  1819. Forget self improvement 2012-09-21 05:44:07 Swizec
    "Maybe you arent supposed to bother with the tedious stuff. Perhaps the reason you havent done it yet, is that you werent meant to. "

    I don't like being meant to do anything, I choose what I work on and falling back to "well maybe I wasn't meant to" is using magical thinking and silly escapism to avoid a simple truth: You. Are. Lazy. And. Procrastinating.

    Here's what I suggest to everyone who gets discouraged by some schlep work: Either find somebody else who will do it, or just get it over with, the sooner you are done with the enablers the sooner you can get to doing the things you love.

    For instance: Most business owners find it tedious, boring and utterly painful to do accounting. But accounting is important. They don't say "Well maybe I wasn't meant to be a business owner", no, they hire a bloody accountant.

  1820. The Most Dangerous Site on the Internet 2012-09-21 05:56:50 Lockyy
    "The thing about Reddit is that it makes you feel smart when you are actually doing nothing productive."

    I could say the same for HN at times. I spend way too much time not working on projects and instead reading everything interesting here, then moving to the slightly less interesting, until I'm down to things on the new page that I'm only slightly interested in.

    This has prompted me to go set up the anti-procrastination settings.

  1821. Ask HN: Name a mistake you continually make. 2012-09-21 21:06:55 riffraff
    procrastinate

  1822. Show HN: Learned Objective C as a high schooler and made this iPhone game 2012-09-22 11:32:39 saxamaphone69
    I've always wanted to learn a language and make a game out of it, but procrastination always gets the better of me (5 years later, I still haven't learnt anything). Congratulations, good luck and keep it up!

  1823. Are those of us who spend their day in Hacker news really building startups? 2012-09-23 01:59:37 cuadraman
    great question... I've never wondered about it. It's a matter of limited resources. If you spend 100% of your time procrastinating in reading/commenting in hacker news then you won't have time left for building startups. However, I participating in HN can inspire you in a great way

  1824. The Last PC Laptop 2012-09-23 19:40:42 linker3000
    Aha - it's the work/life balance thing then, mixed in with procrastination!

  1825. Ask HN: How to deal with losing interest in your passion? 2012-09-24 22:02:02 taude
    Having worked in software engineering for 17+ years, I've learned a few things (and gone through at least two-bouts of serious burnout). One was at the end of the first dot-com boom when getting engineering jobs was nearly impossible, so it was a forced long-term vacation. I went to Europe for a bit.

    1) In my 20s, I worked all the time. Didn't live a very balanced life, this lead to burnout, especially if you're working in a startup environment where you think you'll retire at 30.

    2) I quit engineering twice (but after 6+ months off, new developments in technology that stimulated my imagination eventually brought me back)

    3) I've learned to manage not working the burn-out dream, that likely in the long run, your 80 hours weeks aren't going to pay out. It's proven to me that there's plenty of successful people and companies who work realistic hours.

    4) Hobbies. I prefer those where I get excercise (like cylcing). Gives me time to clear my mind and keep my body fit and invigorated. I also enjoy gourmet cooking.

    5) Managing workload, prioritizing things that are important and recognizing things that you think are work but really procrastinating.

    6) Learn other professional skills than typing text into your favorite editor/ide. Speaking at conferences/local user groups, managing project budget, managing teams, managing bigger teams. Doing these other things makes you appreciate the few hours of coding you have left in the week.

  1826. Show HN: the6pct : a tool to help you track weekly growth based on PG's essay 2012-09-26 22:09:15 calinet6
    "Are you measuring your weekly growth?" No, and for very good reason. For pete's sake, you should not be measuring your growth numerically and targeting it weekly. This is not what Paul meant, and I don't think it's what he would recommend.

    Growth happens on a larger and more complex scale than a weekly sum. Furthermore, if you're expecting your actions for any given week to correlate directly with growth that happens that week, you're doing it wrong.

    Do you need to work hard? Of course. Should you procrastinate? Of course not. Is the key to this tracking your weekly growth. No! You risk misdirecting your efforts, becoming far too short-sighted, and falling into the dangerous trap of running your company only on those quantifiable and measurable numbers. You risk missing the complexity which results in growth, and instead narrowing your focus to the point where it actually stagnates growth or produces the wrong kind of growth.

    See W. Edwards Deming's management treatise that helped bring Japan out of a recessionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Key_principle... - one of his recommendations was to "Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers and numerical goals. Instead substitute with leadership." And a pitfall he pointed out"Running a company on visible figures alone." More can be found in his books, which mostly are targeted toward manufacturing but I find apply incredibly well to software business.

    Please, don't limit yourself to this sort of narrow-minded analysis of your business, or at least be very aware of the consequences and consider it only as an interesting result, never use it as a target or benchmark, and especially don't use it to try to motivate or pressure your employees. Your results will slowly shift toward optimizing your measured goal alone, and your company will become as narrow and pointless as the number.

    Can this metric be used? Of course. You can look back on your efforts over the long (or short) term, and if you see a decent 6% growth rate, great. If you don't, then you may need to change something. But you have to understand it intimately; that it's not a goal, not a target, but a simple metric to be used post-facto to make useful and realistic changes to your strategy. I'm not warning you against using all numeric analysis, but I am warning against using it as a true goal or target. Just keep it in perspective, and I fear a web site that makes the metric as clear and visible as this site does brings it far too close to the front of your daily attention than it should be.

    Growth comes from many complex sources, toward many time frames and overarching goals; and the target is not a weekly number, but instead, a growing and sustainable company. Work toward that.

  1827. Realizations that helped me write regularly 2012-09-27 03:15:37 stephengillie

      1. Nobody fact checks
  2. Procrastination kills
  3. Shipping something awful is still a numinstance of "shipped"
  4. Writing is easy when I write about what I like and know
  5. Making a plan and sticking to it is now a .hack
    Sorry for the pedantic response, but when an article trolls us, I want to return the favor.

  1828. Python 3.3.0 released 2012-09-29 23:53:48 slurgfest
    I'm setting aside the question of whether or why to switch. I'm also setting aside the possibility of starting to learn now on Python 2.7, which is what I think you should really do assuming you don't intend to procrastinate it ;)

    Assuming you do want to wait on Python 3 adoption, your timing should depend on the framework you want to use, because effectively each one has its own community and ecosystem, and their adoption is at completely different rates.

    If Pyramid looks good to you, for example, it already is on board with Python 3. Bottle is on board with Python 3. If you want to use Django, which is what most people will want to do, you should just wait on Django to release a Python 3 version, and Django should be usable on Python 3 within the year. If you want to use Flask (considered the closest analogue of Ruby's Sinatra) then it could take a while.

  1829. My standing desk experiment 2012-09-30 21:00:17 jawngee
    I do the standing thing at home, sit down when working at clients.

    The biggest thing I've noticed is that I'm less likely to dick around on reddit or hackernews if I'm standing, so it's been a boon to beating procrastination which I'm prone to do.

    I've also lost weight, but I'm not sure if that's related at all due to a diet change.

    It took me a few weeks for my back to stop being stiff when I sat. Massage therapy helped. Taking breaks is key.

    I wear running shoes when standing and haven't noticed much pain in my feet, if any at all.

  1830. Test Driven Development Actually Works 2012-10-01 08:53:25 dljsjr
    I couldn't agree more. I work in robotics, and all of the software folk at our lab try to adhere to a very TDD/BDD based workflow; working here is the first time I've been exposed to it, and it's changed the way that I code not so much by altering the quality (though this has probably improved as a side-effect), but by making me more "productive" in the short term.

    I'm a serial procrastinator; not in the cutesy demotivational poster way, but in a way that is legitimately harmful to my productivity and success if I don't find a way to reign it in. It was a big problem years ago. I failed classes in school, missed deadlines at old jobs and internships. I've become a lot better at being responsible, but every now and again I feel the same old apathy set in, and I can go a day or two at around 50% of my normal output. I find that when I need to start writing a new Class or do anything that might be front-loaded in the cognitive effort department, or just suffering from a block in general, it helps to just start writing code, no matter what it is. The process of hitting keys acts a great sort of ignition and warm-up for the diesel engine that is my brain. If I'm going to mindlessly hammer out code, it would help if it's useful. And a well-formed unit test, by its very nature, should be small, simple, and informative of the behavior of the code that it tests but shouldn't actually be all that cognitively taxing to write if you understand the nature of the problem but haven't landed on an implementation. Brain-dumping a behavioral outline that happens to be useful and in code form is much more useful than trying to hack on the problem I'm actually trying to solve and having to go back later and engage in a refactoring marathon.

    In this way, practicing TDD has helped me lay out a system to kick-start myself when I start to slump. I realize that this is just one of many possible means to an end, but it's the one that works for me.

  1831. Ask HN: Is there a 12-step program to cut down on reading HackerNews? 2012-10-01 20:06:42 staunch
    Make yourself busy with truly interesting things. HN is a cheap shot of dopamine but there are far more potent sources. If you're procrastinating on HN it's probably because you don't have yourself mind buried in something engaging enough.

  1832. Ask HN: Is there a 12-step program to cut down on reading HackerNews? 2012-10-01 22:12:08 junto
    1. Go to your HN profile page.

    2. Set noprocrast = yes

    3. Set maxvisit and minaway to your personal (dis)liking

    HN will now stop you procrastinating.

  1833. Lean Domain Search Launches New Business Name Generator 2012-10-01 23:47:53 j45
    Sweet, I've registered a bunch of domains from you and Lean Domain Search is by far a procrastination killer for those times you really want to find a good name.

    Glad you're continuing to build it out and it doesn't fade away like other tools have.

  1834. How To Beat Procrastination by Doing Nothing 2012-10-03 02:14:52 dirkk0
    This is actually a surprisingly simple approach. I need to try that. It might even work. (leans back waiting for the 'nice blog post, kept me procrastinating' comments)

  1835. Sphinxtr: Creating a Portable PhD Thesis 2012-10-04 07:44:22 frisco
    This is what thesis writing procrastination looks like.

  1836. Samsung claims Apple patent verdict tainted by jury foreman 2012-10-04 08:06:02 vidarh
    (this wall of text brought to you by procrastination)

    Canada allows appealing not guilty verdicts.

    Also Norway, which is the system I know best, as do a substantial number of other European states, including e.g. Germany, France.

    Norway (and most other European countries) do have forms of double jeopardy protection, but in Norway as in many other European countries as well as Canada, it does not attach until the case has been fully litigated and all appeals exhausted. Instead it prevents the government from bringing the case again once the case is _final_.

    In Norway, the system has three levels. In criminal cases the lower court usually hear cases with a panel of three co-judges, two of which are lay persons selected from the jury pool. They deliberate together, and so nullification is effectively impossible at this stage as the professional judge can set aside a majority decision by the two lay judges voting together if their decision is a clear misapplication of the law. This right is used, but not frequently, given that the professional judge obviously in this system has ample opportunity to discuss the issue with the lay judges.

    The higher court (lagmannsretten) will in more serious cases have three professional judges and a separate jury like in the US. In this case, nullification would be possible, but if the three professional judges unanimously believe that the evidence clearly indicates guilt, they can still set aside the jury decision. If they set it aside, the case is then retried at the same level without a jury, but with lay judges as in tingretten.

    The last step is the supreme court, which only hears matters of law in the case of criminal cases, so in criminal cases an acquittal on matters of fact after (at worst) a second trial in lagmannsretten is almost certain to stand. As in the US, once the supreme court has either heard a case or refused to hear it (or neither side has appealed to the supreme court), the case is final. This is the point where double jeopardy attaches in Norway (there may be some very narrow exceptions, I'm not sure).

    > Am I understanding correctly that the fact that nullification occurred would be grounds for an appeal in those jurisdictions?

    I'm not a lawyer, but in general my understanding is that nullification _if proven_ would be grounds for appeal in any situation where an appeal is allowed pretty much everywhere, including in the US in civil cases.

    This is also presumably the reason why we rarely hear about nullification outside the context of US criminal trials, because if/when it occurs it would need to be subtle and nobody on such a jury could really talk about it afterwards.

    The problem in bringing an appeal in such cases is that given that the jury deliberations are private, substantiating appeals on such grounds can be extremely hard.

    E.g. in the Apple vs. Samsung case a lot of Samsungs allegation of jury misconduct hinges on the fact that the foreman and at least one other juror (were there more?) have kept giving interviews and saying more and more things about the deliberations that are seemingly at odds with the instructions.

    > My thought here is that in jurisdictions where jury nullification is normally possible and effective, it is only really effective if they give a not guilty verdict. A guilty verdict, given "just because" (or whatever), could be overturned in those jurisdictions, possibly even immediately by the judge.

    You're right, it is vastly more powerful when the decision can't be appealed because they have the freedom to totally ignore evidence and instructions.

    It can still happen in other situations, but it needs to at least be nominally possible to arrive at their decision while staying within the jury instructions which of course often will remove the opportunity to nullify in the type of clear-cut cases where nullification is most effectively used as a protest against unjust laws.

  1837. Todon't 2012-10-05 11:48:15 kamaal
    >>I've tried to maintain to-do lists at various points in my life. And I've always failed. Utterly and completely.

    I don't know if Jeff has read "Getting Things Done" By David Allen. Or he has read "Flow" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. With Regards GTD, David Allen specifically mentions its very easy to get on and off GTD framework. Because GTD does require a level discipline to get it work. Or any Time management framework ever invented for that matter.

    If to-do lists are not working for you, then you have one of the signs.

    1. You don't have a lot of things to do in your daily schedule at the first place. Making the purpose of list obsolete.

    2. You have very few but large monolithic tasks that don't need to be written down, and generally fit in comfortably into your brain cache.

    3. You are not frequently interrupted.

    4. You don't procrastinate.

    5. You are just not disciplined to follow the list discipline.

    >>Eventually I realized that the problem wasn't me. All my to-do lists started out as innocuous tools to assist me in my life, but slowly transformed, each and every time, into thankless, soul-draining exercises in reductionism.

    Sorry to-do lists do work. Don't make to-do lists a religious ritual you need to follow. They are there for a reason and if you fit into that framework its futile to use it.

    >>Lists give the illusion of progress.

    When were lists meant to measure progress? They are meant to track your work, your brain only has a limited capacity to store things. When you put to many to-do tasks in your brain, you start to worry about it. And then most of your energy goes into worrying than executing those tasks.

    The whole purpose of lists is to dump your brain on paper. Then execute them, if you are interrupted you know where to start after you get back. In other words they work like stacks in software.

    >>Lists give the illusion of accomplishment.

    Lists of completed Lists are definitely an indication of accomplishment.

    >>Lists make you feel guilty for not achieving these things.

    That is why they work in most cases.

    >>Lists make you feel guilty for continually delaying certain items. Lists make you feel guilty for not doing things you don't want to be doing anyway.

    Why do you put them on the list anyway. Lists are not books used to maintain vision statements. They are tools to put actionable items whose progress you can measure.

    >>Lists make you prioritize the wrong things.

    Lists are dumb. You create them. How can they make you prioritize wrong things.

    The problem is over zealousness. As I said before a list is not your vision statement.

    Write things in the list what you want to do. Not what you dream about, or want to have 10 years from now.

    David Allen covers this in his book, These sort of things should ideally go in a 10 year plan or whatever year plan and its progress must be reviewed every Saturday or so.

    >>Lists are inefficient. (Think of what you could be doing with all the time you spend maintaining your lists!)

    Think of what you could not be doing if you didn't know the time needed on what you have been doing, doing currently or likely to do in the future. How will you know where you could save time and use it elsewhere?

    >>Lists suck the enjoyment out of activities, making most things feel like an obligation.

    This is true if you work at a resort. But if you are somebody who has to 5-6 meetings, go for status updates, answer 20 emails, solve two bugs, tend to your home and track your personal projects all in a day. Without getting organized you are not going to make it.

    >>Lists don't actually make you more organized long term.

    Because you stop just there. You don't have a list of lists.

    >>Lists can close you off to spontaneity and exploration of things you didn't plan for. (Let's face it, it's impossible to really plan some things in life.)

    That is why you should run your life like an agile project and not in the waterfall model.

    >>If you can't wake up every day and, using your 100% original equipment God-given organic brain, come up with the three most important things you need to do that day

    Most people don't have 3-most important things in life.

    In fact lists exists because most don't have 3-most important things in life.

  1838. Generating original project names that sound good 2012-10-05 17:56:30 markyc
    "names that sound good" - like iptech-group?

    fancy functions, but no actual examples?

    spending more than an hour for the name sounds like procrastination for bootstrappers

    not that i don't do it too..

  1839. Yes I Still Want To Be Doing This at 56 2012-10-06 21:40:14 lttlrck
    a little procrastination helps too.

  1840. HN Spoof 2012-10-07 05:48:17 madrona
    XOR, The Tricky One: advanced Boolean logic for nontechnical founders (scribd)

    Make Fucking Linkbait With a Punchy Expletive

    I learned how to program the HTML this weekend. Heres what I learned

    How to defeat procrastination using Chrome plugins

  1841. Measure results, not hours 2012-10-08 00:39:28 tehwalrus
    My old company had this down to a T.

    First, you only had to complete your EU mandated 37.5 hours per week. If you went over (without a good reason like an urgent project deliverable,) they would ask why you were being inefficient, and if you needed more managerial support or more resource on your team.

    Second, you had to account for every one of those 37.5 hours against tasks and their estimates - and you often didn't write your own estimates (and when you did, it was with manager review.)

    Your results, therefore, were based on slip and gain against quite realistic estimates, and if there was serious slip on an estimate (e.g. 2 hours work took you a day) there would inevitably be a review (although, generally, one focussing on how you could improve next time.) Hours worked were measured too, though, and if there was a lot of work and not enough resource and you stayed late to fill the gap, you were rewarded (especially if this was sustained over a long period of time.)

    If I procrastinated some of my time away at this place, I had to catch up the time later in order to make my weekly status look acceptable. As I worked there, I got better at getting my assigned stuff done during standard office hours, and avoiding working late evenings and Saturdays (which I hated more than resisting procrastination, it turned out!)

    Oh, a final point - they also had flexible working hours (one guy would start at about 3pm and work until midnight! I tended to fall into a 10-6 or 11-7 pattern..) so if people weren't in at 9am, noone raised an eyebrow. Indeed, I was told not to arrive before 10am on my first day, as there would likely be noone to let me in.

    I think ultimately this is about organisational culture - something you have to concentrate on defining early on in a new company, and which is almost impossible to change. This is one reason I want to start my own company when I finish my PhD, rather than working for someone else's which doesn't get my work style and punishes me for not fitting in. This is partly why I left that old employer, although it wasn't to do with their perception of how hard I worked, it was a different aspect of their culture.

  1842. The software development final exam: Algorithms and Data Structures 2012-10-08 18:47:15 Erwin
    I've settled for http://hckrnews.com/ as the HN filtering site -- you can switch between Top 10 / Top 20 and for extreme procrastination, "Top 50%". With a Chrome extensions you can also track # of comments since you last time read them, for the stories with interesting discussions.

  1843. Stop Looking For The Perfect Tools 2012-10-09 11:27:28 bennesvig
    Different opportunity cost, but if they both become obsessions and roadblocks to doing the work, then the search in either case is just a form of procrastination.

  1844. Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered 2012-10-09 22:03:31 eneveu
    When discussing online courses, a recurring theme is that of the "value" of online certifications, versus "real life" certifications. By taking action against cheaters, Coursera is trying to preserve the value of their certification. I wonder how it will affect it.

    Do people really care about online certifications anyway?

    For me, the main advantage of the weekly assignments, is that it stops me from procrastinating, like I might if I were to learn by myself with a book... I don't really care about the certification itself. I guess I can add it to my resume, like the SCJP, but I don't think employers will care much.

  1845. Coursera's Functional Programming - Cheating Discovered 2012-10-10 01:11:16 wicker
    Are your downvotes coming because of you specifically suggesting github or are they because of the underlying idea? I think the idea's good. I had a group projects in a coding-intensive course (not distance) this summer and one of our members procrastinated endlessly. He kept insisting he'd done work and we hadn't but he was new to version control and didn't realize that you can pull up commit logs. He quit the team when he saw them.

    At the least, if someone contributes a ton of code for an assignment in one shot that's identical to somebody else, the professor could compare commit logs there too. Tons of code is out there on the internet and plagiarism is something that'll be tempting on the job under a deadline, too, with potentially more serious legal consequences.

    I keep my code private until the class is over, then open-source it. I consider this stuff to be my resume.

  1846. When Buying Two Computers Is Cheaper Than Buying One 2012-10-10 23:58:53 astrodust
    Keeping in sync is even more of a nightmare if you follow the advice to have a desktop Windows PC and a portable Mac.

    The advice here could be summarized simply: "Buy what you need, when you need it." In the computer purchasing game, procrastination almost always pays dividends.

  1847. How Jeff Atwood works 2012-10-11 05:44:06 RegEx
    Ah. Well perhaps the todo list at that point is just another means of procrastination; you feel productive because you're playing with productivity software. A todo list won't motivate you, but it can help keep motivated people organized.

  1848. Ask HN: Your best passive income sources? 2012-10-11 14:15:51 Vivtek
    A word of caution: unless you have the personal skills to deal with tenants, do not make the mistake of thinking that real estate is passive income. Like any earning occupation, landlording takes attention to detail, the ability not to procrastinate, and people skills. Unlike most occupations, landlording will bring you into contact with some of the worst people the planet has to offer, under what has to be the worst possible set of circumstances. If you want to lose your faith in humanity, I encourage you to take up landlording.

    There are easier ways to live rent-free, unless, as I say, you have the personal skills to ride herd on grown children or if you are lucky enough to own your property in an area where normal people rent, and you can find good tenants on a regular basis.

  1849. The New Oracle 2012-10-13 19:47:09 jordanthoms
    Show's over folks, you can return to your regularly scheduled procrastination.

  1850. If You're Too Busy to Meditate, Read This 2012-10-14 03:50:07 justinhj
    I took a meditation class at a Buddhist temple. There wasn't any Buddhism taught in the class, only meditation techniques. The advantage in my case was that going to a class where I had to sit for an hour prevented me from procrastinating about practising meditation. That alone was worth it. After a few weeks I went from no meditation experience to being able to sit for 45 minutes at a time, and found many of the proclaimed benefits of meditation come right away.

  1851. Show HN: Coldcrate, large short-term burst storage using the Dropbox API 2012-10-14 05:54:10 ninetax
    Hey, I made this last night while procrastinating. It was just a little project to learn a bit about the Dropbox api.

  1852. Show HN: Coldcrate, large short-term burst storage using the Dropbox API 2012-10-14 08:16:35 ninetax
    Thanks, yes I realized that if everyone started using this it would not be fun for dropbox, but from what I have just been testing it on I am pretty sure they have measures in place to limit the undo space.

    But in any case, it's not my brightest hack. Any ideas for a cooler project to procrastinate with?

  1853. Programming as a cure for A.D.D.? 2012-10-15 12:04:17 pserwylo
    Thanks for the write up.

    Can I ask, how much do you think the non-ability to focus on a task it is about procrastination and how much is about your ADD?

    For example, I am doing my PhD now, and find it very hard to focus on actual research, instead losing time to procrastination (I'm looking at you, HN!). After hours, I also tend to have several different projects running at once, for which I struggle to prioritize and get any single one finished. However, when I'm at my paid job as a developer, I focus just fine. Given the other anecdotes here, I would expect a clinical diagnosis would show that I have signs of ADHD, but I would attribute them to laziness on my part.

    I don't want to comment on your case specifically, but my fianc is doing her PhD in psychophysiology, and more specifically, natural treatments for ADHD, and there is certainly a perception that ADHD is somewhat over diagnosed. I am interested if you would have attributed a different name (e.g. procrastination) to some of the behaviours you discussed before hearing about or being diagnosed with ADD/ADHD.

  1854. Programming as a cure for A.D.D.? 2012-10-15 12:09:07 kine
    I think the ADD aids my procrastination. I let it take my procrastination to a whole new level.

    I agree, it's absolutely over-diagnosed. That's why I made a point to keep calling it mild in my post. It's not doctor prescribed, just a hunch that I have.

    I think we all have attention trouble, especially today where everything is vying for our attention with a little ounce of dopamine. I notice when I don't want to do something, that's when I really let the ADD/procrastination combo kick in and run wild.

  1855. Willpower: Its in Your Head (2011) 2012-10-16 22:34:59 lusr
    This "I will have it even so" mindset can work but not forever in my experience. If you want an expanded repertoire of techniques, David Burns' "Feeling Good" has a section on procrastination that pretty much forces you to become aware of the real reasons you procrastinate, and forces you to confront the dysfunctional thoughts at the root of it, making it very difficult to continue procrastinating.

  1856. Pathjoy (YC S10) Offers Affordable Housecleaning With Easy Web Booking 2012-10-17 06:08:50 staunch
    I'd bet that least 2x more people would use a maid service if someone did it in just the right way. I think the biggest issue to fight is procrastination and fear of uncertainty. Some kind of loss-leader promotion might pay huge dividends.

    The front page is perfect and if it only said "First cleaning is on us. No upsells. No commitment. No kidding" or something I bet you'd get tons of people to try it and the LTV would make up for the acquisition costs.

  1857. How I Hired Someone On Craigslist And Quadrupled My Productivity 2012-10-17 16:46:13 bobsy
    This wouldn't work for me. I would set this up then procrastinate trying to figure out how to get around it.

  1858. Compact Off-Heap Structures and Tuples In Java 2012-10-17 22:17:48 pacoverdi
    Funny, I was actually manipulating C structures from Java, and after hitting a nasty issue, went procrastinating on twitter where I stumbled upon this blog post :)

    For those interested, there are less low-level ways to access fields in structures, for example Javolution http://javolution.org/target/site/apidocs/javolution/io/Stru...

    I'm working on a very similar lib but where Structs are stateless, allowing to use them concurrently from multiple threads.

  1859. Command line tool for blocking sites to be more productive 2012-10-17 23:28:41 rjh29
    If you habitually procrastinate by browsing to reddit et al, these tools can help by killing the positive feedback (as the sites appear down). After a while you no longer have the urge to visit the sites, and the tool isn't necessary.

  1860. Command line tool for blocking sites to be more productive 2012-10-17 23:38:46 valdiorn
    For me, procrastination is a normal part of my routine. I've tried forcing myself not to do it, but you know what happens? Instead of reading hacker news, I just stare out the window for ten minutes, or think about what exercises I'm going to do at the gym.

    Your mind is not willing to do the task you need it to do and there is nothing you can do about it. (that's my experience)

  1861. Hacker News Data Analysis 2012-10-18 11:08:42 msellout
    Most websites are busier during the week, while we are all procrastinating at work.

  1862. How I Hired Someone On Craigslist And Quadrupled My Productivity 2012-10-18 11:47:57 technology
    I think this is explained by Dan Ariely in his paper - "Procrastination, Deadlines, and Performance: Self-Control by Precommitment"

    http://pss.sagepub.com/content/13/3/219.short

    Procrastination is all too familiar to most people. People delay writing up their research (so we hear!), repeatedly declare they will start their diets tomorrow, or postpone until next week doing odd jobs around the house. Yet people also sometimes attempt to control their procrastination by setting deadlines for themselves. In this article, we pose three questions: (a) Are people willing to self-impose meaningful (i.e., costly) deadlines to overcome procrastination? (b) Are self-imposed deadlines effective in improving task performance? (c) When self-imposing deadlines, do people set them optimally, for maximum performance enhancement? A set of studies examined these issues experimentally, showing that the answer is yes to the first two questions, and nO' to the third. People have self-control problems, they recognize them, and they try to control them by self-imposing costly deadlines. These deadlines help people control procrastination, but they are not as effective as some externally imposed deadlines in improving task performance.

  1863. Apple says no Java for you, removes plugin from browsers on OS X 10.7 and up 2012-10-19 21:02:58 noselasd
    You won't find Java/Applets on your usual flyby website hoping to capture you in your procrastination time, nor in one the usual tech sites. However, it's used in many more specialized areas.

    Here's a few areas I've used it recently:

    * HP integrated Lights Out (i.e. your server appears dead, you fire up a browser, gets a java applet with direct access to the server/bios) * My bank. Seems most online banking here in Europe use java applets. This is a common case. There's millions of people, non-tech people, that wants online access to their bank. * Provisioning a point to point radio link (the management app was a Java webapp - started with java web start, not an applet though)

  1864. The future of .NET 2012-10-21 18:57:54 throwAway7936
    Mono certainly works on the server.

    Your comment just tries to derail the discussion by bringing up Scheme or Lisp in a context where only languages are considered that are widely used in the industry. Otherwise, how could the word "abandon" possibly apply?

    This language shootout has been criticized before. Except for optimized C and C++ there is no popular language (I'm talking about the performance that is due to the design of the language, _not_ a particular implementation. For example dynamic typing is necessarily slower.) that is faster than C#. Try unsafe C# and you know what I mean.

    Bringing up Scheme here is entirely inappropriate. It's common wisdom that Lisp and Scheme are more beautiful, but this article is about a language that is supposedly "abandoned", because it may not be mainstream enough anymore at some point. If C# is abandoned, then what can you say about Scheme?

    As far as node.js is concerned, it's not a strawman: In fact, the people who claim that MS abandoned C# think that they want to replace it by Javascript. MS even supports node.js in Azure.

    "concurrency" is not the same as asynchronicity, which is what I was talking about. And promises are not even close what C# 5.0 tries to achieve. In fact, promises have been present since .NET 4.0.

    Finally, please explain how Scala is "intellectually challenging". This is not my experience.

    (throwaway account due to procrastination setting)

  1865. Don't Worry About Your Productivity, Worry About You 2012-10-22 10:45:08 suhastech
    For good or bad, I can't express how much of changed person I'm due to Hacker News. It has taught me to question dogma wherever I can, that has given me a better understanding of how the world works, in other words, getting the birds eye view seat of the world.

    So, at my current standing, procrastination is good.

    Or quite simply, as they say "too much of everything is bad" applies to procrastination and everything in general.

  1866. Ask HN: How do you find time for pet projects? 2012-10-22 23:54:52 up_and_up
    I literally have no time, yet find time for major side projects and freelancing

    I work as a fulltime developer, have a wife, two kids and one on the way. My wife also works part time

    The biggest roadblock is sleep. Here is my daily schedule:

    5:30 Wake and Meditation

    7:30 Make Breakfast for everyone

    8:30 Start work

    5:30 End Work

    6:30 Make Dinner

    7:00 Eat Dinner

    8:00 Play time with Kids

    9:30 Get kids in Bed

    10:00 Do dishes

    10:30 Side Project time!

    12:30 Go to bed.

    Repeat!

    During the last 3 years I have built:

    http://wellhub.heroku.com/

    https://www.targetmobi.com/

    From my perspective, anyone without a wife/husband and kids in tow really has little excuses. Generally the issue is either being overcommitted or just laziness/procrastination.

    You will only understand that if you someday have your back against the wall wishing you could back back to your pre-married pre-kid lifestyle.

  1867. How to Name your Company 2012-10-23 03:01:52 tptacek
    Or, just name your company quickly and move on. We lost a couple weeks early on to naming Matasano, and after some false starts, eventually gave up and thumbed through a list of exotic plants. By the time the book of plants had been opened, the naming premise had been accepted: we were done trying to find a semantically "fitting" name for the company. We just picked a plant with a cool name.

    We ran into two "problems" down the road; first: it turns out that a "Matasano" is a "quack doctor" in South America, which we discovered shortly after hiring someone from Argentina. We quickly convinced ourselves that the irony was a value-add, not a cost.

    Second, we kept getting confused with Monsanto. This sounds (a little) sillier than it actually is. A lot of our clients, particularly back in 2006-2007, were large enterprises where the staff was particularly likely to have some confusion. We had more serious conversations about renaming over the Monsanto thing than over the "quack doctor" thing.

    Ultimately, we just got over it and kept plowing forward. Equity goes into your name; it usually doesn't get extracted from your name. There's some sense in picking a good name, but keep in mind that weeks of time --- which is what we were facing --- is a very steep price to pay for something that might only be marginally important down the road.

    I submit that the term "Airbnb", while memorable, has very little intrinsic meaning to most people who rent out their places on Airbnb. Ebay has none whatsoever. "Heroku" was one of YC's biggest acquisitions; that name breaks one of the rules of thumb of this post (3 syllables, yet means nothing to its customers). "Stripe" and "Square" and "Paypal" are great names, but "Braintree" seems to be doing pretty well too, and if "Braintree" is OK, I humbly suggest that "Mindweasel" and "Thoughtpants" will work too.

    This is a good post. All I'm saying is, be careful of the procrastinate-y issues that come up early in your company. They all matter less than execution on everything else.

  1868. How to Name your Company 2012-10-23 04:03:18 aneth4
    It's certainly more important to execute on product and market than come up with a good name, however don't discount the importance of a name. Consumers do judge companies by name, and first impressions matter immensely.

    Matasano is not a good name for an American company. It is difficult to spell and has no apparent meaning or association. That doesn't mean you can't be successful, but you will have harder time and lose consumers early in the funnel because of various points of confusion about what your company does, the spelling of your name, and what language your founders speak.

    Compare mint.com to wasabi.com. Which one will my mother be more comfortable with? Which one will I remember easily? Which one will I go to first if both are equally positioned among a list of alternatives? Which booth will I (or more importantly an average consumer) walk into at a convention?

    All of the above is somewhat less important for a B2B company, but still vitally important.

    For sure, move forward with your business and product. Don't procrastinate on a name. But do carefully consider what impact your name will have on someone who doesn't know, and probably doesn't care, what your company does.

    One analogy - if you want to invite people to a party, are you better off looking like a 60 year old, bald, fat man, or a beautiful 25 year old Argentinian woman? Both can probably get a party going, but one is going to have an easier time, need a less compelling case, and spend less money.

  1869. How to Name your Company 2012-10-23 04:34:46 tptacek
    Most of us aren't really in businesses where customers find us by Googling relevant-sounding names and following one of the first 2 links on Google.

    The point of my comment isn't that there are names that are better than other names. There clearly are. My point is that the difference is unlikely to be determinative of success. Again: Heroku is meaningless. There are many companies in Heroku's space with much "better" names that do not manage to outcompete Heroku.

    I am now repeating myself, but because this is worth repeating: there is a long list of things that "founders" procrastinate on that won't really help their business. They include logos, designing replacement web frameworks so they don't look like they're using Bootstrap, finding the optimal company name, business cards, attending SXSW or going to meetups... the list goes on and on. Most founders would be well served to at least note that these are likely to be unproductive tasks.

    That doesn't mean you can't engage in those tasks. If you love web design, vent some steam by replacing Bootstrap. Just don't con yourself into thinking you're doing something vital by doing that.

  1870. How to Name your Company 2012-10-23 16:35:47 edanm
    Another reason not to procrastinate on the name, logo, etc: Almost everyone starts more than one product/company. Most of these fail. I seem to remember that 30% of YC companies change their product during YC.

    I can tell you from experience - the 5th time that I had to come up with a name/logo for a company, because I switched to a new idea, I already understood that this was not a productive use of time.

  1871. Marc Andreessens Productivity Trick to Feeling Marvelously Efficient 2012-10-24 10:15:24 pbreit
    I liked Marc's "Structured Procrastination" a lot better.

    http://pmarca-archive.posterous.com/the-pmarca-guide-to-pers...

  1872. Marc Andreessens Productivity Trick to Feeling Marvelously Efficient 2012-10-24 12:15:37 asimjalis
    I find Mark Forster's FV (Final Version) to be a great synthesis of structured procrastination as well as a way of creating the feeling that I got stuff done. Plus it's so minimalistic.

    http://markforster.squarespace.com/

  1873. How I automated the boring parts of life 2012-10-24 23:50:20 qwerta
    I have daily job and children. On side I have an huge open-source project. Procrastination was my huge enemy.

    I solved it by 'will'. TODO lists, monthly shopping, booking everything on time... It is easier than you think.

  1874. How I automated the boring parts of life 2012-10-25 01:38:46 Antiks72
    If I didn't have my wife I would so do something like Fancy Hands. For those of us that have ADHD, procrastination is a real killer on our quality of life.

  1875. The Future of Markdown 2012-10-27 03:24:59 swah
    --- End of the story ---

    Wrote the script (it worked), but some specific complex features from Word still were missed ("how do I do a reference to a picture?") and couldn't be easily supported by pandoc or this script.

    Though for a brief time of going full-mode procrastinator and writing another markup language...

    Then I had to admit the whole thing wasn't really working and now recommend we move back to Microsoft Word because it's easier.

    A day of Total fail, and procrastination, and making everyone install MikTex, pandoc and Python.

    I hope I don't regret for suggesting we use Git...

  1876. CSSDeck Codecasts: Learn HTML5, CSS3, Javascript in a new way 2012-10-30 03:31:27 chenster
    Indeed they are very similar. Thanks for sharing, though CSSDeck seems to have more samples. Have been procrastinating on learning HTML5/CSS3, this would be great place to start.

  1877. Fog Creek is about to go down 2012-10-31 00:11:44 Supreme
    I've outlined how we solved this problem in another comment - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4717713

    Incidentally, I'm not here to form relationships - personal or otherwise. The primary goal of social media sites is to indulge in procrastination while advertisers bombard us with new products, not to improve one's life. For the latter, there are books, actions and real people made of flesh and blood. This reminds me a lot of some of the people I encountered in my gaming days - they tend to forget about the context of the platform they are using.

  1878. Joey Hess' minimal approach 2012-10-31 22:02:29 mercurial
    Probably makes it less tempting to procrastinate on Hacker News. Upgrading Debian Unstable must be fun though. Ugh.

  1879. Warning to YC applicants: We're going to restart HN tonight 2012-11-02 10:45:42 willholloway
    > I suspect that the HN software does much more important but less obvious things which meet YC's goals than those you mention. I also suspect it does those things well.

    If I was PG I would test YC founder's time/frequency spent on HN against the success of their startups. I would use that data in evaluating new applicants. This test might ferret out founders with a procrastination problem.

    I might also try discovering possible throw away HN accounts created by founder's applying under their official HN identity. That could really ferret out some assholes not technically competent enough to cover their tracks and dumb enough not to think this possibility through.

    Also, PG's essays are one of the great success stories of content marketing.

    That's how I found this community, and although I probably will never apply to YC, the enthusiasm for it's backed startups have rubbed off on me. I wouldn't have been an early AirBNB or Dropbox user if not for those essays.

  1880. Start Something Small 2012-11-03 01:35:57 moistgorilla
    This is a solution to a problem I have. I am a procrastinator. No matter how much I "want" to do something I always rationalize why it could be better left till later. The way I combat this is by making the tasks I need to complete in a day small and easy so that doing them becomes insignificant. I normally have nothing against the actual tasks I need to complete. In fact I usually enjoy them. But the idea of tackling a giant problem gives me anxiety. If I start with only working for 5 to 10 minutes in mind it will usually extend to hours. If you are a procrastinator I suggest you try this strategy.

  1881. Start Something Small 2012-11-03 01:47:09 fatbird
    This is exactly how I overcame a tendency to procrastinate: decompose tasks to trivially small bits that are easily taken care of right now, at this moment. That gets you started, and that's really all you need.

  1882. Start Something Small 2012-11-03 02:29:53 vitalique
    It seems from the comments that some people tend to understand this advice as praising of the reductionist approach to problem solving, which is only one of the many methods of 'building' or 'engineering'. But I think the article talks about how intentional staying away from 'thinking big' doesn't prevent your product from becoming big - eventually, which is a different thing. Article doesn't try to explain why that is the case, actually, and reads more like a statement of an important fact with some prominent examples. And we know that there are examples to everything.

    Also, it is easy to mistake 'starting small and growing big overtime' for 'starting small and staying small, but having a great impact on whatever side of life/business we choose' - kind of what folks from 37signals do (an example, yes).

    That said, I think this is a very good advise: applied right and regularly, it helps you escape the procrastination period (uncertainty of 'big' may be too strong to overcome), skip needless research and preparations, avoid paralysis by analysis and other friends of 'thinking big'. The next logical step is reducing 'start something small' to just 'start something'.

  1883. Stop Procrastinating by Clearing to Neutral 2012-11-04 02:14:51 jiggy2011
    If you don't want to ahem procrastinate, then don't put a picture of slave leia up on your wall.

  1884. Stop Procrastinating by Clearing to Neutral 2012-11-04 10:35:15 Evbn
    This article is completely ignorant of scientific research into how procrastination actually happens.

  1885. Stop Procrastinating by Clearing to Neutral 2012-11-05 00:14:05 sarah2079
    The idea is to leave something fun but approachable ready to go to make it easy to get into work mode. I don't enjoy code review very much, so for me trying to do this first would be a recipe for procrastination.

  1886. Ghost rethinking WordPress 2012-11-05 21:22:00 johnonolan
    Just because it's a rough concept, and I wanted to put it out as quickly as possible rather than delaying by procrastinating about coding a layout. I actually stole got the idea for making it a big page of images from the original .Mail concept page. If there's interest - of course we could put something more professional (and machine readable) together!

  1887. Poll: What are your primary motivations for doing side projects? 2012-11-07 02:35:15 jtheory
    To procrastinate, to put it a bit uncharitably.

    Though to dig slightly deeper -- urges to procrastinate what I "should" be working on appear when I face a hard problem with no hook on it (some hard problems drag me in; others push me away -- if I try sometimes I can convert the latter to the former just by breaking it down and choosing a place to start, but some problems are just boring-hard and that can't be fixed...).

    Those urges often come in the form of "what OTHER more inviting problem can I solve?", and they are friggin' everywhere.

    I already have a side-project that has lots of actual customers hoping for new features and so on, though, so it's usually pretty obvious to me that leaping into new thing #15 would be a bad idea. I have lots of domains names for them, though. :P

    One of these days I will find someone I can pay to mostly take over that main side project, and then I'll allow myself to tinker with new things... I'm looking forward to that, actually.

    But finding someone and getting them started is/will be hard, so when I think about that task I see lots of other more interesting problems around...

    (Side note: anyone here know lots of Java and music theory, and want a spare-time income stream?)

  1888. No Studying After 5pm: Using Parkinsons Law to Kick Procrastinations Ass 2012-11-08 13:42:08 mediocregopher
    YMMV. I'm also working part-time along with full-time school, and my average school day doesn't end till around 3. This ends up with me not home till 8 usually. I would never be able to hold to any kind of schedule like this, since my days vary so wildly, both in amount of school work and work work.

    Personally, what keeps me from procrastinating is that at this point of my school career the work I have to do at home is mostly project based, so I actually find most of it somewhat interesting, unlike the busy-work laden gen-ed courses I was in the first two years (when I did have a big problem with procrastination).

  1889. No Studying After 5pm: Using Parkinsons Law to Kick Procrastinations Ass 2012-11-08 14:39:52 paulsutter
    Clocks vs alarms is a new insight. During hour-scale procrastination, I do check the clock often. An alarm near the deadline, instead of clock-checking, could force me to start the task immediately because of uncertainty. I'll try it right now.

    EDIT: I just tried it. Unable to check a clock, I felt a real urgency to get things done. Very interesting idea.

  1890. No Studying After 5pm: Using Parkinsons Law to Kick Procrastinations Ass 2012-11-08 15:19:17 codewright
    It's 11:14 pm my time, and I just got done with work. Legitimate, not-procrastinating, i-work-in-the-startup-salt-mines, since I began this morning...work.

    I'm now faced with either getting a little more sleep, getting to read a book series I started recently, trying to get some of my russian studies done, or maybe actually learning something about programming today.

    I think I developed more as a person when I was working a 9-5. I never even got to experience the freedom of academics, because I couldn't afford to go to college.

    Fuck it, I'll read another article about monad transformers and then pass out.

  1891. No Studying After 5pm: Using Parkinsons Law to Kick Procrastinations Ass 2012-11-08 16:17:15 tsahyt
    For me, productivity changes on a day by day basis. There are days when I'm able to stay focused and work from 8am to midnight, taking a half-hour lunch break and a 5 minute break every 3 hours and I actually get a lot done in that time. On other days I work for hours on end on the same thing and won't get it done because I keep procrastinating, checking HN, reddit, whatever.

    I think it's a lot about being motivated and excited about what you do. If it feels really interesting, the work is basically doing itself. If I've got other things on my mind (which I have lately), everything feels like a chore. Still have to do it though. The same even applies to my personal projects to a lesser degree.

  1892. No Studying After 5pm: Using Parkinsons Law to Kick Procrastinations Ass 2012-11-08 17:18:43 tudorizer
    I've tested exactly this last week, for an entire week. Result: I procrastinated like hell. Both in my private life and at my job.

  1893. No Studying After 5pm: Using Parkinsons Law to Kick Procrastinations Ass 2012-11-08 18:25:53 boothead
    I'm halfway through the book "The power of habit" at the moment and here's two little titbits I've picked up so far:

    1. Habits have a trigger and a reward and you'll get nowhere unless you work within this fact.

    Yesterday I had some success, I was trying to fix a dumb programming mistake and getting frustrated. Normally that would trigger my usual behaviour of running off to /r/funny or HN to get my little reward of amusement/knowledge. This time however I was mindful of the loop and said to myself that my reward would be the feeling of fixing it and having the tests pass. It worked. I got my head down, fixed the bug, and felt good about myself.

    2. People who successfully adhere to a habit change routine, visualize and practice how to deal with "inflection points" upfront. Inflection points here are those tough spots where you are more vulnerable to regressing to your previous behaviour.

    I've been having a bit of trouble lately sticking to my habit of getting up at 5am to work on my own stuff (open source and writing a book). Last night I thought about my alarm going off, feeling the cold outside the duvet and having an overwhelming desire to roll over and go back to sleep and visualized myself just getting straight out of bed. Sure enough, this morning my alarm went off and I was out of bed before I was even fully awake.

    I think it's going well, however here I am procrastinating by writing a big post on HN, so YMMV :-)

  1894. No Studying After 5pm: Using Parkinsons Law to Kick Procrastinations Ass 2012-11-08 21:38:46 hakanito
    I think it essentially is a question of personal character. I consider myself very lazy and procrastinate all the time, so it would not help to just cover the clocks for me to get things done. I would still procrastine, probably even more.

    The change needs to happen on a completely different level to get out of the old routines of laziness and inability to focus. I'm talking about some kind of life-changing experience. For example, people being diagnosed with cancer often makes them appreciate life and spend their time more carefully -- or something else that has an impact on our core values and instincts.

  1895. Facebook's Legendary Hackathons 2012-11-10 06:31:40 brd
    Most Thursdays, yes. The age range was roughly 21-35. We all liked the 3 day weekend enough to do it regularly but I agree that physically it probably wasn't the healthiest of choices.

    Interestingly enough, on slower weeks even when we could have gotten all our work done during the week we would end up doing a hack night. We had gotten so used to the habit that we would find ourselves procrastinating during the week so that there was work left for Thursday night.

  1896. Do you actually use desktop workspaces? 2012-11-11 17:06:43 plantain
    Yes, in a sense. I use tags (slightly more powerful) as part of awesome[1], a DIY tiling window manager (with very sensible defaults)

    I have 18 tags across two screens with delegations as follows.

    Screen 1:

    1-2 Thunderbird + composing new emails

    3-4 Jabber conversations

    5-9 Coding related terminals

    Screen 2:

    1-2 work-related chromium

    3-7 sysadmin related terminals

    8 general internet surfing

    9 IRC

    --

    I find clearly splitting out my work related chromium windows and non-work related helps with procrastination. HN doesn't call as often when it's not already open in a tab where I can see it.

    Meta-[1-9] switches to a tag on the active screen, Meta-shift-j switches screens. So 1-2 commands brings me to whatever I'm looking for.

    [1] http://awesome.naquadah.org/

  1897. I don't like this cartoon 2012-11-12 00:25:54 lisper
    Since it's Sunday and I'm in procrastination mode I took a little excursion into the rabbit hole and found this:

    http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/fell...

    The money quote:

    "More than that, though, the big, big problem with the Pr(sunrise tomorrow | sunrise in the past) argument is not in the prior but in the likelihood, which assumes a constant probability and independent events. Why should anyone believe that? Why does it make sense to model a series of astronomical events as though they were spins of a roulette wheel in Vegas? Why does stationarity apply to this series? Thats not frequentist, it isnt Bayesian, its just dumb."

  1898. I don't like this cartoon 2012-11-12 05:15:51 zanny
    If the default state of procrastination was researching higher order mathematical theory the world would be.... probably more predictable.

    I'll let myself out.

  1899. Quick thoughts on the sea of To-Do list apps 2012-11-12 08:36:01 mitchbernstein
    I was thinking of a new collaborative way to keep people on tasks but not distracted with reading or manipulating talks. I feel the biggest reason "todo apps" don't work is because the are "procrastinating-dos". I might design a todo app where you may share with friends or co-workers to help keep track of what everyone is doing, but without the hassle of really depicting each task. Everyone on a team should have a goal, whether it be a shared goal or an individual one, you must have tasks that make up that goal. After a goal is complete (meaning all tasks under that specific goal are done as well) the team should review how well that goal was executed. Maybe in the near future somebody will do it. But if that is not the case, I might look into it more.

  1900. Bring Back the 40-hour work week (March 2012) 2012-11-14 08:22:54 kephra
    I was working 20 hours, 16 hours at home + 4 in office in the last two jobs.

    Imho a coder is more productive if he focus 4 hours a day, then if he procrastinates 10 hours.

  1901. Bring Back the 40-hour work week (March 2012) 2012-11-14 15:16:43 kamaal
    >> Sysadmins and programmers who don't get overtime are having their wages stolen, basically

    When I worked at the call center, 9 hours a day was pretty standard and I hardly ever remember working overtime. Its rare enough in that industry. But the whole point is the corporation expects bang for the buck when it comes to this. No procrastination, No Facebooking etc distractions. Heck you don't even get time to procrastinate, the calls just keep coming. Apart from the 30 min lunch and two 15 min drink breaks you generally don't take any time off. So you essentially work only ( 8 x 5 ) or 40 hours a week.

    Coupled with unconventional working hours. Mine was the US shift, which in Bangalore was 1 AM in the night to 10 AM in the morning. I would come back, sleep till 5 in the evening and then learn programming till 12 in the night. Those were the most productive times in my life. Where I worked a full time job, did my engineering and learned a lot of stuff.

    You also get amazing stuff done. Nearly everybody is as equally productive, the difference is in quality when it comes down to performance measurements. The problem is the programming world is plagued by procrastination problems and its difficult to fit everything into the 40 hour model. Because no one in real serious sense works 40 hours religiously.

  1902. Bring Back the 40-hour work week (March 2012) 2012-11-14 15:31:36 kamaal
    >>I know it doesn't work that way.

    Its because as programmers we never work 40 hours productively. Quite a but of our time goes in procrastinating, reading stuff on sites like HN, Facebooking etc. There fore there is almost an untold understanding that 40 hours is not to be taken literally.

  1903. Hiring well is hard 2012-11-14 16:00:16 DirtyMonkey
    The first guy was quite techy to begin with and had dabbled in web development beforehand (PHP). The other two had absolutely no experience, surprisingly (for me) they have picked up things much faster maybe because they have no prior notions or assumptions about how it all works but I'm not sure. They continuously mention how they can't believe how simple a lot of things are. Whereas the first guy seems to have already formed opinions about how difficult something is before actually trying it. He also procrastinates quite a bit (I believe it's because he thinks things are harder/bigger than they really are) the challenge with him has been to break his misconceptions (Git is difficult, The command line shouldn't be used etc.) and to just get on with it.

    Oh and a bit off topic, but just to mention that one of the other guys is a girl and after a few months of seeing her code, I think every team should be comprised of as many women as there are men (and be more diverse in general). It might just be her, but she approaches some problems in a completely different way to the rest of the team and her perspective has saved us from banging our heads against the wall many times. She also notices things that the rest of us are oblivious to. One day I'll get around to writing a blog post about it, haha.

    In short, I would love to have the resources and time to train more people up from scratch I never considered it before, it's all been positive so far. But, for most of the heavy lifting I'm still relying on either myself or freelancers. As for finding interns, I just asked around friends and family it turns out there's a _lot_ of people that have thought about web development at some point but don't have a clue where to start for some reason they thought they had to be good at maths or art.

    Edit: just to clarify, they aren't interns at the moment it's sort of informal class. We have a project that we work on over weekends (and a little bit during the week) . At the rate they're going, I would hire them in 6 or so months though.

  1904. Bring Back the 40-hour work week (March 2012) 2012-11-15 00:03:14 gasull
    Please speak for yourself. I don't procrastinate. Most days I don't even check my personal email at work. Maybe I should, because despite not procrastinating I'm still pretty much forced to be 50 or 60 hours a week in the office.

  1905. Dole/Kemp '96 Online Campaign 2012-11-15 20:14:30 Random_Person
    It's one of those things that every time I look at templating, I get overwhelmed and my procrastination says that the time it would take me to learn templating would be better served coding the site...

  1906. Hacker News: Unknown or Expired Link 2012-11-16 04:20:15 brudgers
    <non_authoritative_opinion>

    HN is a minimum viable product.

    What gets addressed are behaviors which damage the community.

    These are not usually related to visible features of the site.

    Community issues created by the "Unknown or expired link" were addressed by the addition of the "No Procrastination" feature.

    </non_authoritative_opinion>

  1907. Engineers suck at finding the right jobs 2012-11-16 04:22:51 ChuckMcM
    It is an interesting screed. I was thinking when I wrote up the comment about how VP's might feel about leaving a position that there is an interesting dividing line which doesn't get talked about a lot, Matt touches on it but didn't really call it out, its this, "What are you trying to get done?"

    Early in my career Steve Bourne gave me useful advice, he said the difference between junior engineers and senior engineers was that senior engineers had an agenda. More specifically they had an execution goal (like write a new file system, or create a product that solves problem 'X') and they worked toward it.

    This is a both a hugely motivating and hugely scary thing, its motivating because you don't have to ask "what do I do now?" the direction just falls out of where you are vs where you are trying to go. It is scary because you can find you're goal isn't compatible with any of the company's goals. When you discover that what you want to do can't be done at the company you are working at, you either have to change goals or leave. But its not a 'feel bad about it' leaving it is 'hmm, this isn't going to work out here so lets go somewhere that it could'.

    The alternative to having an agenda is "Goofing off and waiting for someone to give you a task." There are a lot of engineers who operate in that mode, do their assigned tasks at an acceptable quality level and without too much schedule slip. They are great to have around because people with agendas and use them to move the agenda forward, but they don't make for very good 'senior' people because they really don't care what they work on, its not their main focus.

    It is important to note that you can't "fail" if you're just goofing off, as one of my kids put it, "It isn't procrastination if you don't have anything you need to do." You can however rationalize your low work output by the fact that your management really hasn't given you all that much to do, so whose fault is that? Whereas if you have an agenda, a goal, a destination, you can fail to make it to that destination. "You said you were going to build a game that could crush Farmville, you failed." Reading the blog post from Speck about Glitch shutting down, "we failed to develop an audience." They had a goal, they didn't get there.

    Matt's advice that if you don't know what you want, you can't choose reasonably is solid. Start by deciding what you want to do, and pick something that will take a while as early goal achievement has its own problems.

  1908. You Just Have To Do Something 2012-11-17 08:27:15 pulplobster
    Happens to be the way to deal with procrastination and analysis paralysis as well. It's easier to just do something and then course correct, than to try to calculate the best possible path before even starting out.

  1909. The High Cost of Free Office Snacks 2012-11-18 14:43:37 SatvikBeri
    Have ever procrastinated? Lost your temper? Failed to exercise?

    There is a major gap between what people consciously believe makes sense and what they actually do. Rather than deny that, it's often more effective to accept that this gap exists and create systems to work around it.

  1910. Show HN: Status page for Balanced - Payments for Marketplaces 2012-11-21 10:23:55 mahmoudimus
    Hi Chwexy,

    That's actually how it's calculated :)

    I think mjallday had a typo. His anti procrastination settings are turned on so he can't make an edit to his comment :P

    Happy to talk more about how this works, why we decided to take this approach and how we constitute 500s as down time.

    I can also discuss our extensive automated testing and how it's conducted across all our services to provide transparency to our customers.

  1911. You are committing a crime right now 2012-11-22 04:04:48 tptacek
    I read things like "knucklehead" as an expression of frustration, and I'm aware that being on the other side of an argument about the legalities of hacking --- OK, I'll own it, being on the other side of any argument with me --- is very frustrating. Yesterday wasn't a banner day for me on HN; I was chasing down emulator bugs and every time I fixed one I'd procrastinate for another 30 minutes to avoid digging into the next. I think I created a lot of frustration in the process.

    Not to make it about me; I'm just saying, there are message board pathologies that are as annoying as "knucklehead" but not as obvious, so let's not single them out.

  1912. Quick hack for ignoring Facebook's new Sponsored Posts (Chrome) 2012-11-22 05:36:54 skidding
    Hi there. Just wanted to say I made this rudimentary extension a few days ago in like an hour or two (not trying to brag for coding fast but to make it sound less important, since it's an extension for enhancing procrastination), and then forgot about it. But now when I found myself on Facebook again, and the News Feed seemed somewhat less clustered. It even took me a bit to realize that, hey, it's that thing I made last weekend, and it's kinda working. So why not share it, then. Here's the GitHub repo: https://github.com/skidding/chrome-hide-facebook-sponsored-p.... The code is not very optimized, but it's short, clear and of course there's no funny business (seeing how it's requesting access to *.facebook.com)

    EDIT: Oops, I posted with the /publish-accepted at the end which opens up the "published" notification. Oh well, use the clean link below:

    https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ogacbihneknbgjlkgn...

  1913. Vision Without Execution Is Hallucination 2012-11-23 00:06:14 diego
    Sounds catchy, but it isn't true. Hallucination is seeing things that aren't there, and believing that they exist. Vision without execution is more like laziness, procrastination, or apathy.

  1914. On Being Not Dead 2012-11-23 06:20:29 barrkel
    Probably for the negative, given the human propensity for procrastination.

  1915. Some problems are so hard they need to be solved piece by piece 2012-11-24 06:15:29 SatvikBeri
    Honestly, if you're the kind of person who enjoys problem solving so much that you spend your free time solving other peoples' problems-I want to work with you. Everybody procrastinates, and I'd rather hire someone who procrastinates in a productive way.

  1916. Why do you need a Smartphone? 2012-11-28 09:49:32 hollerith
    I found it significantly harder to avoid "procrastinating" on an Android device than I do on my Mac (so I no longer own an Android device.)

    iPads are less "problematic" in this regard than Android devices although probably more "problematic" than Macs. (Have never tried an iPhone.)

  1917. Would the economy be better off without MBA students? 2012-11-29 09:23:15 jewbacca
    Continuing off-topic:

    It's vandalism. I just did an hour of procrastinatory cyberstalking, it's the work of a high schooler in Ohio. Probably vandalizing articles they read for class.

    Speculation: if not just out of frustration, perhaps sabotage against classmates reading later? Is that a thing now?

    ----

    Last good revision:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scientific_managem...

  1918. Ask HN: What do the new profile options mean? 2012-12-01 05:56:28 dpritchett
    I tried delay once. I think it renders your comments to you alone until $delay minutes elapse. Probably helps avoid flamewars and other procrastination because you won't be getting quick replies.

    Edit: Notifo is a push notifications service from a YC company. I'm guessing you paste in an API key and then get pings when your comments receive replies.

  1919. Never mind talent: Practice, practice, practice 2012-12-03 12:40:20 unoti
    Two things that helped me:

    1. The Pomodoro Technique. http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/get-to-work/

    2. Reading The War of Art can help with issues of procrastination if the thing you're having trouble focusing on is a creative endeavor.

  1920. Never mind talent: Practice, practice, practice 2012-12-03 18:14:14 boothead
    Yes. Both of these are fantastic.

    I still procrastinate like crazy sometimes though, so I'd add to this small list a book called the power of habit. This is the missing link on how to make your behaviour automatic.

  1921. Don't read TechCrunch 2012-12-03 22:26:24 tferris
    Reading TC (or any other startup related resource) is kind of procrastination. It's not bad, you get kind of a feeling of the market but usually if just relying on those sources you are too late to the party and it's stops you from doing stuff yourself. You should

    - do, build stuff 80% of your working day,

    - meet other likeminded people 15% of your working day,

    - and read online resources like this one 5% (TC is rather one of the bad ones)

  1922. How I ended up with so much Hacker News karma 2012-12-03 23:18:36 petercooper
    I'm behind jgrahamc at #29 but my results would be similar. One extra driver, though, was getting on http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders was a goal a few years ago. I specifically spent more time on the site and began to submit stuff. Nothing low quality or spammy but just 'putting the time in.'

    Now /leaders isn't highlighted anymore, I spend less time contributing and more time lurking. This is neither good nor bad as I am statistically insignificant in the great tide of stuff on here. But we're all motivated in different ways in different contexts and I've learned over the years a main motivator for me is credit/recognition/"glory" (and not the points per se). Now I know that's a 'quirk' of mine, I take advantage of it as a way of getting my work done and stopping procrastination, rather than trying to do well on HN or wherever ;-) Except for this comment, surely..

  1923. Ask HN: Project Management for Freelancers? 2012-12-04 01:16:25 michaelpinto
    Stop looking for your "dream tool" because it's a form of procrastination. Most tools are feature cluttered given the tasks that most of us have to do.

    Honestly you'd be amazed what taking out one hour a week and a .txt file can do for your life. Another low-tech tool you can use is to print out a calendar and pencil in dates.

    The reality is that "project manager" is a job title, so either you take time for it or pay someone to do it. It's also hard for people doing the work to manage themselves -- and this isn't a new observation but something that Drucker was writing about eons ago.

  1924. Developer Time 2012-12-05 09:33:54 thaumaturgy
    Also: build better tools (and get better at using the ones you have).

    If you can squirrel away a little bit of time here and there to make hard things easier, then you can eventually start breaking tasks down into chunks that fit better into a day of interruptions.

    This has been the only way that I've found to consistently increase my productivity no matter how much I'm procrastinating or being distracted at the time.

  1925. Ask HN: Tons of ideas, zero products. 2012-12-07 10:25:16 bwsewell
    Write all of your ideas down... something simple. No need for a lengthy description, you'll know what you're referring to. Something like this:

    - Traffic app - Weather app - Better twitter app - foursquare for dogs

    If you've got them written down, one of them will eventually scream your name begging to be worked on. As for actually doing it... well... your experience with procrastination is not unique. We've all been there. Self-motivation is one of the most difficult things to achieve when you're so used to bouncing all over the place. Just sit down one night with a 6 pack and start. Don't wait too long after your idea otherwise the inspiration will wear off.

  1926. Ask HN: Tons of ideas, zero products. 2012-12-07 19:23:55 rooshdi
    I don't know if you're still following this post, but find the one thing you want most from your product and build it. It may be shitty, but that's okay. It's a process. Don't procrastinate over perfection. Take it step by step. Want by want. If it's a good enough idea to you, you'll figure out a way to make it. Period. If not, you don't want it bad enough, which may be a strong indication no one else wants it either. Find your annoyance. Hope this helps.

  1927. Explaining coder's block to non-coders 2012-12-08 00:51:44 samspot
    Is this issue common with personal projects? I've been a developer for almost ten years and never experienced it. What I do experience is the urge to procrastinate on hacker news :-)

  1928. Survey of MIT Students on their Stress 2012-12-08 13:17:59 ruswick
    Agreed. In this situation, the individual students have agency over their level of stress during that specific week. It's absurd to make generalizations about the school because a large number of individuals decide independent of one another and of the institution to waste time or to procrastinate.

  1929. An office with "library rules" 2012-12-11 06:38:24 aaronz8
    Is it too much to ask everyone to get used to it? I used to think that "this is just the way I am" and "I can't change" until I was forced to be adaptable, so here are some of my personal experiences:

    I used to not be able to sleep if there was any light at all. Even regular curtains were not good enough, they had to be the ones that blocked out all light from outside. I sometimes would wake up just because someone turned on the light in the hallway, because it leaked under my door. I also had to turn my computer off, because the whirring of the fans would keep me wide awake.

    And then I entered college.

    People here are up 24 hours a day. Even I, during some weeks, am nocturnal due to homework. I never had a roommate, but I would wake up due to my neighbors roommates. I HAD to adapt, or else I wouldn't be able to survive. With this mentality, I was able to adjust myself so that I could sleep wherever, whenever. (reminds me of the "Everything is my fault" article from yesterday")

    I feel like this situation is similar. If you find yourself not to be able to concentrate in a certain environment, find something you must do and do it in that environment. Train yourself so that you can concentrate any time and any where. Give less excuses for yourself to procrastinate, and feel awesome at the same time for being so productive.

  1930. The Mathematical Hacker 2012-12-14 01:36:26 frozenport
    There aren't enough humans that can do math, and there are more openings for jobs than intellectuals.

    Programming is not necessarily a job for intellectuals, any more than painting or automotive repair is reserved for intellectuals. Have you heard of the balmer peak? This stuff we call code ain't that hard.

    I don't like your complexity argument. If you are a gear in a watch you do not deal with complexity. You are well insulated, dealing with your 1 or 2 immediate neighbors. Most programmers are gears, they are attempting to deal with the complexity inherent in your company is a great way to procrastinate, waste time remaking the build system, and get fired. I am sure we have all see this happen.

  1931. Working alone sucks 2012-12-15 02:17:34 darkstalker
    I think totally the opposite. Working in group most of the time degenerates into procrastination. Also I find a lot harder to concentrate into problem solving when someone is talking to me.

  1932. Ask HN: When will Hacker News improve their HTML? 2012-12-16 12:05:07 __herson__
    Ok, I know HTML is not the most important thing on the site, but that kind of thoughts only leads to procrastination, because there will always be issues on other stuffs like databases and security, but it would be nice to HN pays a little of atention to this kind of stuff.

  1933. Ask HN: When will Hacker News improve their HTML? 2012-12-16 13:01:04 pg
    Focusing on the most important problems is not procrastination; in fact it is the opposite of procrastination.

  1934. How to Make Your Site Look Half-Decent in Half an Hour 2012-12-16 17:58:49 rpm4321
    I couldn't agree with you more. I'm a programmer with a fair amount of experience managing graphic designers, and I have a pretty good eye for design - if I do say so myself ;)

    After not having personally touched any frontend code for a number of years, I recently found myself in the position of having to personally bootstrap an important side project - backend, frontend, design, and mobile - all on a miniscule budget.

    The process she outlines so closely mirrored my own that I'm still not entirely convinced she didn't have a hidden camera in my office. This post would have easily saved me weeks of fumbling around, false starts, procrastinating, and looking around for the appropriate resources and frameworks. In my opinion my end product looks much more polished, but she was clearly just putting together a simple demo to support the text, and her design quality is easily sufficient to test out a minimum viable product. Of course, once you get some traction and have a budget to hire a designer, you should because design is sacrosanct blah, blah, blah, etc, etc.

    But if you're a programmer on your own with no budget, just trying to get your idea out into the world and not embarrass yourself, this could be invaluable.

  1935. Ask HN: What unknown technical blogs or sites do you read? 2012-12-17 08:29:54 11001
    Many truly interesting technical posts never make it to the front page. Instead it's mostly self-help/anti-procrastination garbage, reviews of the latest tablets and posts about how shitty U.s. math education is.

  1936. Simplify Your Life, Hide Your Bookmarks Bar 2012-12-18 00:35:55 rsobers
    I love the idea. I'd have to turn off auto-complete, too since hitting CTRL-L then typing "n" <return> would take me right to Hacker News. Muscle memory. I totally check sites out of obligation/procrastination.

  1937. Why was Pinball removed from Windows Vista? 2012-12-19 10:56:31 shmageggy
    My procrastination from studying for finals says "you're welcome"

  1938. Studies Show Ways to Get an Extra Boost of Self-Control 2012-12-21 02:11:12 gregcohn
    The key to avoiding procrastination, apparently, is to watch viral videos?

    For a second I thought I was on Reddit.

  1939. Want to chat with inaccessible people? Pay them, not Facebook 2012-12-22 00:43:47 dbecker
    Great response.

    I would think it took some time to compose that. Out of curiosity, is this procrastinating before finals, or is this free time after finals?

  1940. Show HN: A DNS server that removes the top million domains 2012-12-22 04:36:46 makmanalp
    This could work as a pretty neat anti-procrastination tool. HN is ranked 2.9k and reddit is 100-something.

  1941. Getting (Unremarkable) Things Done: The Problem With David Allens Universalism 2012-12-22 05:51:44 dirtyaura
    pg wrote about this very subject in his essay Good and Bad Procrastination http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

  1942. Getting (Unremarkable) Things Done: The Problem With David Allens Universalism 2012-12-22 07:40:52 ErikAugust
    "That's the sense in which the most impressive people I know are all procrastinators. They're type-C procrastinators: they put off working on small stuff to work on big stuff."

    That's it, really.

  1943. Getting (Unremarkable) Things Done: The Problem With David Allens Universalism 2012-12-22 08:30:26 gomox_ar
    I agree as well, it definitely matches my experience. GTD will only work on a certain type of work.

    In startup environments there are often significant tasks that go out of your comfort zone (if you're an engineer, you may have to write a tutorial or a script for a video). Those don't typically go on my "pending" list although they are very important to the business, sometimes even more so than dealing with whatever technical situation that might have come up in the last few days.

    This is why I have stopped feeling guilty about what I used to call "procrastination". Sometimes you have to avoid your task list and work on the complex things.

    This said, the Service Desk / Issue tracking system we develop adopted a GTD-like philosophy in its latest iteration (a pretty significant UX change) and the feedback from our internal and external customers has been outstanding. It helps you keep your head level.

  1944. Blue-collar knowledge workers will save the economy 2012-12-23 13:03:54 zampano
    Anecdotally, I went from working a part-time job making 11/hour a year ago to working full-time as a (very) junior Rails developer for double my old pay after a friend encouraged me to make the transition. I did have a lot of general computing experience from being a computer gaming nerd as a kid and in high school, but I had always stopped short of coding after a few abortive forays when I was in my early teens (though I did have some knowledge of late 1990s HTML and CSS).

    I too had issues with hardware (my only computer was a $300 netbook) but I got around this by getting a Linode and using that to do all my development. This had the added benefit of forcing me to familiarize myself with the command line and Vim/tmux (though, I do admit I had some experience with basic commands from trying out linux a few times when I had been younger and too broke for Windows).

    In my case, I was so hopelessly in debt and so upset with the aimless path my life had been taking that I threw myself into programming. It was extremely difficult at first since there were a ton of concepts that I had to learn even to be able to understand the official documentation. I found myself going through beginner tutorials and books over and over, each time picking up more details and each time coming away with more understanding. When I had trouble figuring out Rails, I went deeper and tried to understand Ruby first. When I felt I wasn't making any progress (it took me months to really wrap my head around blocks until one day it just dawned on me), I would explore Javascript or try to update my html/css knowledge to modern standards or explore the wonderful world of man pages. I even made an effort to make any procrastination beneficial by making sure it was "on-topic" by reading Hacker News, toying with project euler or studying math. In short, I tried to make thinking like a programmer my life. I felt like I had a lot of catching up to do with those who had been programming from their youth. I also wasn't sure if the current booming market would perpetuate forever and I didn't want to miss my chance to gain precious experience while the door was still open to me.

    This was probably the first time in my life I had devoted myself so fully to anything. I had always been someone with one thousand differing interests and lacked in-depth knowledge in many subjects. It was hard giving up things like photography and probably-excessive reading (I would often spend entire weekends reading through piles of books) to focus on something that was often not as relaxing or easy, but I found the challenge incredibly stimulating (more stimulating than anything I had encountered in university for instance) and it wasn't long until I found my mind constantly wandering toward whatever concept I had been learning or working on.

    While I originally was enticed by the financial benefit of programming, I find that to not be a large factor in why I work today. Once I got out of my financial hole, it was like being able to breath for the first time and in an instant I stopped caring about pushing my way to the top. The thing that gets me up in the morning now is the thrill of solving the problem and that wonderful feeling of accomplishment when you realize that what you worked on is succinct, beautiful and works. I have been trying to encourage some of my friends who are now stuck in dead-end low-paying jobs, surviving thanks to credit cards and on the verge of devastation by something as minor as needing new tires for their car, but I have yet to have any success in pushing anyone in this direction. Like you, anyone I've tried to encourage has usually fallen off the wagon pretty quickly. Maybe it was simply easier for me since I was never scared to tinker or play with the computer. Maybe I'm just a bit more obsessive.

    Whatever the reason, I couldn't be happier where I am today. I get to build things and solve problems/troubleshoot everyday. I get to work with smart people who genuinely work hard at what they do. I look forward to expanding my knowledge and improving myself and my code for the foreseeable future and maybe, one day, building my own business and my own product to help change the world like so many of you guys have.

    So, I know it can be discouraging when your friends don't stick with programming, but don't write off everybody because of a handful. Even if it is rare, there are a few of us out there who just need the right kind of push. As the old saying goes, "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink".

  1945. If you have a file called todo.txt on your computer, you're in the right place 2012-12-23 20:12:39 tsahyt
    I've just had a look at the CLI functionality. About a year ago I've been looking for something similar and couldn't find anything light enough which just let me add TODOs on the command line. I ended up writing my own in about a hundred lines of Python which implemented the most important functionality. It had no way to filter or anything (that's what grep is for though) but it worked well. By now I have abandoned todo-lists completely after realizing that merely organizing my work won't get the job done. The best way to deal with work is to actually get it done, rather than procrastinate by just thinking about it.

  1946. Ask HN: How should I spend a year? 2012-12-25 12:03:26 mion
    Are you sure your number one issue is discipline? I'm in a similar position to you and I had also realized that I lacked discipline, but nowadays I think it's actually a matter of doing what you're into.

    And recently I came across one of Paul Graham's essays that resonates with my thinking. Quoting pg (http://paulgraham.com/hs.html): "Now I know a number of people who do great work, and it's the same with all of them. They have little discipline. They're all terrible procrastinators and find it almost impossible to make themselves do anything they're not interested in. One still hasn't sent out his half of the thank-you notes from his wedding, four years ago. Another has 26,000 emails in her inbox.

    I'm not saying you can get away with zero self-discipline. You probably need about the amount you need to go running. I'm often reluctant to go running, but once I do, I enjoy it. And if I don't run for several days, I feel ill. It's the same with people who do great things. They know they'll feel bad if they don't work, and they have enough discipline to get themselves to their desks to start working. But once they get started, interest takes over, and discipline is no longer necessary.

    Do you think Shakespeare was gritting his teeth and diligently trying to write Great Literature? Of course not. He was having fun. That's why he's so good."

  1947. Ask HN: Do you remember what you read on HN? (And if so, why/how?) 2012-12-26 00:48:38 pbateman
    I remember what I learn more if it's relevant to work I'm actually doing.

    So if, for example, I'm thinking about landing pages and I read some links on HN about building better landing pages then it gets lodged in my brain and I learn something worthwhile.

    If on the other hand I'm just procrastinating I don't remember much or extract much value from being here.

    One of the best uses I've found for HN is searching for past links related to what I'm working on; there's a lot of value in the old comment threads.

  1948. New Technology Is Making Us More Like the Amish 2012-12-27 07:32:57 chewxy
    This hit really close to home for me. Two years ago I had a nearly falling out with my partner because she claimed I wasn't listening to her enough (I was, it was a yum cha place, and I was busy reading reddit on my phone).

    I introspected a bit and decided to change my lifestyle. I would let technology adapt around me, instead of me adapting my lifestyle/life choices around technology. Although I must say this one is a two way street - I cannot live without my smart phone.

    Now, we have rules: When having personal one-on-one time with other people, no mobiles allowed. We still suck with crowds so, mobiles still come out in crowds like parties.

    Personally I think this has got to do with our brains and our information diet. We're being constantly drip fed information that is being pushed to us. I feel sometimes that pulling information, with limits (HN's procrastination feature is great). Heck I even wrote a write up on this: http://theslowweb.com, and tried to get a movement going.

    Oh well.

  1949. Get off HN and work 2012-12-28 14:17:57 SusanTanHMC
    I have to take a coding challenge... eventually. It's hard not to procrastinate.

  1950. Ask HN : What do you do when you feel like a loser? 2012-12-28 22:38:00 mping
    It doesn't really matter what your preferences are. That's why I had the "whatever" option. I am just advocating that you have to be aware of what matters to you, always. It's pretty easy to get lost in everyday stuff, whether procrastinating on the internet or anywhere else. If you know what's important to you, by comparison you won't be bothered with the rest, and you'll spend your energy wisely.

  1951. What one book could give me a new, useful superpower? 2012-12-30 19:04:59 IsaacL
    Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. It's a guide to Vipasanna meditation, the central practice of Burmese buddhism.

    Two reasons why HN readers might find it interesting:

    a) The author claims to have gained enlightenment - yes, enlightenment with a capital 'E', the thing the original Buddha achieved under his tree, and he claims that you can do the same.

    b) if you're thinking "ok, this writer's a new age nutcase, moving on...", the author's day job is as a medical doctor and he applies a strong scientific sensibility to his experiences.

    The whole thing is written in a very rational, down-to-earth style. He also rants about how new age practioners in the west have turned meditation into this aimless, chill-out practice when actually in certain Asian countries it's seen as something with definite stages and goals.

    My view of meditation is that it's basically about training and hacking your mind. There's three main practices: concentration training, which is what it sounds like - focusing your mind on one object; insight training, which is basically running netstat on your perceptual system; and morality, which is integrating your learnings from meditation into an ethical life.

    Potential benefits:

    - better ability to concentrate and avoid procrastination

    - you can learn to feel happy all the time. It's not that you never feel negative emotions, but they're always be an undercurrent of peace and relaxation when you learn to stop fighting negative feelings.

    - you can access mental states which are not too unlike those caused by taking certain drugs, without the negative side-effects (though it is possible to get "meditation hangover").

    - most importantly, you'll learn to train your mind to put it to whatever tasks you deem important.

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1904658407/ref=as_li_ss_t...

  1952. IRC is dead, long live IRC 2013-01-04 19:50:27 octotoad
    I know not everybody is a nostalgic nerd with a thing for tech industry history, but, yeah, I'm two years younger and even I was aware of the general history of Netscape's journey and choices by the time I was 14-15.

    Perhaps he was too busy putting his head down, pumping out a real product instead of procrastinating and focusing on the past :)

  1953. A year without caffeine 2013-01-05 03:00:50 mtrimpe
    I quit coffee 6 weeks ago. The first two working days were hilarious, as I actually had trouble maintaining the focus to procrastinate.

    The headaches lasted for a bit more than a week. I tried all household remedies and only peppermint tea seemed to help although it might also be the excess fluids. I tried to avoid taking painkillers (Ibuprofen worked like a charm) but in retrospect I would probably accept a week or so of Ibuprofen/Aspirin usage.

    All in all it took about two week for my body to feel balanced again. After that a few really interesting things happened though, namely:

    * I could no longer get away with no breakfast or morning routine, whereas before I would just drink a coffee and be ready to walk out the door.

    * It seemed that I used caffeine as an external motivator which kept me 'just doing stuff' and actually had to relearn how to choose goals and focus on them.

    * I had to accept that my mental acuity was just a bit lower; even though it's now constant throughout the day.

    * It now feels like my mental acuity is now linked to how physically healthy I am (as I've heard said many times), whereas that didn't seem to be the case all that much before.

    All in all I realized that caffeine is very much like a self-inflicted Ballmer Peak [1] and if you really try to keep your blood-caffeine percentage optimal like me and the OP did, you'll destroy yourself in the long term.

    [1] http://xkcd.com/323/

  1954. Gamers hired by father to 'kill' son in online games 2013-01-08 01:21:58 justjimmy
    Read the chinese link and thought I'd share some more bits:

    Kid says his dad over reacted, mistaken his gaming ways as an addiction. Claims he only played heavily for a few days and it was a misunderstanding between them. Wants time to find a suitable job - he can either play or don't play, just that he hasn't found a suitable job and plays to kill time.

    It seems to me like denial/avoidance - I've personally experienced issues like this - you play heavily not to kill time but to delay the inevitable, delay the decisions you will have to face. You don't want to ask the hard questions and you simply put it off and procrastinate. If you're still in highschool, then it wouldn't mean much but once you graduate and in your mid twenties (and beyond), you have to shape up and not delve into activities that doesn't help build your character (heyoo).

  1955. No, you are not 'running late'; you are rude and selfish 2013-01-09 10:45:14 ojosilva
    Hi there. I'm the one you're talking about. I'm always late. You're right. It's a character flaw. But I swear to you, it's the toughest character flaw I've ever dealt with. For some reason, when I'm deeply immersed doing something, I'm incapable of wrapping up whatever it is that I'm tied up doing and fucking leave. It's stronger than willpower. It truly bewilders me. I feel that dealing with my lateness is 100 times worse than dealing with that other time management disorder, procrastination. At least with procrastination I can realize what's going on and help myself out of it. But let me assure you: I don't mean to be rude, and I'm not at all selfish as I consider myself pretty empathetic with your frustration. And I'm not only late for appointments: I delay eating my meals, falling asleep, going to the bathroom... I guess it's some sort of time-autism: if I'm supposed to be somewhere at 8, only when the clock is about to turn 8 an alarm triggers a switch in my brain (all other alarms are useless) and I get going, with zero chance of making it on time. Like you said, 8 and 8ish become the same on a daily basis. At 8, when I snap out of it I'm really angry at myself for losing track of time. How did it happen, I ask myself one time after another. It's sickening how often it happens. It feels like waking up in pajamas in a bus stop and realize you just sleptwalk your way there. Consider it some sort of Tourette's. It's not pleasant to be around me, but I just can't help it, I swear.

    From what I've been able to observe so far, procrastination precedes my lateness, in a way that one becomes a symptom for the other. Ie. It's morning and I have to do some really important task at work ASAP. Later, at 8pm, I have to meet you for dinner downtown. But I don't start getting work done until way after lunch, having procrastinated all morning surfing HN. So, around 3pm, when my mind finally comes to terms with responsibility, an overwhelming sense of duty takes over me, striking upon the task at hand with great vengeance and furious anger. Concentration is tops and speed is maximum. Code is thorough. Design is sharp. Text is brilliant. Suddenly it's 8 o'clock and, yup, I'm late. Time is not standing still anymore. I feel awful.

    My theory is that the strength I have to build up on a daily basis so that I can overcome procrastination, sleepiness, attention deficit and mild depression is also responsible for my recurring tardiness. To be able to reach such concentration nirvana, my mind has to shut down everything else on the planet earth. On the other hand, whenever I wake up focused and in a good mood, chances are I'm going to be the one ordering that bottle of Pinot.

  1956. Results of Bruce Schneier's experiment in trust 2013-01-12 01:03:22 B-Con
    > What is also very likely is that few if any of those made a decision not to uphold their end of the bargain.

    I disagree. Although I agree that it is unlikely that it was their intent from the outset, there is a threshhold at which point someone has practically decided not to do something. Once they have procrastinated on doing something for X months and know that it is only #73 on their internal priority list, they have essentially decided not to do it. It could happen, but the odds are, what, maybe 10%? If you assume that a commitment to do something is giving a 100% guarantee and a commitment to not do something is a 0% guarantee, a 10% chance is, pragmatically, a "no".

    Also, part of the implied deal was that you write the review promptly. From the original blog post where Schneier made the book offer:

    > Liars and Outliers has been out since late February, and while it's selling great, I'd like it to sell better. So I have a special offer for my regular readers.

    I don't think he was hoping they would send in their reviews a year or two later. Those who do would have a hard time arguing that they met the spirit of the deal.

    The initial blog post was almost exactly 5 months ago and the offer was closed in two days, which means that a lot of readers probably got their books at least 4 months ago. (In my experience he does ship promptly, as I have gotten a book from him before.) If he was hoping that they would write their review in a reasonable amount of time, say 8 months, and only 9% wrote a review in the first half, I highly, highly doubt that even 41% will write a review in the second half. And the majority of those who will not probably subconsciously know it by now.

    Edit: To be specific, I don't think he expected 90% turnout by this date, he's just disappointed that the turnout is so low by now. It's not even 1 in 10. 4 months is a decent amount of time to review a book you agreed to review.

  1957. Results of Bruce Schneier's experiment in trust 2013-01-12 02:38:20 AnthonyMouse
    >Once they have procrastinated on doing something for X months and know that it is only #73 on their internal priority list, they have essentially decided not to do it.

    I think the point is that a decision is an affirmative act. Nobody decides to forget to do something. It's like the difference between incompetence and malice.

  1958. Life ToDo 2013-01-12 02:47:16 ezYZ
    I've kept a similar todo list in a Trello board since last year. It acts as an indispensable reminder of priorities and progress like an analytics dashboard for life.

    While it's somewhat useful as a reference and procrastination deterrent, I find the real value comes from asking myself the big, fuzzy "What do I want out of life?" questions more often.

  1959. Life ToDo 2013-01-12 03:29:57 tjtrapp
    I get the to-do list... I used to make them myself.

    However, I found that I would stress over the list. I need to do this or I need to do that... whatever! Stress sucks and my life is better w/out it.

    Now, I follow the "whats the most important thing I should be doing right now?" and do it.

    http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

    Not everyone is like me, so I suggest sticking with what works for you and your life situation.

    Cheers.

  1960. Did porn warp me forever? 2013-01-14 08:31:53 psykotic
    Good for you--I mean that. My addictive superstimulus is learning new things with no practical relevance my work, like orbital mechanics or calendrical calculations. When I catch myself going on extended binges, I try to extricate myself by consciously directing my time and energy elsewhere. But it would be silly of me to indict textbooks as harmful objects. Any hardcore procrastinator knows that the focus is incidental and essentially arbitrary.

  1961. Is Life Boring you? 2013-01-17 21:35:56 guard-of-terra
    Maybe I genuinely enjoy my lifestyle too much. But it's nothing fancy - I go to work, I sleep, I procrastinate.

    Of course, I eat out, I go to concerts, museums or something more crazy, travel a bit. But I do that because I like it, not because I'm trying to inject some "change" (sounds cheap btw) into my life.

  1962. Why the Fuck? 2013-01-22 01:08:47 shaunxcode
    I can only speak for myself: When I was younger I had nothing but the loftiest of goals. To implement the cybernetic fantasies that had been suggested to me either directly by my favorite authors, or by my imagination connecting the dots of how the world I longed to live in could exist.

    I got older. I realized it was going to be nigh on impossible to get a large enough user base for anything of that sort to exist so I settled into a cycle of keeping a straight job whilst I focussed on tool refinement as a form of procrastination. "Once I have the perfect platform..."

    I doubled down on my critical theory. Maybe once I REALLY understood what marx, beer, derrida, lacan, mcluhan, and debord were REALLY saying my next steps would be clear.

    I became stuck. Entirely aware of the complexity and futility of the "all". For now I wait and attempt to inspire those around me to take a deeper look into their cybernetic heritage (past and future). Keep on refine, keep on read, keep on eval, keep on print.

  1963. The joys of having a Forever Project 2013-01-22 18:10:09 smeddinck
    This is exactly what I thought: Pretty much every great inventor or researcher has that one big problem, or one big question that drives them ... but I think it is a good point to say that one should not be too disappointed about not necessarily making rapid progress on "the forever project" all the time. Thanks for making me feel a bit better about seemingly (and for the duration of typing this actually) procrastinating from tackling the underlying challenges behind my PhD topic ;) ...

  1964. Basecamp Personal 2013-01-23 00:11:18 sergiotapia
    I STRONGLY recommend Asana:

    http://www.asana.com

    It's like using a smart piece of paper that just gets out of your way and let's you create, assign, toggle, set dates, etc really intuitively.

    I'm a freelancer - and for my usage I typically have a Workspace called Freelance Projects. In that workspace I have many projects, each for each freelance gig I land. I then invite my client (YOU CAN INVITE UP TO 30 PEOPLE PER PROJECT FOR FREE HOLY BALLS) and collaborate intuitively from there.

    He/she can upload photoshop files, images, text files, edit desriptions and I can comment on them and we go back and forth. Better than email.

    I used to procrastinate a lot. It was my achille's heel; but since Asana I enjoy working because there's something deeply psychological in ticking things off and seeing them grayed out.

    If you haven't checked it out.

    There's also Trello but I kind of dislike it when there are more than 5 items in a list. It gets unwiedly.

  1965. Why you need more margin in your life 2013-01-23 01:42:38 analyst74
    I skimmed through most of the article, and agree to many points the author raised.

    However, I find it not convincing, despite the fact I already agree to much of it. It's full of "I think this makes my life better, so it should to yours", with no definition of "better" or concrete example of achieving that "better".

    This is unfortunate, I'd also like to believe that one should be able to achieve greatness without working themselves to death, and I wish there is evidence of that. Then I'll be able to enjoy my procrastination guilty-free.

  1966. What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project 2013-01-25 00:53:55 JabavuAdams
    So, I've felt the same way about uploading my own work-in-progress code to GitHub, but I use it as an antitode to perfectionism / procrastination. It's almost a form of militant pragmatism.

    I've worked at some quite successful small companies, and they all share the property that you really don't want to examine the code too closely. The sausage is inevitably somewhat disgusting on close examination.

  1967. Dear brilliant students: Please consider not doing a PhD. 2013-01-25 01:57:16 stared
    To start with, I recommend text: The Ph.D. Grind, A Ph.D. Student Memoir http://pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir.htm. The good thing about it is that it contains rather report, than merely a conclusion. Plus, it is written in a neutral way, leaving judgement to the reader. When it comes to anecdotical evidence (both the linked article + most of stories in this thread are one data point) also http://www.phdcomics.com/ (in short, equating PhD with stress, procrastination and frustration) is popular for a reason.

    Among my friends, ones doing their PhD are lot more depressive than programers.

    The "funny" thing is that (according to my observation) burnout and crisis hits the most the most creative and ambitious ones (and often - talented). If one starts with a world changer approach but then discovers that "you are free as long as it contains keywords from the grant + will result in a popular publication on a fashionable topic" is devastating. My friends who had approach "OK, I don't have ambition to do anything beyond what my advisor says" do much better, at least - psychologically.

    One thing is that "the world is changed" - and no longer academia is the place for the smartest and the most creative. There are other possibilities. And I wish I had known that before.

    Caveat: I'm in the middle of my PhD. Then going to data science or software engineering, after finishing PhD... or instead of it.

  1968. Designers Will Code 2013-01-30 19:53:17 andrewcooke
    its unfortunate that not many programmers are going to read this (i wasn't going to until faced with the dire necessity to procrastinate) because there's some impressive information about quora's backend^Wmiddleware (what would you call it?) in there. they seem to have very good support for integrated, componentalized dynamic update. i wonder if they will ever open source it?

  1969. A Short Rant About Working Remotely 2013-02-01 00:16:52 rwhitman
    A few notes from someone who's worked remotely roughly 60% of the last 10 years -

    1) Most investors know that startups are generally at a disadvantage with a remote team and give founders shit for hiring remote people. I've found thats one of the reasons early stage folks don't hire more remote people. And there is some truth to being more creative with a team around you... if the team is awesome. Also communication is infinitely easier when you can walk over to someone and ask them a question rather than wait for them to respond to an email

    2) Working remotely when you are self-directed and not under tons of pressure, really does lead to awful productivity. At home there are just so many ways to procrastinate

    3) However, you can be more productive from home when on a tight deadline. No coworkers bugging you and the music cranked however loud you want, working whatever hours you want means laser-focus for some people.

    4) A good checkin routine is key. I've been most productive and been in productive remote teams when there is a routine like a morning "standup" call, and maybe an afternoon call. A good ticket tracker is crucial. Working for folks who use the phone a lot tends to have the most productive outcome

    5) There are a lot more small companies who use all remote workers than you think. But they hide in the shadows, and typically are very unsexy cashflow oriented businesses, not venture backed startups. If you're willing to work for consulting businesses that do boring backend for big corps you can find good remote work. But if sexy startups are your thing, expect to get a lot of hesitation until you really prove yourself...

    6) Change environments. Sometimes the house can stagnate - spend part of your day in a coffee shop, lease a desk in a cowork space etc and change up workspace once in a while. It helps me at least

  1970. A Short Rant About Working Remotely 2013-02-01 03:37:44 chalst
    2) Working remotely when you are self-directed and not under tons of pressure, really does lead to awful productivity. At home there are just so many ways to procrastinate

    This is not true for everyone. There is a huge variance in how vulnerable people are to procrastination.

  1971. Concerns About A.D.H.D. Practices and Amphetamine Addiction 2013-02-04 01:02:33 danneu

        > ...when he was in elementary school he fidgeted, 
    > daydreamed and got As. he has been an A-B student 
    > until mid college when he became scattered and he 
    > wandered while reading He never had to study. Presently
    > without medication, his mind thinks most of the time, 
    > he procrastinated, he multitasks not finishing in a 
    > timely manner.

    > His father reacted with surprise. Richard had never
    > shown any A.D.H.D. symptoms his entire life, from 
    > nursery school through high school,
    This is precisely how my parents reacted when they found out I was taking amphetamine to control some sort of abject ADHD specter in university.

    "But Dan, you never had problems with focus and performance. You're a smart kid! You always made A's in school!"

    There's a jarring problem with this analysis. The truth is I've struggled with focus my entire life. It just so happened that university is the first time school surmounted my lack of focus or, more precisely, my willpower.

    Thankfully I arrived at a low dose of amphetamine which is the only reason I've been able to work towards my life ambitions.

    Addiction is always serious. And the cases in this article involve classic stimulant abuse. There are certainly conversations to be had. Not just about amphetamines, but also about the structures of our society that make amphetamine so sought after. Why was I psychoanalyzed in grade school when I didn't want to sit in a chair for 8 hours? Why do people only see "drug problem" when they hear about amphetamine availability across campuses instead of "systemic education system failure"?

    But what I'm concerned about is an encroaching universal condemnation of ADHD medication where people may eventually roll their eyes at you when you seek help for a problem that inhibits your ambitions and squares your life away at a fraction of your full potential.

  1972. Concerns About A.D.H.D. Practices and Amphetamine Addiction 2013-02-04 02:04:52 Adirael
    It's been so overly diagnosed that right now the opposite is started to happen. There's a lot of doctors and people diminishing it, and even saying it's no real sickness.

    I was a straight A student until I finished high school. Not because I focused and studied but because the level was shitty and it was enough for me to be sitting in class to known enough about the subjects. I started failing when classes became so boring and I became old enough to be skipping class.

    I was diagnosed at 22-23 and took medication for almost a year. My productivity was better on those months and it helped me gain some structure and organization I lacked. I stopped taking medication because I moved to a different part of the country and I didn't want to waste time seeing doctors (I needed to change meds as the ones I was taking were making me angry all the time).

    I'm good enough now. Sure, I'm still more or less a mess and I do procrastinate a lot, but those months gave me enough willpower and organizative skills to be able to get things done.

  1973. The Joy of Flying AR Drones with Clojure 2013-02-05 12:33:34 asimjalis
    I kept procrastinating on working on AR-Drone because I didnt want to do it in JavaScript. This is great.

  1974. PBSs Silicon Valley to Debut Tonight 2013-02-06 11:49:58 brewdad
    If it's like most other PBS shows, tomorrow it will be available in its entirety. They want you to watch it on your television if possible, then give you the opportunity to see it online after it's aired. It may only be available online for a limited time though, so don't procrastinate too long.

  1975. Microsoft looking to release Office for Linux in 2014 2013-02-07 16:22:18 josteink
    That's a workaround, and a US-only one so, for those who are very, very eager to run Office.

    It's not a natural first option for writing documents if you're on a device which already has Google Docs, Polaris Office, Kingsoft Office or anything like that.

    In fact, most people will probably never even consider it an option. At least not until Microsoft provides a native version of Office for their preferred procrastination platform.

    And kids growing up these days spend more (most?) of their time on mobile devices, running iOS or Android, or when on a laptop, 99% of the time in a browser.

    The time when people grew up and learnt Microsoft by default is definitely over. These days you can actually grow up, learn computers and internet without ever once using Microsoft software. It's not that far fetched.

    This is Microsoft's problem. They can no longer claim to be the one default everyone knows, uses and are familiar with (and hence prefer).

  1976. Why Real Businesses Don't Charge $5/month 2013-02-13 06:09:57 ahoyhere
    False dichotomy. There are a million other potential explanations. As for what it is in each specific case, quite possibly different.

    For us, it's a combination of factors:

    1. Our lower plan is for freelancers. Freelancers are basically by nature unprofessional, and suck at business. (Saying this as a former freelancer who fit that bill for a long time.) Freelancers go out of business all the time, and they also don't engage in professional practices with any great will. Larger plans -> larger teams -> more professional and more durable as a business. They also tend to evaluate software more carefully and then stick with what they pick because A) they don't get paid to try out infinite software packages, B) they do actually want to get paid and not procrastinate or diddle around pretending to look for the perfect tool, C) getting a whole team off one tool and onto another takes valuable time & energy away from actual work.

    2. Cheap customers are always the worst. Always. This cuts across all industries. People who shop on price are not the people you want to deal with they are the most demanding and again far more likely to quit! You'd think lower prices would mean lower expectations but it seems the opposite is true. These people can scent a low price a mile away through the muddy waters of the internet, and once you attract them, the only way to shake them is to raise your prices.

    We have friends who run software that's more urgently needed than time tracking something that couldn't, theoretically, be replaced by a nasty Excel spreadsheet -- and they see exactly the same behavior even though in theory even their smallest, cheapest customers ought to be professional and on the high end of the tech savvy scale. You simply cannot believe how much happier they are since they dropped their lower plans entirely.

    We too have seen a decline in crazy support emails since we raised our prices across the board.

  1977. March 16, USPTO switches from 'first to invent' to 'first to file' 2013-02-13 22:10:40 ansible
    ... the electronic braille reader industry for the blind. This is a multi-billion a year industry that has stagnated and seen no innovation or development in 30 years.

    Yesterday I had run into a discussion about blind programmers, and what technology they use. Rather than using TTS I think I would (were I blind, I'm not) use a braille terminal instead. Out of curiosity (or perhaps procrastination), I starting looking around at those, and they didn't seem much advanced, and very expensive.

    I was thinking that instead of having the the braille "display" below the keyboard, I'd really rather have a small wireless version that I can pop in my mouth and read with my tongue. That way I could still touch-type on a regular keyboard. I think that would make me much more productive than constantly having to move my hands back and forth. Maybe use Bluetooth with Serial Port Profile, and then it would be easy to connect it to phones and PCs.

  1978. Ask HN: Does having a hobby make you more efficient at work? 2013-02-14 05:47:26 nicholas73
    You procrastinate because you have an unpleasant task that is not internally motivated. A part of you hopes it will go away, so you delay starting. Only when time is running out do you realize you need to get on it. The trick is to find something you would do on your own time.

    IMO, a hobby merely helps you spend the time you would have wasted procrastinating.

    You are at a golden age where you can choose any path. Don't procrastinate on that. One day you will have to spend all your waking hours working to pay the bills, and changing course then will be doubly hard.

    Though, by all means find a hobby, because that teaches you more about what you'd like to do.

  1979. Seven Habits Of Highly Effective Mediocre People 2013-02-15 00:25:12 simonsarris
    Uh oh. The title reeks of linkbait.

    > Ive never done anything that stands out. No Whoa! This guy made it into outer space! or, This guy has a best selling novel! or, If only Google had thought of this!

    "The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else's highlight reel." (Steven Furtick), etc, etc

    > Ive started a bunch of companies. Sold some. Failed at most. Ive invested in a bunch of startups. Sold some. Failed at some, and the jury is still sequestered on a few others.

    Okay the title is really slipping here. Who wrote this?

    Oh. James Altucher. That guy submits a lot of articles here. And that's okay. Some of them are pretty good! But being the goddamn prince of link-bait titles leaves me with a sour taste.

    http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=jaltucher

    "I Want My Kids to Be Drug Addicts", "How to Be An Effective Loser", "10 Reasons I'm Giving Up On Having Opinions" (the jokes on us there.), etc, etc

    Anyway, back to the article. The problem with articles like these is that they're 2 parts enjoyable read, 7 parts snark and 1 part decent advice. It's not a bad article, but I'm certain you could get the same information across with just as much amusement while still toning down the Malcolm-Gladwell-esque linkbait-snark machine.

    A few things that stood out to me:

    > Procrastination could also be a strong sign that youre a perfectionist, or that youre filled with shame issues. This will block you from building and selling your business. Examine your procrastination from every side. Its your body trying to tell you something. Listen to it.

    I think that bears repeating as worthwhile, sincere advice.

    > Out of silence comes the greatest creativity. Not when we are rushing and panicking.

    My Bosnian sculpture teacher always said the exact opposite. Once most artists tend to "make it" and live very comfortably, they tend to stop producing as much. When times are tough, when their mind is filled with desperation, is when they tend to make their greatest pieces, he'd say. I have no idea if this is true or not, but it's always made me wonder. Certainly, for me doing programming and writing, I need to be clear-headed and emotionally unperturbed, etc, but maybe its different per person or discipline.

  1980. Poll: Would you like to have "hide" button for stories 2013-02-15 21:22:16 Tichy
    I'd like that because it would prevent me from rescanning the homepage over and over again, and eventually reading even the stuff I don't really want to read because I am procrastinating. I'd like to decide once "don't want to read" and be done with it.

  1981. Heroku - Bamboo Routing Performance 2013-02-16 05:04:21 habosa
    So do the issues in the RapGenius post only affect those on the Bamboo stack? I'm procrastinating migrating to Cedar now but this could be a very good reason.

    Also, I really love seeing a company take responsibility like this. I know the situations (and the stakes) are not comparable but this is a lot better than what Musk did when Tesla got a bad review. As a company just take the blame and say you can and will fix it, that's good enough for most people.

  1982. The psychology of how being told what to do impacts our productivity 2013-02-17 22:21:11 goldfeld
    Wow, psychological reactance.. there's a name for my illness! I thought I was the only freak who procrastinated immensely on a task just because someone ordered me to do it--especially if I was just about to do it anyways. Since I was a kid I would get bummed because if I did as ordered, the person would think I was only doing it because I was told, and self motivation has always been my biggest driver. Luckily I love my day job exactly for the lack of direct pressure from superiors.

  1983. Ask HN: Tools of the trade, 2013 edition 2013-02-17 22:43:37 sergiotapia
    I STRONGLY recommend Asana: http://www.asana.com

    It's like using a smart piece of paper that just gets out of your way and let's you create, assign, toggle, set dates, etc really intuitively.

    I'm a freelancer - and for my usage I typically have a Workspace called Freelance Projects. In that workspace I have many projects, each for each freelance gig I land. I then invite my client (YOU CAN INVITE UP TO 30 PEOPLE PER PROJECT FOR FREE HOLY BALLS) and collaborate intuitively from there.

    He/she can upload photoshop files, images, text files, edit desriptions and I can comment on them and we go back and forth. Better than email. I used to procrastinate a lot. It was my achille's heel; but since Asana I enjoy working because there's something deeply psychological in ticking things off and seeing them grayed out.If you haven't checked it out.

    There's also Trello but I kind of dislike it when there are more than 5 items in a list. It gets unwiedly.

  1984. HN is 6 today. Here's traffic since the beginning 2013-02-21 18:35:01 phryk
    So basically just about everybody is reading HN only at work. Procrastinators, ahoy!

  1985. What Your Startup Culture Really Says: the toxic lies afoot in Silicon Valley 2013-02-22 03:07:34 tptacek
    I'm not here to judge you. If you think the gender of the author had no impact on you, that's great. I'm just suggesting that we keep our subconscious biases in mind as we evaluate arguments.

    I don't know what forms of discrimination you do or don't condone. You point out that love of sports is not a protected class; from that, I infer that you might be OK with the idea of discriminating based on that; you are, in fact, (gently) sticking up for that behavior.

    I also don't know what forms of discrimination you're aware of. It is clear to me that the operators of many tech startups are not aware of the impact their "culture" has on their inclusiveness. Most of those operators would claim not to be biased against e.g. mothers, but many would in fact be creating environments hostile to them anyways.

    When we start to venture into this discussion, it's important for you to realize that we are also validating the post that you've dismissed. Perhaps we're using language that is more congenial to you; that's a fair thing to point out, but if so, again, I suggest you re-read and re-evaluate the post, because you may have missed other things in it.

    It is all love with me and this comment.

    And procrastination

  1986. The Net Is a Waste of Time (1996) 2013-02-22 10:01:47 OGinparadise
    " Wonder what headlines we'll make fun of in 17 years?"

    "Smartphones are a waste of time"----if you waste your time on them with useless apps and especially if you get in the stupid game of telling everyone, every bite you take.

    Gibson realized it was a double edged sword, useful but also a procrastinator's dream.

  1987. I Can't Find a Single Productive Use For My Tablet 2013-02-24 01:07:18 spython
    I found the iPad to be a better media consumption device than my laptop. Which means that I rarely spend my non-productive time on the laptop. Which in turn creates a higher spatial divide between work and entertainment, creating designated places for each. That alone makes me less likely to procrastinate and more productive.

  1988. I Can't Find a Single Productive Use For My Tablet 2013-02-24 08:56:56 vetinari
    Switching devices is a feature, not a worry.

    On laptop/desktop, you know you are working. You don't procrastinate.

    On tab, you know you are entertaining yourself. You are in "definitely not working" mode.

    Surface Pro breaks this paradigm.

  1989. Ask HN:How do you manage to go through loads of infos to build a product? 2013-02-24 23:09:13 lnanek2
    Yes, agreed. OP shouldn't be out trying to learn JavaScript, take classes, etc.. OP should be out trying to learn how to do a specific thing they ran into problems implementing - how to loop through a set of things that each take a callback in NodeJS and run something when done, etc..

    The amount of general learning people do nowadays should probably just be classified as procrastination. Easier to read a book or take a class than actually sit down and write something. So there are people who just do that constantly and never actually build anything.

  1990. How Doers Do 2013-02-25 05:01:52 jodi
    This seems like he's really just diverting to a more fun project as a way to procrastinate and still feel productive. His Jekyll project will still have those pull requests and issues to weed through at the end of the day :)

  1991. How to start working on side projects 2013-02-25 06:56:34 overgard
    A shorter version: close browser, write code.

    "How to" articles are an easy way to procrastinate, unless you're legitimately stuck on something.

  1992. How to start working on side projects 2013-02-26 01:17:18 goldfeld
    I agree focus is the most important thing but I love having something like a half-dozen projects going on at any time. I can easily procrastinate on not doing one of them when I don't feel like by doing another, and six times slower they all move forward whereas maybe if I had just one it would be six times faster split between my project and idle browsing the web.

  1993. Bad sleep 'dramatically' alters body 2013-02-27 00:51:11 littledot5566
    From my personal experiences, having a quality roommate (not in same bed) forces me to adopt a normal sleep schedule. I don't want my activities to wake my roommate up and turn his day bad, so I sleep shortly after my roommate goes to bed. But when I live alone, I procrastinate my sleep, I would rather watch videos than go to bed, it wouldn't disturb anyone anyways, and the chances of having an abnormal sleep schedule becomes the norm.

    Perhaps there is some psychological/social aspects to sleeping and what you and I have described falls into this aspect.

  1994. Marissa Mayer is killing telecommuting, and thats a good thing 2013-03-01 23:50:39 kyllo
    >Family historian Stephanie Coontz writes that todays workforce is so demanding that families can only handle having one person in the workforce. She shows how the average work week does not allow for people to take care of children, which means that one partner needs to drop out of the workforce and take care of kids.

    No, no, no, no, no. This is not the way of the future, or even the way of today. This is a throwback to the past. Yahoo has a productivity problem because of incompetent management that cannot measure productivity, and sees butts-in-seats as the only way to start. They are regressing. Because of their dysfunction, they are trying to solve a problem that better companies already solved years ago.

    A person simply cannot work productively for 12-16 hours a day over a career. You start to see diminishing returns at about six hours, and after nine or ten, the only reason you're still there is social climbing. And because you know you're not going home early no matter what, because you basically live at the office, you will naturally take breaks, screw off, and procrastinate. Working 8 to 8 for an Asian megacorp, I have seen it so many times. On the other hand, bankers, management consultants, lawyers, and startup founders who actually work hard 12-16 hours a day do not and cannot do it for a long career, they are running a sprint not a marathon to maximize short-term earnings in the hopes that they will reach their finish line, achieve "f--- you money" and be able to retire before they burn out.

  1995. Ask HN: Your favorite to-do list or task manager? 2013-03-03 21:38:23 kennu
    I also recommend Things, because it's an app that makes you feel good if you're into OS X and iOS style user interfaces. I bought it years ago, but truly started using it when they got the Things Cloud sync working.

    So now I always keep it open on all my Macs (I switch between 3). It's always up-to-date, shows the number of tasks pending for today in the Dock icon, and it's comfortable to very quickly switch to the app, and create new tasks or mark old ones done. And when you're procrastinating, you can organize the tasks into projects and drag'n'drop them around, enter tags and descriptions, etc.

    I think you can achieve the same with any todo list app or even text files, but Things makes it look and feel nice.

  1996. Ask HN: Is 25 too late to become a proficient developer? 2013-03-04 11:57:47 shyn3
    Nothing is too late in life. Stop procrastinating.

  1997. Adderall Addiction: The Last All-Nighter 2013-03-05 16:02:38 thelogos
    A large part of the blame lays on her.

    IMO adderall's mechanism is much more severe on neurons than methylphenidate. It's very well proven that amphetamine/methamphetamine increases the level of free dopamine in the cytosol which are prone to auto-oxidation to quinones. This wreaks all sort of havoc over the long-term.

    Methylphenidate(ritalin) and its stereoisomer stay cleanly outside the presynaptic neurons and only blocks NET and DAT from pumping NE and DA back inside the cell. Unlike amphetamine, it doesnt disrupt the pH gradient of the vesicle membrane and cause an abnormal amount of dopamine to leak and accumulate in the cytosol.

    Personally, I would never take adderall/vyvanse/dexedrine.

    As a counterexample, let me give you my experience. After being prescribed focalin, my gpa shot through the roof. This stuff actually improved my health.

    How?

    Instead of pulling all nighters and procrastinating like I used to, this stuff allows me to get work done weeks early and go to sleep on time.

    I learned calculus in 1 week, bought a piano and taught myself how to play moonlight sonata 1st mvt and kiss the rain in 3 weeks (working on bach air in d major at the moment).

    Oh yea, I also read the entire lehninger biochem book and bernard milller's advanced organic chemistry for fun in my own time. Then a whole world of research papers were discovered through the uni library subscription :>

    This stuff allows you to learn at an alarming rate if used properly.

    I don't drink alcohol on days of studying because it prevents LTM formation, you're basically wasting your time studying if you do this. Also I never waste my time with people while medicated. This stuff can make you socially awkward and kill your sense of humor. Take it only for the singular purpose of learning and getting work done.

    I took extra care with my health, ate blueberries, avocado, eggs, brocoli, meat, etc., lots of lycopene, astaxanthin, R-lipoic acid, melatonin and 8 hours of sleep.

    Tolerance will go up very slowly with frequent breaks and essentially goes back to zero with a month break. For adderall, this will take much longer, some people will even develop permanent tolerance that will never go away.

    On days when I dont take focalin, I sit around, sip on a beer and browse HN ;)

  1998. Inspiration is procrastinations cousin 2013-03-11 23:40:27 mrcharles
    I find that I agree with the article, but thought that the article would be about how inspiration itself can be procrastination. I know I have a problem where I constantly have so many good ideas that I end up stuck in a loop of never finishing, as I keep moving on to the next idea, or working on multiple things at once.

  1999. Ask HN: Getting out of severe procrastination and a lack of motivation? 2013-03-13 04:13:10 gesman
    At the root of every procrastination is suppressed fear. Fear of failure, fear of punishment for not being good enough, fear of shame, fear of success. Specifics doesn't matter. You may temporarily overpower fear with positive emotions or sparks of activities which works while it last. The real solution is to actually look at this fear, feel it fully. You attention to fear dissolves it irreversibly.

    Roughly: trigger the fear (which will be felt like strong a discomfort) by trying to do something you procrastinate about. Locate it inside your body. Feel it fully within yourself. Breathe. Rinse and repeat. The more direct focused attention you put into fear directly (within your body, not within your mind) - the more it will dissolve.

  2000. Ask HN: Getting out of severe procrastination and a lack of motivation? 2013-03-14 03:54:29 terrykohla
    You may be the type of person who is undecided by nature and likes to "go with the flow" depending on your mood, prefers to improvise rather than sticking to a plan, easy going and that's just part of your personality, you're a procrastinator by nature when it comes to sticking to the plan and performing tedious tasks that must get done. If this is your case I simply recommend to spend some time doing things you like, things that energize you, things that get you in a good mood, to get your energy levels up. Once you get there use some of that energy to start planing, make a calendar with your goals and write down your achievements. Do this little by little, baby steps. This is imperative to achieve your goals, therefore you need to go do something else, get energize, come back and do it little by little until it becomes programmed in your super-smart brain. Learn to recognize what energizes you and what drains you and use that to empower you rather than depress you.

  2001. We're Building A Reader 2013-03-15 05:20:47 notatoad
    I see two big shuffles: there's one right now, when all the proactive people are finding replacements for google reader. There will be another when google reader actually shuts down, when all the procrastinators are looking for a replacement.

  2002. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 09:05:58 Swizec
    "You see, procrastinators tend to be people who have, for whatever reason, developed to perceive an unusually strong association between their performance and their value as a person. This makes failure or criticism disproportionately painful, which leads naturally to hesitancy when it comes to the prospect of doing anything that reflects their ability which is pretty much everything."

    I disagree.

    My reasons for procrastination go like this:

    1. I don't know yet how to tackle the problem. (and I munge on it in the back of my mind while procrastinating)

    2. I am tired, but don't want to admit it. (and procrastination is faux rest)

    3. I'm pushing off committing to doing X because finally jumping in is scary. (it closes options to doing something else and humans would rather do nothing and have many options than do something and have no options)

    4. X just isn't that important to me right now. (it's much easier to clean the kitchen before cooking, than randomly in the middle of the day)

  2003. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 09:24:49 jmj42
    I disagree as well. My reasons for procrastination tend to fall around artificially creating a high stress situation. You see, I perform very well (very high productivity) under stress, to the extent that high performance may actually be a stress coping mechanism for stress.

    I certainly do not procrastinate because I'm lazy, or have poor work ethic, or even risk averse. You can ask my family about that one. None of them would describe me as risk averse.

    For me, it really comes down to stress as a motivator. Procrastination means doing things at the last moment, which creates an artificially stressful situation.

    It may also be interesting to note that I do not suffer from any traditional high stress related health issues. My doctor recently commented that I am in exceptional health for my age (mid-thirties)

  2004. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 09:25:22 jongold
    "You see, procrastinators tend to be people who have, for whatever reason, developed to perceive an unusually strong association between their performance and their value as a person. This makes failure or criticism disproportionately painful, which leads naturally to hesitancy when it comes to the prospect of doing anything that reflects their ability which is pretty much everything."

    What's most cutting reading that paragraph is how true it is, and how much of my self-worth I feel diminished by admitting that.

    I've got better recently, but that post really hit home.

  2005. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 09:26:51 ChuckMcM
    My biggest source of procrastination is the fear of making a change that can't be undone. I find this particularly challenging on projects around the house like putting in a new door, and having the door ready to be hung on and knowing if I screw up the hings placement I need to get a new door. Blam! I procrastinate the crap out of taking the irreversible step of routering in the hinge mounts. I have to sit down and give myself permission to buy a new door if I screw up, and even then it's painful to move forward.

    I never really thought of it as a judgmental problem (self worth related) so much as a sort of efficiency problem (hate to have wasted all that resource (time, money, whatever)). One of the weird things about quitting World of Warcraft was that I played hours on that game, so I could pretty much do anything and it would be less wasteful of my time than that. So for a while that was a great crutch, "We'll hey, I didn't get much done but if I had been playing WoW I wouldn't have gotten anything done."

  2006. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 09:39:19 mikeash
    Yes, some people may procrastinate due to fear of failure, but it seems clear that it's not universal. I know I'm not procrastinating on filing my taxes right now because I fear failure somehow. There's not much failure to be had, and I'm comfortable with the process and have a great accountant who helps me through it. I just don't feel like doing it right now, because the process itself is painful. I'd rather have silly conversations on the internet than dig through paperwork. It seems to simply be a matter of valuing immediate rewards more highly than distant ones. And this applies almost everywhere. The immediate reward of eating a donut can be far more prominent than the delayed reward of eating healthy. The immediate reward of spending money on dinner delivery outweighs the delayed reward of saving money. This seems to me a far more fundamental and interesting problem than fear of failure.

  2007. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 09:42:06 Isamu
    Let me second the OP and recommend Neil Fiore's book "The Now Habit".

    There are lots of good strategies in that book, such as:

    The Unschedule

      * a weekly calendar of committed recreational activities and breaks, meals, etc
  * productive periods of work are recorded after they are accomplished
  * encourages starting earlier on projects once you see 
    how much time is already committed
  * 30 minute chunks of productive work - too small to be intimidating
    Leverage Reverse psychology:

      * do not work more than 20 hours a week on this project
  * do not work more than 5 hours a day on this project
  * you must play or exercise at least one hour per day
  * you must take at least one day a week off from any work
  * do only 30 minute chunks without reward / break
  * work for an imperfect, human, first effort
  * start small
    Builds up an unconscious desire to work more and play less

    Schedule only:

      * previously committed time - meals, sleep, meetings
  * free time, recreation, leisure reading
  * socializing
  * exercise
  * routine events - commuting, classes, appointments
  * Fill in periods of productive work only after completing 
    a 30-minute chunk
  * take credit only for 30 minutes of uninterrupted work
  * reward each chunk with a break or a change to a more enjoyable task
  * track the number of productive hours by day and week.
  * always have at least one full day of recreation or enjoyable tasks
  * before recreation, take time for one 30-minute chunk of project work
  * focus on starting
  * think small
  * keep starting, finishing will take care of itself
  * never stop when you are blocked or at the end of a section; 
    push through a block or start a new section before stopping
    Benefits:

      * realistic timekeeping
  * avoid feeling overwhelmed
  * allows you to experience success
  * deadlines are self-imposed
  * new-found free time
    I also recommend another book (by another psychologist): "The Procrastination Equation" by Piers Steel.

    The second book is partly at odds with the first, so I leave it to you to see which better describes what you observe.

    Summary of The Procrastination Equation:

    Perfectionism does not lead to procrastination - this is well studied. It may be that they are thought to be linked because of the cases where there is this discrepancy in behavior. Procrastination is a result of impulsiveness. Self-control and delaying gratification are key to controlling procrastination.

    Procrastinators suffer from

      * weak impulse control
  * lack of persistence
  * lack of work discipline
  * lack of time management skill
  * inability to work methodically
    Motivation can be modeled by

      * (expectancy * value) / (impulsiveness * delay)
  * The numerator is Expected Utility Theory in economics
  * Expectancy is the perceived likelihood of reward or success
  * Value is the perceived value of the reward
  * Delay is the perceived delay in receiving the reward
  * Impulsiveness is the tendency to (irrationally) pursue immediate reward instead
    Expectancy - optimism, expectation of success

      * too much pessimism causes procrastination - 
    low expectation of success keeps us from starting
  * too much optimism causes procrastination - 
    unrealistic ease of success causes delay of starting until the last moment
    techniques for improving optimism:

      * success spirals - progressive series of successes build  
    confidence (e.g. earning scout badges). regularly
    stretching your limits is important to teach yourself 
    confidence in your ability to tackle something difficult
  * vicarious victory - relating to someones success story, 
    finding inspiration in books, movies, inspirational speakers, 
    joining a group of inspirational people
  * wish fulfillment - visualization of success and contrasting with 
    where you are now. Visualization that only focuses on the goal may 
    drain motivation to complete the necessary steps. 
    As you visualize attaining the goal and then contrasting the current
    situation, maintain your optimism so that you can translate this 
    visualization into a plan of action.
  * Plan for the worst, hope for the best - develop strategies to recover 
    from falling back into old habits. Anticipate temptations and find ways
    to counter them.

  2008. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 09:45:22 Swizec
    No, it's not a fear of incompetence. It's seriously just a problem of working out what exactly I want to do.

    Good case in point from this week: "Write a book chapter on d3 layouts".

    Now that's a very vague task and it takes some thinking to even get started on it. You have to even decide what the first step towards a solution is and once you do have it, you then have to do the creative part of figuring out how to write about it.

    Creative tasks in particular do not resolve themselves with a focused step-by-step approach, you must solve them by procrastinating (ie. slowly thinking about them freely).

  2009. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 10:23:06 throwaway_20
    If you have persistent, severe problems with procrastination, willpower, and organization, don't rule out the possibility of an attention disorder. Smart people can often scrape by -- but proper diagnosis and management could dramatically help and improve your life.

  2010. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 10:53:08 bitsoda
    "Don't wait until you feel like doing something"

    That's the one sentence solution described by Oliver Burkeman that has remained in my Pinboard.

    http://www.oliverburkeman.com/blog/posts/the-one-sentence-so...

    This article describes procrastination as two demons you need to conquer: the first is doing the actual task, while the second is to get into a certain state of mind or mood that makes you want to do the task. By setting up two barriers to getting the task done, you're likely to procrastinate further.

    The "just do it" mantra jettisons the "I need to feel like doing the task before I do the task" roadblock. What you'll find is that once you actually start working on your task, you're more likely to continue along merrily, wondering why you even resisted starting in the first place. This almost always works for me. Give it a shot.

  2011. Wealth, risk, and stuff 2013-03-15 11:18:48 bobwaycott
    Your suggestion has a nice staccato rhythm, somewhat building pith as it goes. I like the way it flows.

    I'd write something like:

    > As with carrying, so with owning in general. Poor people aren't too dumb to see the virtue of living with less; they own more to reduce risk.

    Keep it focused on ownership (not clutter), with a slight nod back to the original article to which the author is responding.

    From my vantage point, 'have clutter' unnecessarily problematizes communicating the core idea--poor people aren't too dumb to appreciate the value of living with fewer possessions. I suggest eschewing 'clutter' altogether, because it implies messiness in addition to more things, increasing the negative tone. This is the only place 'clutter' shows up in the text--a conspicuous word choice in the midst of an article discussing quantity of possessions as a signal of one's wealth (as opposed to the organization and tidiness of one's possessions). A poor person with cleaning compulsions might own more to mitigate risks, but have it neatly tucked away and unobservable, thus making the messy, rich person with fewer possessions look like the one with clutter.

    Note: Getting sidetracked by comments on sentence structure may be the signal that I've successfully procrastinated other work long enough.

  2012. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 11:18:50 desireco42
    I think you better expand this in blog post :) I really enjoyed OP post, but your comment is what genuinely I believe most people have as procrastination, it is normal and your way of handling it is very good.

  2013. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 11:49:08 matterhorn
    As a World Champion Grandmaster Super Kingpin Big Daddy Procrastinator, I have to say...yes, it is indeed laziness.

  2014. Wealth, risk, and stuff 2013-03-15 11:52:16 Pitarou
    > Note: Getting sidetracked by comments on sentence structure may be the signal that I've successfully procrastinated other work long enough.

    Tell me about it. Anyway, how's this:

    > The rich have savings accounts and insurance; the poor stockpile junk.

  2015. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 11:57:40 lukevdp
    I agree.

    I find for me I don't really identify with the "fear of failure", yet I do have a problem with procrastination.

    I find tasks that I enjoy, or tasks where I am working towards a goal, easy to start and do. I find it hard to work on tasks where the task leads nowhere (the example of doing taxes is the perfect example)

  2016. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 12:19:35 duck
    Actually, this post is from 2011 as well: http://www.raptitude.com/2011/05/procrastination-is-not-lazi...

  2017. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 12:36:19 tapp
    Writing this quickly because I'm about to run out the door, so please excuse the incomplete answer.

    In brief, aside from simply recognizing it intellectually (which alone helped me a lot,) I'd start by literally following the advice I wrote above and remove the phrase from your vocabulary. i.e. Don't say things like "I really have to get caught up this weekend." It's a hopelessly imprecise statement that, if you're like me, primarily just engenders stress and shame. Instead use active language re: precise tasks. e.g. "I'm going to fix my bike and go to the store this afternoon."

    Fiore does talk a lot about similar language issues in the Now Habit. For example, he stresses the importance of saying things like "I choose to work on this report now" versus "I have to work on this report now."

    His argument is that the latter promotes a victimhood mentality leading to resentment and then procrastination.

    He also points out that it's simply untrue. If you're going to be precise, there's very little you have to do - there are simply things you choose to do because either you enjoy them, or because you prefer the consequences of having done them versus not having done them.

    Hope that helps!

  2018. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 13:27:49 calhoun137
    I have a very different take than this author, and apparently many of the people in this thread.

    I absolutely love to procrastinate and it's very important to me. Actually I am procrastinating by writing this comment right now. Allow me to explain:

    When I program, or do math, it's very important to me to have a clear head; and I take procrastinating very seriously because I know if I don't do certain things then I will have a hard time concentrating when I sit down to work, and that will prevent me from going into "the zone", or achieving what some people call "flow".

    There is such a huge difference between not only the amount of work I get down, but the quality of that work, when I am in the zone as opposed to when I am not; and procrastinating is sort of a ritual for me. I have to have a clean room, I have to have my desk nice and tidy, I have to have a glass of water, or a cup of coffee, in the same place on my desk that it always goes, I need to open my notebook to review my notes from the day before, and so on. Maybe I'm slightly OCD, but I do these things on purpose as part of a ritual to get into the zone.

    If I have an urge to check HN, I log in and do it. Otherwise when I start working I have an awful nagging thought that won't go away saying "hey you know, there is probably something awesome on HN!" and the fact is I need that extra space in my brain to load up all the details of the code I am working on.

    Then I load up my music playlist, put on my headphones, fire up my code editor, and the next thing I know it's 4 hours later and my stomach is growling because I have completely lost track of time. Guess what? Time to procrastinate again, otherwise productivity starts trailing off, and the quality of the work suffers.

    Sometimes I keep coding anyway, but then I come back the next day and say to myself, "Jesus, what was I thinking when I wrote this crap! I wish I hadn't closed Eclipse before I went to bed, because now I can't ctrl-z out of this mess!" So it's actually a bad idea for me to keep programming when I start getting distracted by random things because then I have to waste a bunch of time the next time I sit down, just undoing a bunch of crap.

    I love procrastinating, and I don't consider it a form of laziness at all, but just for a different reason.

  2019. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 13:52:11 SoftwareMaven
    That doesn't sound like procrastination to me as much as it sounds like a ritual. I say that because the steps, even though completely unrelated to what you want to accomplish, are still moving you closer to accomplishing your goals.

    For those of us whose procrastination has had a negative impact, those steps invariably drive us further from what we want to accomplish.

  2020. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 14:13:02 billmorris813
    While making To-do lists is useful, I find that tackling low-hanging fruit is the best way to slowly but surely start overcoming procrastination.

  2021. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 14:19:17 SoftwareMaven
    Horrible arrow buttons that can't be undone. I want to first apologize for having my thumb slide past the down arrow.

    Second, I completely understand the feeling of isolation and loneliness. And it makes it hard, if one's nature is to procrastinate, to push through. I've started talking more about my project with people in an effort to encourage myself to want to show more progress. And, yet, here I am. :/

  2022. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 14:26:57 marknutter
    Has the OP ever considered that they may not actually like what they do for a living? They mention a few times in the post that one of the ways they procrastinate is to "try a new recipe" or "watch a documentary". For me, I procrastinate from cooking by programming, because programming is much mor enjoyable to me. Heck, I even enjoy programming more than most recreational activities. Perhaps the OP should pursue the culinary arts, or become a documenteur, or an expert on the psychology of procrastination given how long and in-depth this post is. Seriously, it's a 2600 word article that I have no doubt the author wrote instead of doing something else they were "supposed to be doing". But should they really be doing it, or feeling guilty for not?

    I say this because I spent 7 years in college bouncing from degree to degree, finally settling on physics of all things, not because I had a burning passion for physics but because my father had always held it in such high regard and had such high expectations for me. Every day was a struggle against procrastination. It's funny because I wrote countless self-addressed pieces like the OP's lamenting my battle with procrastination and what to do about it; I even kept track of the different strategies I'd employ, which all inevitably failed.

    Turns out it wasn't that I was broken in some way and it wasn't a problem I could fix. I just didn't want professional physicist, and although I did graduate (thanks grade inflation!) I haven't so much as touched a Lorentz transformation or Feynman graph since. I wanted to build things, not discover things, and programming rubbed me in all the right ways. I now have the complete opposite problem the OP has; I work too much, am very productive, and it frankly it affects my liesure life. I haven't finished a video game in years.

    I'll close with one last bit of wisdom I learned from my father. No matter what my Dad does for the day, whether it was ten important things or 1 seemingly trivial thing, he always focuses on the stuff he got done rather than dwell on the stuff that got neglected. Now I always make sure to do at least one thing I can look back on about which I can say confidently made the day worth it. It's easy to lose perspective. You don't have to be superman every day.

  2023. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 14:43:39 calhoun137
    You have a very valid point, and even though I call it procrastinating it's not the same. However, I am all too familiar with the procrastinating of the type described by the OP, as I have experienced it myself quite severely.

    I suppose the reason I made my comment is one day I realized that it was actually a positive thing to "procrastinate" for a non-trivial amount of time before I even start working; as long as I actually do start before it gets out of control.

    I suppose it was also helpful for me to get rid of the psychological baggage of feeling guilty about "procrastinating", and I wanted to give a word of caution about not over-compensating by going to an extreme of never taking a break, or taking too short of a break, because of feeling guilty or afraid of not being able to start working again if you do.

  2024. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 15:10:44 okamiueru
    I think you are projecting onto the OP. In fact, I feel you are completely disregarding what the OP is trying to explain, by suggesting that the problem lies with him "not actually liking what he does for a living". I'll agree that if you are stuck doing or studying something that is uninspiring to you, that it could cause a lack of motivation, and in turn make you procrastinate. But that is a completely different beast all together.

    At least, that is what I believe, based on the assumption that the OP and I are very similar in this regard. Everything he wrote rings true to me, and nothing is off. Yet, I never had the slightest problem in sticking to, and finalizing my degree, nor disliking my work or profession. In fact, the parts where I have found myself procrastinating the most, is when setting out to do my own pet projects, the ones I would LOVE to do. And why is that? The exact same reasons stated in the article, the fear of imperfection, of trying, coming short and experiencing it as a personal failure.

    So, I disagree on the notion of "whatever you do when procrastinating, THAT'S what you should do for a living"-notion.

    As for the last bit of wisdom you provided. Right on! Keeping a "Done-list" as opposed to just a "Todo-list" can be really useful!

  2025. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 16:30:17 eterm
    What an incredible post, reading throughout I felt like not only could each paragraph be about me but it struck so accurately with me I felt like I could have written those words.

    I am an extreme procrastinator but I will take away what I can from tfa and this thread to help that. It has forced me to accept that such procrastination isn't acceptable if I want to be a success.

  2026. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 16:41:09 eitland
    As far as I understood OP clearly states that he likes to work (...although he recently had a bad experience that might have been the straw that broke the camels back...)

    BTW, -this isn't to uncommon. Many who suffer from procrastination love their work.

  2027. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 17:11:47 chmike
    My impression is that procrastination may have multiple causes. Some of them are fleeing difficulties like overcoming procrastination which is a vicious circle.

    My perception is also that the first cause of procrastination is fear of X, where X is most probably specific to you. Another term of the equation is that avoiding something that we fear, increases the fear of it. And this probably closes the loop.

    I found out by experience that a way to get out of this loop is to inhibit any (negative) thinking about the task at hand and just focus on doing the task. Then praise yourself when you achieve the task with "good work Harry", something you probably didn't hear enough when you were young.

    For example, when I'm about to write an essay or review it, I might think that I'm not a writer, or that I'll be ridiculed if anybody see this text because they will see I'm very bad and presumptuous to think I could write, etc. This thinking take place in milliseconds and generate a sting strong enough that when I see the text file I fell like an electrical shock keeping me away of even touching it. I took me time to understand that it was fear from my own imagination that kept me away of it. Every time I just focused on the task itself, clicking on the document, just read it for my self and see what I like and don't like for my self, inhibiting any thoughts on what I might do with the document, there was no procrastination.

    This type of procrastination can be diagnosed if one is frustrated by not being able to achieve what we really want to do.

    One can feel the same for a startup project where we live a frustrating paralysis in front of the project. This paralysis comes from all the fears generated by our imagination anticipating all what could go wrong. But this is like the Maserati problems where you imagine you could crash your Maserati. Just do it, make the MVP software for your own pleasure, focus on the creation of it, polishing of its interface and UX just for yourself. Inhibit any thoughts on the future which are the source of fear and paralysis.

    Regarding procrastination in house and cloths cleaning and food making, I think it might also be as simple as fear if one has not learned and has been put in confidence to do it when he was young. It is bad parenting if kids are not familiarized to do it when young, thought it may seam the opposite at first look where parents take care of all the needs of their kids.

  2028. Ask HN: You're the smartest people I know. I am struggling and need advice. 2013-03-15 17:31:04 chris_dcosta
    OK. I think we all struggle with procrastination. I seriously doubt you are alone in your level of procrastination. If you ever get a chance to flick through "The Procrastination Equation" you'll get why we, as humans, are programmed to procrastinate. So don't worry it is perfectly normal behaviour.

    There are no magic pills to get over this, and I speak from experience, but the first step for me was to stop being too ambitious. The next step was to set very very small tasks, one at a time. Resist making a list of all the tasks to complete the goal, just list the first and smallest task that comes to mind. Then do it and iterate.

    Lastly, you don't seem to be happy with the subjects you are taking, is there any other areas that gets you properly interested - don't just do the science stuff because you think it's what to do.

  2029. Ask HN: You're the smartest people I know. I am struggling and need advice. 2013-03-15 17:35:20 offdrey
    The current top thread on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5378462) is about procrastination. I think you may find it helpful.

  2030. Ask HN: You're the smartest people I know. I am struggling and need advice. 2013-03-15 17:57:32 tomalterman
    Ypu're not alone and yes everyone has this to a lesser or greater extent The key is that there is no medecine that makes this better, just ways of adjusting your outlook, setting clear goals and overcoming procrastination.

    I would second offdrey referral to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5378462

  2031. Microsoft is dead 2013-03-15 19:08:00 junto
    Their Surface tablets don't appear to have sold very well, but to claim they are "dead" seems more than a little batty? Microsoft appears to be alive and well in the enterprise.

    As an example, Microsoft (with Azure) is doing the same as Amazon in the cloud space. Now with Azure VMs and Azure websites, even more so. Websites on PHP or node.js? Hadoop? Go for it.

    Want to run your own VM image.. fine, just upload it, Microsoft don't give a crap what OS you run. They offer pages and pages of VM flavors built by the community: http://vmdepot.msopentech.com/List/Index

    I think that Microsoft are starting to get it. In my opinion they are entering the next phase of their lifecycle. Microsoft are starting to realise that they need to be open to survive. Google on the other hand, appear to be delving into their 'dark years' of wall-building and blocking, which Microsoft went through and (I believe) are starting to emerge out of the other side of (just sprouting seedlings, but still).

    Several years ago people like Scott Hanselmann evangelized the open sourcing ASP.NET stack. It was hard to do and a huge fight in Microsoft, but it is now out there and this has started a conceptual change within Microsoft. http://www.msopentech.com is the next big step. The first job for the OpenTech team was officially supporting a port of Redis to Windows. I expect we will will see more of the same. Want to keep track? Want to make some pull requests (they will be accepted)? Pop on over to https://github.com/MSOpenTech

    I bet that in ten or twenty years Microsoft will still be here (not dead) and going strong and still paying me good dividends. They may still have no great tablet offering, but then a jack of all trades is a master of none, so as long as they stay good at several things, who cares if others endeavors fail. In my opinion, I'm glad they tried to make a tablet. At they tried, even if the first try has failed.

    <rant> This forum is about embracing the making of things, about supporting the doing and not sitting back and procrastinating. To try and fail, is what this game is all about. I'm not going to knock anyone or any company that makes a damn good try at making something. People hate Microsoft because of the twenty years of protectionism and 'evil' monopolistic practices. I can understand that, but I am the kind of person that also is willing to give someone a second chance. If you think that you have been so wronged by a company that 'forced you to use Internet Explorer for such a long time', then really, first world problem. Grow up. That kind of hatred is just puerile. This kind of negativity should not be tolerated in such a forum, where the value of building things is such a core concern.

    The same goes for sun-setting Google Reader. Oh Diddums! Bullshit, that's an opportunity! Go build another RSS reader if people are so vocal about losing this product. Make something better. Get off your fucking arse and stop whining. Google gave you something for free, now they took it away. Oh well, life goes on. </rant>

    It will also be interesting to see where Google sit in twenty years. My gut feeling is that Google are about to start their protectionist phase. In twenty years we may well be talking about them in the same way we do Microsoft. The reality is that all companies when they reach a certain scale become cumbersome. That hinders them, and to continue revenue they are forced to protect their market.

  2032. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 19:17:17 sergiosgc
    Self motivation is an art. It's something everyone everywhere has had to learn, so don't feel down because you are struggling with it. As with all abilities, some people are naturals, some have to learn it. My personal opinion is that, as with most abilities, the "naturals" are just people who learned self motivation at a very young age. You have to learn it, as did I, and as did many more people than you can imagine.

    Take it as a personal project to manipulate yourself. This is the trick. You want to have your reptilian brain under control, and the problem is that the reptilian has lots of power. There are a number of strategies, try and try again until you find one that fits. For me, the one that really worked is delayed gratification as a reward for small accomplishments. Trivial stuff, such as "I can break for coffee once I fix that small annoying bug that is just boring to fix". Frequent, delayed rewards.

    Anyhow, talk about it. You'll find most people go through the same problem. Virtually everyone goes through phases of procrastination, and you'll find everyone has invented their own method of snapping out of it.

  2033. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-15 21:35:37 Isamu
    Agreed, this is another good book. I think it explains a lot about behaviors that have puzzled me over the years. I think it can be related to the set of beliefs behind motivation, which is a part of procrastination. It may not help someone with procrastination per se (that may be better addressed by books directly dealing with the psychology of procrastination) but it is part of the puzzle.

    In particular it might help with motivation and perception of success/failure.

    For those who haven't read it, Mindset sets out 2 main opposing beliefs:

      * your abilities are largely "fixed", mostly a function
    of innate "talent" that you can't change
  * vs. your ability is mostly due to learning,
    and you can always learn more
    Dweck points out the problems associated with the former point of view, and how a shift in this thinking can transform your outlook on your entire life. I am surprised sometimes at how controversial this can be when you bring it up.

  2034. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-16 00:15:44 du
    I'm an even worse procrastinator and what is helping me the most is Beeminder: You define a goal and pay exponentially increasing sums of money if you fail.

    For it to work you need to dislike losing money, be honest about your goal progress and rerail if you derail (although they now have an automatic rerailing feature). Getting some pleasure from the goal progress and statistics is important too.

    I'd start with something like "study 1 pomodoro/day of $course" and slowly increase it. Maybe also add a time requirement ("by 2 pm").

    The fact that I have to rely on something like Beeminder to get things done can be a little hard to accept. I'm essentially the same procrastinator, I'm just forced now to do things. I have yet to find a way to fundamentally change myself but if there is, then a structured life surely is a better starting point than being depressed because you've procrastinated your life to shambles. I also have some hope that the habits formed with Beeminder will have some deeper self-discipline changes in the long run.

    Apart from the slightly mentioned Pomodoro Technique, Anki also helps me.

  2035. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-16 01:00:49 neltnerb
    So I've found that exactly one thing helps me focus on work -- boredom. I am definitely not OCD, but I still find that I can't just work on something at any time for any length of time. I have to be in the right mood.

    I'd also add that procrastination and perfectionism is something I've seen a lot of, and which has always struck me as particularly insidious. I managed to finish my PhD by 26, but the reason is because I was comfortable with turning it in imperfect (and expected to do so from 24 on, after initial grad student optimism was burned out of me). I've had friends who spent years on a thesis past when it was done by any sane definition of the word just because they wanted it to be perfect. And since "perfect" was unattainable they spent all their time playing video games instead.

    Last, I have spent over a decade carefully cultivating a mentality of not attaching myself to the outcomes of my projects but instead focus on enjoying the process. If I don't enjoy the process, the product is sort of irrelevant (at least for long periods). If I do enjoy the process, the product will be the best I can do. I'm currently running two startups, working part time at a third, teach karate, and am at least nominally pursuing romantic and social relationships. I often find myself using the mantra "it will turn out how it turns out" to help myself sleep on anxiety ridden nights. I also more formally say "I release <foo>" when I find that I am dwelling on something in meditation and visualize myself no longer being emotionally attached to that thing. Particularly helpful for tentative romantic relationships. Worry there seems to be cause inevitable failure.

    Dunno if that helps anyone, but it helped me a ton.

  2036. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-16 04:38:11 Felix21
    I'm not sure you have experienced the kind of procrastination the op speaks about.

    You have a to-do list of 5 items for today and then a week later(with up to 11 hours of busy-work everyday), you're on item number 3.

    This kind of procrastination is a sickness and has causes a lot of emotional distress.

    You're reading hacker news(or even working on a less important project) full of guilt and indescribable negative feelings that you need to be working on the "important things", then you move to the important thing you need to be doing but you cant get it done cause there is this hyper-active force on the inside of you that just wont allow you to focus.

    Its a very sad-depressing place I hope never to return to.

  2037. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-16 18:17:07 jmtame
    I have found that the act of free writing whenever I'm stressed out or procrastinating results in an inevitable question that needs answered, and for whatever reason I was avoiding it at the time. Once it's on paper and I can look at it, I can answer the question and move on, and I notice I almost immediately feel better. Figuring out the right question is sometimes not the most obvious thing either, it takes some writing to get to it. Even if I don't act on the question immediately, knowing the question makes the stress go away and then I start thinking about how to resolve the problem.

    I don't know, it's something about the act of writing for me. It's getting it out of your head, but going along the lines of what the OP says, there's zero judgment. It's also forcing yourself to not just endlessly think about ambiguities. Writing it down forces you to focus it more narrowly and address specifics. You break the problem down into smaller steps and from there it seems easier to tackle.

  2038. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-16 22:46:59 Uncompetative
    I think that you make a very important point about discontinuity. It made me think about how I could reduce the inertia of refamiliarization when I resume editing some program after some interruption. I find that I can concentrate for about four hours before my ability to maintain a mental model of the salient aspects of whatever subsystem I am modifying break down and I start to make unconscious mistakes that I fail to notice due to the effort required to direct my little remaining drip of concentration on those aspects that were associated with the initial goal. I suppose one could estimate how much time it would take to make a given change and only attempt it if you knew that you had an ample block of time to complete it without pause, but I somehow feel that this is wishful thinking and that you don't necessarily know what you are getting yourself into when you resume editing some part of a complex system.

    Those prone to procrastination will find that the advice to "do a little every day" isn't all that helpful if the task requires the previous day's (partially unfinished) changes to be comprehended before you can pick up where you left off, mental model now reconstructed. There is also a temptation to rewrite this unfinised, untested, undebugged code as unentangled, "fresh", code is easier to write than that which is burdened with interdependencies, observed protocols, ceremony and context-dependent assumptions. Without refamiliarization there is a danger of blundering blindly into damaging changes with subtle, far reaching repurcussions, due to your naive comprehension of the system dynamic.

    Given that refamiliarization is exhausting, I wondered if there were remedies that could reduce the time and effort it required each day:

        * Allow the visualisation of the project with a number of domain specific Projectional Editors - derived from an Abstract Syntax Tree
    * Use SSA symbolic variables - imperative programs are hard to understand because they support the reassignment of named data cells
    * If you have to have state defer changes to a globally synchronised Superstep - also support the Command/Query Separation Principle
    * Use a live programming debugger to play with the system and refamiliarise yourself with its dynamical behaviour in a safe sandbox
    * It may help to use a language that scores well on the Halstead complexity measure to reduce overall development effort - Python
    * Use a WHY directed outline for code - that explains its goals through a folding text editor that supports literate programming
    * Avoid fragile base classes - there is very little point having encapsulation if you hack the heritage of an object's genealogy
    * Use Go style interfaces
    If all that fails:

        * Revert to the previous working version and redo up to the point of interruption or pause - as it's easier to write entangled stuff
    I welcome anyone's opinions on these suggestions, or suggestions of their own...

  2039. Smart Guy Productivity Pitfalls 2013-03-17 01:26:46 shurcooL
    Ok, I have to clarify. Things are pretty great for me. They've been improving and they're much better than in the past. I'm really happy doing what I'm doing. Procrastination has been a much lesser[1] problem lately.

    So I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining. That said, there's still a lot of room for improvement, if I find like-minded people and get a chance to work with them.

    I'm going to a workshop on the very topic that interests me[2], and I hope that'll be my chance to do some networking in this narrow area, and maybe get a chance to collaborate on something.

    [1] https://github.com/shurcooL/

    [2] http://liveprogramming.github.com/2013/

  2040. RSS readers on Linux 2013-03-17 04:38:16 omaranto
    Liferea is worse than useless for me, it's downright dangerous: I procrastinate enough as it is, I don't want an RSS reader than I can only use when I'm at my computer and most probably should be working! RSS readers go on the tablet or phone to check in my spare time.

  2041. Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users 2013-03-17 10:41:19 csense
    > no one up voted you

    This is a problem with HN. I've submitted 6 stories with this account, all of which seem like they're definitely interesting material highly relevant to HN's audience, and rather similar to stories that have made the front page.

    But they've gotten at most 3 upvotes, as of this writing. Heck, I have single comments that get more upvotes than all of my submissions combined.

    I don't want to think about having the success or failure of a product riding on HN's ability to find my submission and upvote it.

    If you want to personally do something about this, next time you read through the front page and still want to procrastinate, look at the New feed, and upvote some stories that don't already have a big group of people looking at them!

  2042. Procrastination is Not Laziness 2013-03-20 15:36:31 Felix21
    When i got into this cycle i was in a desperate place.

    I got out of my first startup because "Chinese importers" had driven prices down so much that I couldn't turn a decent profit.

    A few weeks later, i got in touch with my manufacturer about a new product for the iPhone 5 and as they were in the process of manufacturing my new product, i listed it on amazon for pre-orders.

    I was selling about 10 pieces an hour and had a few thousand pounds in my account after about 5-days, enough to cover my manufacturing costs.

    Then amazon reached out that my account had been blocked because it was somehow related to another account they have previously blocked and i cant continue to sell with them or open another account.

    They froze my funds and cancelled my account, so i had to refund all those pre-orders and at the time amazon was 99.9 percent of my sales(big mistake)

    After that disappointment, i was a bit depressed and decided to leave that business and come into web startups.

    I started learning how to code and while i do enjoy coding, its not something i really want to do as much as something i felt (at least at that time) that i had to do. I think it was this mental block + the mild(not clinical)depression that caused me to continue to procrastinate this way.

    I was like this for i think about 6 months.. it was bad.

    Along with a complete lifestyle optimization (i went in hard on reorganizing my life to be efficient), the big change came when i started working on another promising project - i now had something to look forward to and a hope to hold on-to and i think that's what really made the difference and got me "productive" again.

    I can send you details about my lifestyle optimization if you are interested.

  2043. Today is International Day of Happiness (established by the UN last year) 2013-03-20 17:21:06 lutusp
    Tomorrow is International Procrastination Day ... or is it the day after?

  2044. Just Use Sublime Text 2013-03-21 16:55:12 kamaal
    Almost anybody who associates great programming with things like super keyboarding skills and muscle memory is unfortunately degrading the status of programming to mere typing.

    What is it that is so distracting and pulling you out of your zen when you use a mouse? Seriously you type so fast and code at the speed of thought that a little glitch here is like making a mistake with a Formula 1 car in the Monaco Grand Prix?

    Let me tell you how real work happens and how productive people work. I am currently working with a very senior electronics guy in the night for some side projects. Watching him work shows me the path on how we programmers should be working. He will first build the base PCB with all his reusable designs and additional ones reading the documentation I rarely saw him Google anything in the past 15 days. If he has to ever get down to googling its generally to find some data sheet. Once that is done, he gets the components and meticulously builds the entire circuit on the PCB module by module. Every time he builds the module he tests if the inputs and outputs to it are as he designed on the PCB. It took a well whole month with each sitting spanning hours to get the whole PCB working. When he was done, the entire PCB worked like magic. The manufactured one's too. And there wasn't a single problem/bug. It was so spotlessly done. It looked like art work.

    Yet the pace at which he solders, or used the CRO or multimeter hardly matters or is even relevant.

    And yes, he hardly rushes or goes in a rash break neck speed in doing anything. So here is what I learned. Firstly learn to define the problem correctly, break the problem and establish a clear understanding of inputs and outputs to each module. Read documentation get a clear idea as to what it is done. Spend long hours trying to build/test each module. If possible automate testing(if its software). Spend time integrating.

    Go slow, the biggest productivity leaks are not in going slow. Go slow but go steady. The biggest productivity problems are in problem definition, solution clarity, distraction and procrastination. For us programmers, let us be frank. Most of us don't RTFM. We jump to googling and then go down the time sink and end up reading all sorts of articles achieving nothing at the end of the day.

    If possible work things out on the paper. Do use stuff like Mind Map for test cases. Learn to work things on the paper and by reading documentation. Learn good debugging tools, sound programming practices etc.

    That is what counts guys. Not optimizing the 1 second delay needed to reach the mouse. That's not even relevant in the broad spectrum of things.

  2045. How To Hire Me (or any other programmer) 2013-03-24 06:08:05 SomeCallMeTim
    Well, OK, I agree, for the most part.

    But I have seen CVs of people "outside." Heck, I've accidentally become an expert at fixing people's broken code, or porting crap code from one platform to another. I've SEEN how bad it gets. (And as I type this, I'm procrastinating from porting some code from one platform to another that I'm surprised works at all -- oh wait, it actually crashes All The Time. Sigh.)

    And I know that even THAT work is filtered so that I only see the code written by people who eventually got something to run at all.

    Oh, I know how bad it gets. In part it's why I've gone the consulting route; there's no way I'd be adequately compensated working as an employee anywhere. By at least a factor (divisor?) of two.

    But you have to figure that all of those people who suck are still developers. Professionally. And some of them have been for 20+ years. So someone must hire them. At least sometimes. And that means there's a market for them. And in that market, I continue to assert, is a buyer's market.

    Now it's a market I have no interest in shopping in. I assume all of these people end up in huge companies that can afford to have people who barely know what they're doing. But someone must hire people from that crowd or they'd give up and take blue collar jobs. Everyone has to eat, right?

    But yes, you and I and a large fraction (at least) of the HN crowd live in the Seller's Market.

  2046. How to do anything 2013-03-29 11:50:07 kamaal
    For those who already don't know about this, GTD is the best place to start on anything related this. Also start watching various talks by David Allen to get a total perspective of how this works.

    And for those who want a quick heads up. Continue reading...

    The crux of the issue is that the human brain is not good at storing thing like lists, or lists of lists or lists of lists of lists .. ad infinitum. The problem gets more complicated when you to manage these list structures in your brain. Its very difficult to do this to-do, done, priority and triaging etc activities in your brain itself. Chances are that, if you put all that stuff in your head you will- Either forget most of them and focus what you brain thinks is the highest priority(which most of the times disastrously ends up in a task called 'procrastination') or that your mind will spend great deals of time, energy and psychic resources to maintain those list structures. The net result is much resources are spent maintaining that list structures than executing them. This is when you get that overwhelming feeling of 'I am stressed' or 'There are too many things to do, I cant take it anymore' emotions.

    What is the result?- you either mess up real badly forgetting things or get overwhelmed and give up.

    There are a few exceptions to these cases. During the times of crisis/interesting-situations your brain does a superb job of prioritizing things and putting all the focus on one most important task at hand. This is the reason why when your life is in danger or when you start work on a very interesting project you brain automagically tells you to do tasks X, Y and Z without even you consciously knowing about it. A few more exceptions to this are moments of 'Flow', when you are in a moment of 'Flow'[1], when you experience flow you will not need a list set up to help you out. But you will need GTD to get into 'Flow'[2].

    To summarize it all:

        1. Your brain needs a purge from time to time.
    2. You need some way of maintaining task state outside
    your brain. My advice is use a diary and pen/pencils.
    3. You need to visualize things. Not just your schedule.
    I mean everything. Even if its a simple program you are
    writing, put it down on a paper first. Visualize it.
    4. I repeat. Purge your brain. Put things down on paper
    first.
    5. Make plans, break them down and execute.
    6. Pick interesting projects. Helps in getting into
    'Flow'.
    7. REVIEW THE PROGRESS OF YOUR PLANS(without this its 
    all useless)
    8. Ponder on the 'Next task' for every task you do.
    [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29 [2] The book by Mihly Cskszentmihlyi is a nice place to start on this.

  2047. Online Education's Dirty Secret - Awful Retention 2013-04-02 03:00:03 JabavuAdams
    The one problem I have with an ADHD diagnosis is the power of choosing a useful narrative for oneself. I see an ADHD diagnoses as a stepping stone to letting go of the ADHD diagnosis. Use the tools but don't let your son get stuck there.

    Here are various narratives I've had for myself:

    1) Child prodigy

    2) Failed child prodigy

    3) Something's not right about work / study. I know what to do, but in the moment I do the wrong thing or procrastinate egregiously.

    4) ADHD (medicated)

    5) ADHD (stopped medication due to side-effects and depression)

    6) Square peg / round hole. Make (startup) or find square hole.

    7) Found square hole. First non-founder programmer at regional success story mobile games company. Crucial to the company, recognized / compensated as such. In demand.

    Guess what hasn't changed all that much through all of these narratives? Me. I've just become ... optimized. I'm still terrible at time-sheets and coming in before 11. I would be a failure in a place that expected that.

    P.S. Check for sleep issues (e.g. sleep apnea). As a society, I think we encourage and tolerate sleep deprivation to an absurd degree. From what I've seen, chronic sleep deprivation is indistinguishable from ADHD.

  2048. How I Used ADD to Build Great Businesses 2013-04-02 23:36:46 mortdeus
    ADD was changed to ADHD-PI in 1994 when the DSM-IV was published.

    ADHD comes in 3 subtypes, Hyperactive-Impulsive, Predominantly Inattentive, and Combined (which is what I am diagnosed with). There is also a disorder called Slow Cognitive Tempo that is similar to ADHD, but still a different classification of disorder.

    The truth is, ADHD is way more complex than what most people believe ADHD is. Many people think they have it that do not. Many psychiatrists misdiagnose patients with ADHD, when the actual problem is a different disorder. And many people are struggling in life because they have not been diagnosed with ADHD yet.

    ADHD has only ever been a huge burden on my education, relationships, and quality of life. It does not give people with ADHD any sort of "super powers" or "exceptional intelligence and creativity". It doesnt have any beneficial traits whatsoever.

    Hyperfocus is a form of self medicating. It is the only time when the chaotic hurricane in our mind is calmed. We can focus on certain activities that stimulate us because its the only time were not extremely uncomfortable.

    The problem is that we cant control what we hyper focus on. Many of us can not self motivate ourselves to not procrastinate. Many of us can not remember what we just read or where we put our keys 5 seconds ago no matter what. Many of us can not stop ourselves from saying absolutely offensive and cruel things without provocation. Many of us hardly have any real friends, and the friends we do have are just like us. Many of us can barely speak a full sentence clearly without stumbling over our words because our minds float away on a tangent.

    ADHD is a horrible disorder to suffer with. Just as bad as schizophrenia, bulimia, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, and autism. Anybody who is trying to live with ADHD untreated should seriously reconsider and seek professional psychiatric help. Research ADHD and all other closely related disorders, and figure out how you can help your psychiatrist better help you.

    Its the single best decision I've ever made.

  2049. Browse the Hacker News front-page from inside Sublime 2013-04-03 17:37:07 DigitalSea
    Just downloaded this, works really well! Nice job. Now I can procrastinate while I am working but only I'm not actually working and it still appears as though I am working because I've got Sublime open.

  2050. A Better To-Do List: The 1-3-5 Rule 2013-04-05 13:29:44 vidarh
    If you only have two big things you need to get done, that is probably part of your problem. In that case, one of your todo's should probably be to subdivide one or both of them into smaller tasks.

    One of my most effective ways of overcoming procrastination in particular is that when I don't want to do something, I force myself to at least spend two minutes splitting at least one task on my todo list into a few smaller tasks. Sooner or later I have enough really small, trivial tasks that it is easy to push through at least some of them.

    Sometimes that ends up with stupid levels of details. But often it ends up revealing that part of the reason for procrastinating was that I didn't really know, but maybe had a nagging suspicion of, the level of complexity in a task...

  2051. Failing in College and what to do about it 2013-04-07 02:14:07 saymen
    My first experience with Uni was horrible. I was hoping to learn serious computer science, but got disappointed by maths, physics, electronics, etc. I was one of the best at programming, but overall result was very poor, I was one of the worst. Additionally I failed calculus at 1st semester (but other exams were passed) what made me depressed and I did 1.5yr pause doing completely nothing (barely used computer-I started hating it).

    Now I'm 22. Decided to start one more time at the same Uni, same faculty, second semester ahead. I'm getting average (or little below avg) marks. I became more focused on non-IT-classes, because I managed to find ways how can those math/phys "things" can be used in practice.

    Result:

    +I became little more self-confident, headstrong, hard-working guy

    +I developed ways to be more connected with people

    +Forcing myself to study things I don't like (physics) somehow makes my brain smarter, nimble, flexible

    +I don't struggle with procrastination

    -Being older than the others in group is little bit uncomfortable

    -Problem with employers asking questions about that pause/harddepression period

    -Endless comparisons to younger friends in my mind

  2052. The Disposable Academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time (2010) 2013-04-07 09:08:30 seanmcdirmid
    Are you sure you aren't just procrastinating? I'm joking, it sounds like you are doing the right thing.

  2053. The Disposable Academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time (2010) 2013-04-07 18:43:31 seanmcdirmid
    I was in school for 13 years (5+8). Procrastination is a common grad student problem.

  2054. Go Hard Early 2013-04-08 16:52:13 mahyarm
    I think the entire psychological structure of academia leads to a tendency of procrastination. I don't procrastinate at work much at all, I procrastinated way too much in academia.

    Properly designed academia would probably remove procrastination from K to PhD.

  2055. Go Hard Early 2013-04-08 18:38:16 antninja
    I'm not OP but presumably: homeworks are done alone at home whereas professional works are done within a team at a workplace. Procrastination is the demotivating consequence of working alone, isolated.

  2056. Go Hard Early 2013-04-08 20:57:26 ajanuary
    To add to the other response(s), there's a sense of artificialness to homework and the way it's drip fed.

    The deadline is just so the setter has a schedule to assess it, and the next one will be coming at some point in the future.

    With work it's usually all coming now. If you're not doing task a, you could be doing task b, c, d or e instead. Of course good planning and management will mean time is organised between all the tasks to get them done one at a time (or as close to) and it's not a daunting pressure, but I find there's always a sense that there's lots to do.

    In the cases I've had where there doesn't seem like a lot to do, that's when I tend to procrastinate with what I'm meant to be doing, looking at this and that other interesting thing we could be doing.

    [Edit] Also, money always helps ;)

  2057. The underappreciated power of common courtesy 2013-04-11 03:00:13 Anechoic
    My common courtesy wake-up call: MIT mechanical engineering students often had to go through the course "secretary" to see their faculty advisers of high-level MechE professors. At the time, the course secretary was a middle-aged women with a desk outside of the MechE administrative offices. When you walked into the office, you spoke with her and she would send you to the appropriate faculty office.

    Whenever any of my (mostly male) coursemates talked about visiting the office, they always referred to her as "bitch," "cunt," "hag" etc. I never understood this - she had never been anything but nice and respectful to me. After one interaction I witnessed between the secretary and another student, I finally began to understand. Those other students really saw her as just a "secretary" who had no business running interference between students that were clearly her betters. I on the otherhand never went out of my way to ingratiate myself to her, but I did treat her as a human worthy of the same respect as any other faculty member, and I guess she noticed.

    One year, I signed up for more classes than I intended to take with the intention of auditing the classes, deciding what I wanted to take and then dropping the excess classes before the drop date. I decided pretty quickly to drop one of the classes, and therefore didn't attend any of the lectures or do any of the coursework, but I procrastinated in getting the signature of my adviser to drop the class.

    Eventually the drop date loomed, and I realized I had only a couple of days to get that signature. I walked into the MechE office, exchanged pleasantries with the secretary and asked to see my adviser. "Oh I'm sorry," she replied "he's out of the country for the next two weeks." She saw from my reaction that something was wrong, and I explained that if I didn't get my adviser's signature on the drop form ASAP, I'd fail the class. She smiled and told me that in situations like that she actually had discretionary power to sign forms on behalf of absent professors. She asked for the form, signed it (in her name) and gave it back to me. I was all set. A year after that, I handed in my thesis and forgot to sign a form. She called me and waited after hours for me to run down to the office to sign the form so I could graduate on time. All because I treated her like a human being.

    I later told some of my coursemates about that, and they had absolutely no idea she had that kind of power. I like to think that maybe they started treating her a little better after learning what a little courtesy can accomplish. But I certainly learned that "little people" can hold great power that can be wielded in your favor if you just treat them like you want to be treated.

  2058. Be More Productive: Avoid Task Switching 2013-04-11 19:24:18 randomsearch
    I agree with you, that the delays are a pain.

    Recently, though, I've stop listening to most of the "productivity advice" and warnings about multitasking, splitting your time into chunks, and the myriad of other approaches.

    The best bit of advice I have heard is just to get on with it, work hard, and stop procrastinating about it. Too much meta is not good.

  2059. Ask HN: Is college for everyone? 2013-04-12 01:58:49 GFischer
    My thoughts, in somewhat rambling order:

    1) Parents don't know everything, however they love you and are looking after your welfare. They think your best bet is college. I have taken choices other than what my parents thought best, and worked out. Maybe you will too.

    2) As others said, your startup has a likelihood to fail, or at least you'll encounter some major hurdles on the way. You have to keep that in mind. You might be extremely excited, but do you have user validation?

    3) College has a lot of benefits outside just the boring education part, and not all of your courses are macroeconomics! (which I did take, and found interesting, but YMMV). Many courses help with basics you might need in the future. Doing things in practise is a great way to learn, only there are some theoretical things you won't come across unless you do some kind of structured course (can be college, Coursera or whatever). In my case, I tend to procrastinate, so college imposed some rules and forced me to study, which I otherwise wouldn't have done on my own. It also opens your mind.

    4) You'll meet like-minded people and broaden your horizons. Especially if you get into a college you want.

    That said, I don't know about how it works in the U.S., but you could do a "year off", see where your startup leads, and, if it doesn't, get into college a year later. It won't be the end of the world.

    Something I believe you must do is try to "fail fast". Show your startup to the world. Heck, show it here - unless you believe it's a one trick pony we can easily copy, or some other competitive advantage - in that case show it to people you trust, but show your stuff to SOMEONE that will give you feedback. Especially people in your target, and people that don't know you / won't sugar coat it.

    I'm sure you know about Steve Blank's philosophy, Lean Startups, Pre-totyping, etc. It sounds like it fits to what you're doing.

    Edit: this is not legal advice :) , I'm 32, never did a startup (yet), work for a boring BigCo, did college and just finished a master's (loved the masters), still have friends from college.

  2060. Busyness is Not a Virtue 2013-04-12 23:16:14 hashmymustache
    While I agree that saying "I'm busy" can come off as "I'm super important," I often use it as fill in for "I want to be alone with my thoughts." Often that helps me feel more joy and mindfulness in my work because my focus isn't as splintered. But I also procrastinate heavily, usually depends on the type of work and how interested I am in it. The interplay between mood, goals, self-control, work ethic, passion, etc is complicated. Things like this, breaking down tasks and reorienting them sounds incredibly beneficial, I'm just too busy to start.

  2061. Busyness is Not a Virtue 2013-04-12 23:56:19 lnanek2
    > If you only do the easy and useless jobs, youll never have to worry about the important ones which are so difficult.

    This is the toughest form of procrastination to avoid. E.g. it's easy to just fill your day with things like reading news and doing email, but the coding isn't going to get done that way.

  2062. Ask HN: how do/would you teach programming? 2013-04-13 09:44:34 lsiebert
    Oh... New Programmers suck at estimating project completion time. I mean this, it's bad.

    They will procrastinate, often unintentionally. Of course you can warn them, and give them lab time in class, but that may not be enough, so plan for what you will do about late assignments.

    I know one teacher who always gave specific deadlines, and then moved them on the due date, just to get people to start working earlier. Even that wasn't entirely successful.

  2063. The Dangers of Productive Procrastination 2013-04-14 17:42:45 nivstein
    That is so true! one trick (dunno if that's the best word for it though) for dealing with the challenge of delving into some big new project is really starting small. I try and pick the smallest most trivial task and get going from there. I've found that it helps me get into things more easily (divide and conquer I think). I'm curious if anyone else has tried this or has some other techniques to share about procrastination?

  2064. Ask HN: Those with intense focus, how do you do it? 2013-04-15 18:24:22 meerita
    My approach:

    1. Low music. Better as background music. Random, any radio.

    2.Shut down all Twitter apps.

    3. HN procrastinator mode-on.

    4. Get on doing the stuff no matter what's going outside.

  2065. Ask HN: Those with intense focus, how do you do it? 2013-04-15 18:37:04 acesubido
    The lack of focus can be directly derived from the lack of interest, vision and love on what you're doing.

    When you're thinking about other things, it means what you're about to do is so much of a chore to you that you subconsciously procrastinate and despise doing it. Remember that what you're working on is something you love; you'll soon find out that everything else doesn't matter. Love isn't a feeling, it's a decision to commit because you found value no one else can't seem to see.

    It's clear that the most productive people are people in love in what they do. They find joy and value even in their smallest chores/tasks. They don't need to "minimize distractions" or use "software program that blocks any time-wasting internet site", it's natural for them to have a distaste for other things except on what's currently right in-front of them.

    The practical task lists or methods on "how to focus" are easy as pie, there's a lot of content tackling, although looking for something you love working on or reminding yourself that you should love what you're doing - that's something only you can answer.

  2066. Ask HN: Those with intense focus, how do you do it? 2013-04-15 18:37:40 randomsearch
    Tricks like reducing distractions and using your time better are interesting and sometimes helpful, but also a great way to procrastinate. When you're an adult, you become more self-aware, which probably explains why it wasn't a problem in the past.

    I agree with what others have said - you may simply not be interested in what you're doing. If that's the case, change.

    I have three bits of advice:

    1. It could be you're not sleeping enough. Sleep more and drink less caffeine and alcohol.

    2. If you aim to do a great, great, job of whatever you do, it can become much more rewarding. Be a perfectionist. (nb for some people perfectionism leads to procrastination, but not for most).

    3. Get on with it. Don't allow yourself to read any further advice on how to be effective. Get up early, get working, work your ass off, have a fixed schedule with breaks and don't try to do long hours. I think an awful lot of people worry too much about productivity rather than just getting on and doing the work. It's also a case of momentum - once you start getting some feedback on what you've achieved, your hard work will feel justified and you'll be more motivated.

  2067. Ask HN: Those with intense focus, how do you do it? 2013-04-15 19:06:38 D9u
    For myself, It's a strong desire to learn something new. I can be sitting in a noisy place and tune out my surroundings, staying focused on the matter in question, as long as I can read the words I can put them together in varying ways until they all work together.

    Sometimes I sit here for 36+ hours straight. I just can't give up until the task has been completed. The tasks are taken in small portions, and I do take breaks, but not as often as I should.

    However, if I have no appreciation for the goals of the project, I can procrastinate in the same manner as I focus.

    It's a dual edged blade, and you can cut your own line if you're not careful. Having a strong desire to achieve your goals should be your priority, and having a vision for the long term is crucial in order to carry you forward through those times when you are less than motivated.

    Balance is key, as is moderation.

  2068. News is bad for you and giving up reading it will make you happier 2013-04-15 19:10:50 slig
    I believe I get positive value from HN. So while it's a good way to procrastinate, I'm think HN is a good news source to learn about new stuff, new frameworks, neat projects, etc.

  2069. Ask HN: Those with intense focus, how do you do it? 2013-04-15 20:01:58 alinajaf
    My pick-me-up checklist for when I'm procrastinating too much for comfort:

    * Get plenty of sleep. If you're sleepy, take a nap. Go to bed early, wake up early.

    * Drink plenty of water.

    * Eat well, whatever that means for you (for me its cutting back on sugary things and processed foods).

    * Do some exercise.

    If you take care of these basics, for me at least, the rest seems to fall into place.

  2070. A Comparison of Angular, Backbone, CanJS and Ember 2013-04-17 22:52:00 corresation
    It wasn't intended as a barb. If anything it was self-reflection, in that I tend to find myself caught up in essentially trivial things when I get caught in procrastination loops. Perhaps I am projecting.

  2071. A Comparison of Angular, Backbone, CanJS and Ember 2013-04-17 22:56:27 marknutter
    I read it wrong then. At any rate, fwiw I actually think Ember.js and Angular.js help with procrastination. It's far to easy to get muddled in the details of how to organize a backbone.js or vanilla jQuery application; at least for me. Going with Angular.js let me move forward faster than I would have otherwise.

  2072. _why's site updated again 2013-04-19 08:12:14 skore
    That rings very true. But it needs to be taken further:

    I would say that regardless of mood, it's still a worthwhile pursuit. Because to sometimes be unwilling to be one, whole, person is essential to finding who you are, eventually.

    Once you have found who you are, you are less likely to see changing who you are as a top priority - granted that you like who you are. But it most likely took a lot of time to be who you are and during that time, it would have screwed you forever to be forced to stay who you were. Which is, I guess, why young people care about privacy. And who is to say that you will always like who you are? Which is probably why old people care about privacy.

    Becoming a person in the first place has a lot to do with trying out traits or persons. I don't think Depression is necessarily a cause (although it may be) for pursuing privacy about that search, maybe it's just a symptom - that not being whole is depressing and thus searching for yourself deserves privacy. To protect your unfinished person to be finished by the outside world.

    But it's also about the pressure we put on ourselves. Merlin Mann said somewhere that Procrastination is forgetting who you are for a certain period of time. I initially thought that that was an entirely negative statement. It just now occurred to me that it can be a positive statement as well. And that being depressed about not "getting things done" is entirely useless, because you're basically punishing yourself for trying harder to find out who you are (instead of finishing stuff that who you were cared about). Which stunts your development and leaves you more likely to procrastinate, kicking you back into a cycle of self loathing.

  2073. 2nd year Comp Sci student that just now figured out I have ADD 2013-04-20 11:32:12 loceng
    It could be food-related. Look into an elimination diet ... Also, look into innerchild / regression therapy. There's usually an underlying reason why our behaviours lead to procrastination. Good luck.

    Edit: Oh, and yoga's good too. You can train the mind to be more focused. Everything takes practice to get good at it ... focus isn't any different - though with computers and multi-tasking, we sometimes think we're "focused" because we're working, but really we're not focused on any one thing.

  2074. Finding Unlicensed Repos on Github 2013-04-21 03:07:05 CodeCube
    I really wish github had an automated tool to add a license file (by easily choosing from a list of existing licenses, of course). I always neglect to include a license on my projects ... and then procrastinate doing it afterwards.

  2075. A Primer on IPv4, IPv6 and Transition 2013-04-22 08:57:52 purephase
    I don't either. But, you have to admit a grudging admiration of our ability to procrastinate and not have the whole thing collapse around us in the meantime. We've been talking about IPv6 for years in alarming tones about address exhaustion and yet, we're still ok.

    I guess I'm a glass half-full person on this one.

  2076. Sleep: Everything You Need to Know 2013-04-24 06:14:04 superuser2
    I would assume that a highly paid professional spends a much greater percentage of his or her day engaged in actual work, is more efficient than I am, and is required to produce a higher quality output than I am. I'm sure it's cognitively harder, but I doubt it's anywhere near the number of hours.

    My dad is an accountant. He gets to work at 7:30am and gets home at 4:30pm. He spends about as many hours at work as I do at school, but when he logs off for the day, he's done. I can't remember the last time I actually completed my obligations for the day. If you do manage to do a good job on all the problem sets and readings before losing consciousness, there's always a test to be studying for or a paper to be revising. I procrastinate because there is literally no such thing as "after homework is done."

    I don't mean to complain - I gave myself this courseload and I've done well enough with it that I'll be going to my dream school next year (UChicago - yes, I know, the workload will increase exponentially). Sleep deprivation is a price I chose to pay. But I do think that most professionals have a day which ends - usually before 7pm, but at some point it ends - and several hours to commit to a social life, family, side projects, pleasure reading etc. as they please. Obviously not in 80hr/week fields like law and not in startups about to ship, but on balance. Is this not accurate?

  2077. It ships when it ships 2013-04-24 11:45:57 opcenter
    That research lines up pretty well with my own experience in college. It haunted me until my 3rd year when I was so bogged down with advanced projects that I just couldn't keep procrastinating because I was only barely getting the minimum done I needed to in the last hours I had before the projects were due.

    Professionally, I've learned my lesson and while I've had some moments of procrastination (especially for tasks that I have little to no motivation for), I tend to work more steadily than I did in those first few years of college and I rarely run up against a deadline (soft or hard).

    However, I've worked with plenty of software developers who wait until the last perceived moment and work crazy hours to try to meet the deadline. I'm not sure what they would do if they didn't have that deadline. I suppose they would either get fired for lack of productivity or just be productive enough when nudged to keep their jobs.

  2078. Marketing Software, For People Who Would Rather Be Building It 2013-04-25 00:21:25 patio11
    I fly out to Microconf 2013 in approximately 20 hours and haven't finished my presentation yet, so I thought I'd procrastinate by finishing the editing on this transcript of my Microconf 2012 talk. Also includes slides/video.

    Feel free to ask questions if you have them.

  2079. Show HN: A website for exchanging McDonald's Monopoly stickers 2013-04-25 00:58:40 YPetrov
    Hi everyone! A fellow classmate and I have exams approaching, so we thought that the best way to procrastinate will be to build something. That's why we hacked Monopoly Exchange quickly (in about 2 days) to allow people to exchange stickers in the McDonald's Monopoly game and we are interested in your opinion!

  2080. Ask HN: What is your daily reading list? 2013-04-26 19:50:42 TeMPOraL
    HackerNews and LessWrong. I go to Reddit only when I'm looking for something particular or when I'm procrastinating heavily.

  2081. Obsession 2013-04-27 13:35:16 hkmurakami
    I was probably fortunate that this kind of frustration came much earlier in my life. In elementary school, I basically never studied for any exams other than memorization-style spelling and vocab tests. I excelled at math but was mediocre at best at everything else. I distinctly remember getting a 17/100 on a 5th grade, take home, open book history test. (actually, the only reason I was good at math was because I went to my normal "American" school 5 days a week and a separate "Japanese expat" school on Saturdays and had double the math hours as all my peers)

    I also remember when things changed for me, and had OP's "I can do better" moment. It was in 7th grade when I got my first B in math in my life (Algebra) and narrowly escaped a C in Civics (I think I got a 79.6). While not "disastrous" marks by any means, it was still incredibly jarring for a generally studious kid who always turned in his homework on time, wrote his papers, tried hard, etc.

    Looking back, it's strange that the almost-C bothered me, since I think I had some Cs during elementary school. Maybe I had instinctively known that in Junior High, the stakes were somehow higher. But more importantly, my new friends were getting straight A's, and I knew that there was no reason I couldn't do just as well as them. Also, I knew that I was "good at math" and that I should of course be able to get an A in the subject. Of course, I had basically never studied in my life, so it was growing pains figuring out how I can do well in history/literature/spanish exams.

    I somehow managed to figure out a studying method that worked for me and it was good enough to get me near straight A's throughout the rest of Junior High. My High School was the same as my JH, so knowing "the system", I was able to do similarly well in HS. The biggest difference that I can see between OP and myself is that my "on" switch was flipped 6-7 years before OP's, which allowed me to turn on the after burners while I still wasn't too far behind my peers and still had enough time to catch up.

    However, I was definitely not the most efficient or the smartest in my class, and was probably putting in the most time out of anyone in my grade. Two guys were definitely much much smarter than me and I knew it, despite my having higher grades than either of them. To this day they are two of my closest friends.

    Looking at the "traits" OP describes in the studious types is really interesting to me. I procrastinated like crazy and played video games for an obscene number of hours (I would frequently borrow a RPG + the console from a friend on friday, finish the ~25 hour game over the weekend and return it to him on monday). I remember playing FF7 before it was even out in the states (since all my consoles were Japanese region) for over 300 hours and had amassed so much "gil" (money) in the game that the number was overflowing out the left side of the menu window. But it's true that I have always performed well under pressure (I always did better on the actual standardized exams than my practice exams) and put in pointlessly long hours studying the course material until I knew (almost) everything (combined with the massive hours of video gaming and extracurricular activities I had, I would often only get 3 hours of sleep/night which is just pure idiocy).

    But what do I have to show at the end of it all? Honestly the result is a book smart'ish and tool'ish person who can't build anything to save his life anymore, a far cry from the kid who would tinker around and build stuff when he was 8~10 years old. I do extremely well within the defined framework of an academic setting, but I highly doubt that I'd outperform this significantly doing anything "in the real world" (I probably do outperform the "average" to some extent, but definitely not to the degree I did as a student). Hindsight is 20/20, but it would have served me much better to have focused on what I enjoyed most: drawing, tinkering around with techy stuff, etc rather than devote thousands of hours to cramming academic material into my brain.

    So even if you "succeed" in the academic rat race, it's not really useful unless you're going to use those supposed "accomplishments" in the future (ex: go into consulting/ibanking where academic pedigree and GPA is heavily considered).

    I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say anymore, but as a person who managed a breakthrough from a position similar to the OP (and there are quite a few people in the top colleges who didn't study hard at all to get their perfect marks -- definitely not me), I can say that it's not necessarily useful to succeed at this either. In fact getting a wake up call 4+ years earlier might turn out to be a blessing.

  2082. Obsession 2013-04-27 14:38:13 xijuan
    I am one of the try-hards OP has described. I came to Canada at the age of 12 knowing very little English. In my first two years in Canada, my self-esteem and confidence dropped to a very low point because I couldn't keep up with my peers due to my poor English skills. Basically, I was not even allowed to take regular classes because my English was not good enough. I am not naturally good at learning language so I had to study very hard. My parents were not good at English and we didn't really have money for tutoring. I don't even think my parents really believe that tutoring would work; they always believe in self-learning. I eventually got better and got the chance to take regular classes. But my English still caused a lot of difficulty in understanding the course materials. Other students could easily understand the lecture and the textbook. However, to me, I could not understand anything the teacher said in class; so I had to read the textbook myself. The textbook was pretty hard for me; so I had to read two or three times. To my surprise, due to hard work, I was able to get the top marks in most of my classes. And the learning strategies I have developed along the way have helped me succeed in university as well.

    I think OP definitely has "idealized" the people who could achieve top grades. I procrastinate a lot of times, wasting my time watching dramas and constantly interrupting myself with online chatting. I am not sure if I perform poorly under stress or not. But I am very very very prone to stress and anxiety. I think because that I recognize my limit (my predisposition to stress and anxiety), I always start things early so I don't have to stress out in the end.

    It is not that good to get high marks all the time. Some people think I am simply a nerd who doesn't know how to socialize. They would also say that I only know how to get good marks but not know other things. Some people would think that I am an introvert who stays at home studying all the time... In fact, I love being around people, love hanging out with friends.. I love teaching, tutoring and giving out presentations.. There are a lot of stereotypical beliefs about nerds.. And these things made me very sad at times. But I feel that I had to work hard because I wanted to go to grad school and GPA is a big consideration when it comes to applying for grad school..

    Anyways...all these rambling probably won't help OP gets good marks..I will provide some of the study strategies that have helped me succeed in school: 1) Prepare before you go to the lecture. Read the textbook before you go to the lecture. There are times when I preview the whole course material during the summer before taking the course... I think that is simply too extreme for other people..But I did that and it worked for me. When everyone was struggling to understand the materials, I already know most of it...

    2) I record my lectures and listen to them like "music"? If the prof is good at lecturing, it is actually not that boring to listen to the lectures again. At times, the prof would give some possible hints about questions on the exams; those hints can be helpful at times.

    3) Start on your hw early so that you can leave some time to ask questions. If hw counts a significant portion of the mark, you should definitely start early and ask the TA questions if you don't get any of the questions. Keep asking them until you figure out the answers. KEEP ASKING! It is funny that I eventually become a very friend with one of my TAs because I always go hang out with her during her office hour.

    5) I know every well about my limit. So most of the times, I don't take too many courses to overwhelm myself. I also tried to balance my semester with some easy courses and some hard ones. Whether the course is easy or not depends on what you are good at. An English course can be easy for an Arts student to get an A but extremely hard to a science student.

    6) Know about the teacher's testing strategies. Some profs like to ask questions from the textbook; some like to focus on the lectures more.. Some have really tricky MC questions.Some teachers like to test the conceptual stuff more. Every prof is different. Knowing what the teacher's testing style is very important.

    7) I don't know how relevant it is to other people but TAs have marked my exam wrong multiple times.... It happened to my friend also. There was once when the TA gave me 76 when I got 95.. There was also another time when I got 95 on an exam after crazy scaling. I thought this time, they probably marked everything right and I didn't need to check my exam with the TA; but I eventually went to check it before my final just in case there were some similar questions on the final. And they marked a written question wrong again. Maybe I am just bad luck.. Always check your exams carefully to see if the TA has made any mistakes.

    8) I am generally a very curious person who doesn't mind studying anything. But after studying something for a long time, I would also get bored and frustrated.. At those times, I would keep telling myself "STUDYING SHOULD BE ENJOYABLE. IT IS REALLY INTERESTING!" OK.. Maybe I was just a bit too crazy..I don't know. My point is that at times, it is important to motivate yourself and to keep remind yourself how interesting the topic is.

    These are all I can think about it so far..If I remember more, I may add later.

  2083. Path fined $800,000 by FTC 2013-05-01 00:32:26 mistercow
    But a notification when the package has shipped is all that the FTC needs to prevent procrastinating via the mail.

  2084. GitHub was down 2013-05-02 11:53:20 jameswyse
    It was down for 10 minutes about an hour ago too. Oh well, time to procrastinate!

    edit: Damn, it's up again. Back to work everyone..

  2085. Bayes' rule in Haskell (2007) 2013-05-02 18:38:33 michaelochurch
    Let me throw my hat in the ring for this. Tell me how I did.

    First, Bayesian formalism shouldn't be hard. Just remember that

        P(A | B) = P(A & B) / P(B)\n
    \nand it's easy to derive (left as exercise) Bayes's Law. That's quite easy. The hard part, here, is applying it.

    Let's say that I have a coin and I run a game where I always bet heads. If I flip tails, you get $1; on heads, I get $1. Let's also say that 1.00% of the people in the world are depraved enough to use unfair coins that always come up heads. You don't know me, so that's a good assumption for how likely I am to be a scumbag. So there's a prior probability of 0.01 that I'm a scumbag running an unfair game, and 0.99 that I'm using a fair coin. Now, we play, and I flip a head. I win. There's evidence (or signal) that is suggestive that it's more likely that I'm a scumbag, but far from conclusive (fair games will turn up heads as well). How much has the probability changed? Well, let's look at the possibilities:

        I'm a scumbag, and flip heads: 1/100 * 1 = 1/100\n    -- There's a 1% prior prob., and if I'm a scumbag I'll always flip heads.\n    I'm a scumbag, and flip tails: 1/100 * 0 = 0\n    -- If I'm a scumbag, I'll never flip tails. \n    I'm using a fair coin, and flip heads: 99/100 * 1/2 = 99/200. \n    I'm using a fair coin, and flip tails: 99/100 * 1/2 = 99/200.\n
    \nIt might help to draw a rectangle for the four possibilities, like so:

          Scumbag    Fair\n      (1/100)  (99/100)\n    +---------+---------+\n    | Scumbag | Fair    |\n    | Heads   | Heads   |\n    |         |         |\n    |  1/100  |  99/200 |\n    +---------+---------+\n    | Scumbag | Fair    |\n    | Tails   | Tails   |\n    |         |         |\n    |     0   |  99/200 |\n    +---------+---------+\n
    \nOnce we flip a head, we can throw out the "flip tails" sections, because we didn't. We flipped heads. That leaves us with a subspace that contains 99/200 + 1/100 = 101/200 of the total space-- we know we're in that space, so we can consider only it-- while the probability mass of the "I'm a scumbag and flip heads" remains 1/100. So the probability that I'm a scumbag posterior to flipping heads is:

        (1/100)/(101/200) = 2/101 ~ 2%\n
    \nProbability wise, I'm almost twice as likely to flip a coin after a head comes up. That relationship holds very well for small priors, but what if there's a 55% chance that I'm a scumbag? Flipping heads doesn't put that probability to 110%-- first of all, that makes no mathematical sense, and second of all, there's still a chance that I'm fair but just flipped another head. (The actual posterior probability is about 71%.)

    For probabilities over 0.5, "twice as likely" doesn't make sense, if you think in terms of probability. What about odds, however? Then, you can derive that "twice as likely" as 55% is 71%.

    You can say "twice as likely" if you think in odds, not probability. Odds is probability transformed through p/(1-p), or the ratio between the probability of the event happening and it not happening; it has domain [0, +inf] which means that "twice as likely" doesn't cause that problem. If you think in odds terms, it turns out that odds(I'm a scumbag) exactly doubles each time I flip a head. After the first, that odds number goes from 1/99 to 2/99. If I flip 10 heads, then it's 1024/99; transformed back into a probability it's 1024/1123, or a 91% chance that I'm a scumbag.

    In fact, what I think makes Bayesian inference hard is that it involves that subtle context switch between probability and odds.

        If B is observed and there is a known prior _odds_ of A, the posterior _odds_ of A \n    are k times higher, where k is the ratio of the _probabilities_ of \n    (A & B) vs. (~A & B). \n
    \nWhat makes Bayesian inference neat is that you can run it as an online process (you can look at events one at a time). If observed events (signals) are independent, you don't need to process the corpus as a whole, and order doesn't matter. That becomes nice when you factor in concurrency and distributed computation. From these principles, you can also derive logistic regression (multiplication in the log-odds space is a vertical shift along an S-shaped logistic curve) and you start to see why the logistic curve comes up so often in machine learning.

    Ok, so what about Bayesian statistics? Essentially, it comes from the idea that:

        (1) There is some prior probability distribution [0] over the possible states S \n    of affairs, which you cannot observe directly but whose relative \n    probabilities you can estimate based on observed events E. \n\n    (2) For each event E observed, compute unnormalized posteriors according to \n    posterior_unnormalized(S) = prior(S) * likelihood(E | S).\n\n    (3) To compute normalized posteriors, divide each of the unnormalized ones \n    by the sum (or integral) of those likelihoods over all states S. \n    You now have a sum of 1, which makes it a legitimate probability distribution. \n
    \n[0] Regarding (1), picking priors is more of an art than a science, which is why some people distrust Bayesian methods. The good news is that if you have a lot of evidence and your priors are reasonable (few assumptions / Ockham's Razor) you will converge to something close to the right answer with enough evidence, regardless of priors.

    Now, many actual Bayesian inference methods ignore (3). It's computationally expensive (when there aren't two possible states S, but millions to infinitely many) to normalize and often we don't need to do it. For example, if you're doing classification between two classes Q and R-- with "events" being features of what you're trying to classify-- then you generally only care about which is more likely, not whether there's specifically a 23.75% chance of Q. So the normalization step is generally either skipped (if relative probabilities are all that matters) or procrastinated to the end of the analysis. This "feels wrong" at first but it actually works, and is often better (numerical stability) for the accuracy of the conclusions.

  2086. Yahoo acquires Astrid 2013-05-03 04:25:21 shenanigoat
    Good for them. Astrid is best todo/task app I've ever tried...and I've tried many. In fact, testing out todo/task apps is a great way to procrastinate.

  2087. Ask HN: How long did it take you to become a proficient programmer? 2013-05-07 20:53:24 joelmaat
    My regress to an average (or worse) developer did happen all at once, but I guess I'd say yes, because it was due to this same reason (jealousy/BS). Before "the event," many constantly did everything to get in my way and this slowed my progress down considerably. Years ago, I was on the cutting edge nearing greatness, but this BS eliminated any chance of me actually achieving that.

    Also in there is my tendency to procrastinate, which also slowed me down, but I don't procrastinate much when it comes to writing code and working.

  2088. Contextinator: Divide your web browsing into projects 2013-05-13 02:48:28 glomph
    One thing that would be nice is if you could right click and 'send to project' tabs from another project or an unclaimed window.

    Or even have checkboxes by tabs in the project list that allow you to select lots and send them all to another project.

    That way say you have a lot of tabs open and you suddenly realise that half are procrastination and half are part of a project, you could send the first half to a new project and keep the second half open as a procrastination window.

    Adding to this the ability to merge projects would be cool.

  2089. Show HN: My seven minute workout timer evening project 2013-05-17 04:15:30 d0m
    OK, fine for this time, but tomorrow, you do it instead of procrastinating and creating a web page about it : )

  2090. Ask HN: how strong is your focus when you are coding? 2013-05-18 10:03:29 lukethegeek
    22yo coder here - my focus is patchy or fragmented at best and I procrastinate like a trooper.

    I'm capable of decent stretches of focus/productivity when the moon & stars align - er - when I have the right energy levels and can fully mentally comprehend the task at hand (best properly planned and broken down into manageable chunks as xackpot said).

    Isolating earbuds and some upbeat music help me focus. IMO regular breaks are a must to keep mental exhaustion at bay, especially in a career like programming.

    I don't force myself to focus if my brain just isn't cooperating, since I just start making mistakes and any productivity evaporates. I just go and do something else for a while before trying again.

    Really, I don't think that there's a 'one size fits all' answer. You just have to try different things and see what works for you. You may (or may not) be able to significantly improve your focus (I never could), but I learnt to get the most done with what I have.

  2091. Ask HN: how strong is your focus when you are coding? 2013-05-18 18:36:18 xcbnxcbxmcb
    I'm almost 29 and I've written a lot of code over my life-time. Having spit out copious amounts of code for over 10 years now, I don't think productivity in a larger sense declines with age. Physically or in terms of life priorities, writing code all-night long is not so much fun anymore, but any reduction in energy is made up by a higher efficiency due to experience. At least, that's the way things have been so far!

    I definitely have productivity swings (and I make myself feel better by saying they're akin to moood-swings and out of my control!) Productivity is highest for me when I'm in a highly structured environment. I've churned out insane amounts of code when

    a) I knew exactly what needed to be done and b) Had a sharp timeline to complete it

    #a happens externally sometimes, when requirements are crystal-clear. For example, when you build stuff on http://community.topcoder.com/tc Otherwise, my approach is to spend as much time as needed in order to clarify requirements. I simply do not bother to code unless I'm sure about the end-goal.

    #b can be seen in hackathons, or when a team / startup has committed to a demo-day (it can also be artificially imposed by managers)

    When both #a and #b are externally satisfied, I can code all day long without problems. Things like headphones (to prevent interruptions) are useful but not necessary unless the environment is extremely distracting.

    When #b is satisfied but not #a, I try to reduce the uncertainty around requirements - otherwise jumping in to code and then having to throw it away can be killing. At some point, the RoI in trying to achieve more certainty will get negative, at which point I start coding with whatever I have.

    When you have #a but not #b, it is very easy to procrastinate. Of late I'm inspired by www.structuredprocrastination.com (brilliant, short read) to still maintain productivity.

    Finally, having neither #a nor #b is the worst. Being in startup mode for the last few years I've seen how difficult that is. I'm making my own version of productivity pr0n, inspired from Marc Andreessen's blog post http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_personal_productivity.html The most effective thing for me is to plan a day ahead and then actually log what happened in the day. Just the act of measurement goes a long way in lifting mood and productivity.

  2092. The Three Kinds of Laziness 2013-05-19 05:35:42 loup-vaillant
    If procrastination was that easy to beat, we probably wouldn't have a laziness problem in the first place. I mean in general, not just for "spiritual" practices.

    As for spiritual enlightenment, my best bet right now is mind uploading, which should make introspection and subsequent ascension much easier. (I know it's still a long shot, since we may not have that possibility before my body fails me if ever. But it is my best bet.)

  2093. The Three Kinds of Laziness 2013-05-19 10:28:35 pastaking
    The third kind of laziness is a contagious type of procrastination that eats away at you slowly from the inside. You won't know what happened until one day you realize that you're hollow.

    I realized exactly that a few years ago (when I got into a car accident) but I didn't relate it to laziness. It's so important to have the courage to stop beating around the bush, especially when it comes to getting what you want out of life.

    Great post! Now I'm intrigued by buddhism.

  2094. Ask HN: How should I go about learning Emacs? 2013-05-20 20:50:30 swah
    A good reason to learn Emacs is to program Common Lisp or Clojure. Editing Lisp it really shines; otherwise I'd say the risk of procrastination while learning Emacs is huge.

  2095. Unheralded Mathematician Bridges the Prime Gap 2013-05-20 21:59:57 benjamincburns
    > This is enough to put a smile on my face. There is something wonderful about skepticism and cynicism being proven wrong, especially when the skepticism is my own.

    Mathematicians have always amused me with their weird way of turning their craft upon themselves. There's an astonishing amount of work done (I assume by procrastinating PhD candidates) on the statistics of performance in mathematics. Mathematics is supposed to be such a "pure" science, but this work seems to be motivated by insecurity and a base of other negative emotions. The skepticism it breeds isn't at all useful or beneficial for the field; if anything it's destructive, but yet it seems to persist.

    Malcolm Gladwell wrote a great piece for The New Yorker [1] on late vs early bloomers in the art world. Gladwell writes that early bloomers are often driven by a sort of internal energy, and since they haven't taken time to refine their process they tend to be more abstract or conceptual. Late bloomers, he suggests, tend to take years or decades honing their craft. They're extreme perfectionists who, instead of working on building a piece, tend to work on refining the skills they need to build a piece.

    In Gladwell's model for genius, Zhang is obviously the latter. I think as a society we'd benefit from celebrating the successes (and even the failures) of "late-bloomers" like Zhang a lot more. Maybe it would promote the kinds of intrinsic motivation which would encourage more brilliant people to continue their struggle.

    All of that said, the thing that brings a smile to my face is the fact that Zhang didn't come from one of the MITs, Harvards, Stanfords, or Cornells of the world. He came from a "lowly" state school. Here's hoping he stays there.

    1: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/20/081020fa_fact_...

  2096. How to work remotely as a software developer 2013-05-24 03:32:53 fernandotakai
    Working from home for the past 3y here.

    I need some structure on my day otherwise I procrastinate too much.

    That means, waking up early, working from x till y, stopping in the middle for a quick lunch so basically, just like working on an office.

    Different people, different tastes.

  2097. How to work remotely as a software developer 2013-05-24 06:40:13 dageshi
    Thanks, I'll take a look.

    I think the best way to explain it, is there's part of my mind, perhaps the really creative bit that needs to be distracted in order to actually get anything done. As in, if I've got a problem I need to solve and actually it's just a case of iterating/implementing to get it done, if that bit of my mind isn't being occupied by something I'll immediately try to "think the problem to death" which ends in procrastination and getting nothing done.

    But If I have some kind of conversation going on in the background then that part of my brain is occupied and I seem quite capable of getting on with things.

    I wish I could describe it better but it has really made a noticeable difference in the past few weeks.

  2098. How to work remotely as a software developer 2013-05-24 14:30:57 porker
    It's not my monthly budget, so much as my guilt complex that people in full-time employment are paid to do 8 hours work each day. I don't quite 'get' how they can be employed in that and have a clean conscience if they then procrastinate or use it for restroom breaks - and I do know that office workers waste a lot of time.

    You're right though about the hours; 30 seems sensible to aim for, especially being newly-married where working late every evening isn't a Good Idea (TM).

  2099. Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick 2013-05-26 05:36:49 jasonlotito
    > Did you have similar problems in College?

    Yes. And it was a struggle. I always chalked it up to procrastination. As a 33 year old learning you've had ADHD and OCD all your life, it kind of freaks you out. They say not to do it, but you can't help but think of what you could have done had you been properly diagnosed. Instead, they tell me I need to focus on what I have accomplished in spite of my condition (which, to be completely fair, is nothing that I can complain about).

    > Unfortunately, the meds are giving me side effects (increased heart rate).

    Try something different? =)

  2100. Why 3 MIT Grads Want to Send You an Empty Box 2013-06-01 05:28:33 rj2hhhhh
    I'd say that this is a really cool approach. The number of times that I have wanted to sell an item but procrastinated thinking of the posting + shipping hassles are countless. This obviously is targeted at a lazy ass like myself and my bet is that there a bunch like me around. Good luck to these guys. I for one plan to try it out.

  2101. If you live in the future 2013-06-01 07:52:21 leephillips
    If you live in the future, medical science will have made lifespans so long that you won't do anything because there will never be a reason not to procrastinate.

  2102. A minimalist approach to washing the dishes 2013-06-03 18:18:42 michielvoo
    As an experienced procrastinator I can tell you that doing the dishes is an excellent way to procrastinate. Yes, my kitchen looks great, but I'm just trashing (e.g. not executing, after the dishes are done I will clean up some more, then get a cup of tea and pet my cat). So that's another data to consider...

  2103. Todo. - The To-Do web-app for overworked hackers 2013-06-10 10:13:48 noerps
    I will never, ever, understand why I would like to delegate something so trivial and marginal to a distant server, for example:

    Todo: change password from XXX to ZZZ.

    I can imagine only procrastination as a valid reason to do so, because you can state that your todo-list isn't available to you, and its not your fault.

  2104. How many opportunities should I give my co-founder? 2013-06-10 12:44:25 wavefunction
    I think you're just looking for a blessing to cut him loose because you've already lost faith.

    Personally I would. I sometimes procrastinate on my own projects, but I don't have a partner I have to answer to either.

  2105. How many opportunities should I give my co-founder? 2013-06-10 12:59:24 gexla
    If your co-founder isn't taking a professional approach or at least coding his way out of his other shortcomings then this may not work. If you don't have a business, then you just have a hobby.

    When I work on client projects, among the first things I have to do is break down the project so that I can provide an accurate as possible quote as well as the timeline.

    When the client accepts the quote, that breakdown serves as roadmap for the client.I need to start out with X and that portion will take X amount of time. After that, I go to the next item on the roadmap. My client may not know anything about development, but the roadmap is easy to follow.

    If I run into problems with X, then I communicate those problems with the client and then I adjust the roadmap. With this communication and clear roadmap, the client is generally at ease, even when problems appear. The client can see where we are at, what we have done and what's left to do. The client also knows the approximate time left on the project due to my estimates.

    Some projects aren't that simple, especially if you don't have a client to work with. You might be working on something which has an open deadline and which may pivot at any point. The developers of one of the paid tools that I use refuse to provide a roadmap to customers.

    However, your developer can at least provide a rough sketch that both of you can follow. If you are still having problems, then cut it out into smaller chunks. Perhaps at this point you might see that your project is too ambitious and that you should cut down on the features so that you can get out that prototype faster.

    Wasting time on things that aren't important in the beginning is a great way to procrastinate. The developer mind wants to work on what it feels like working on, not always what it really needs to be working on. If you don't even have a prototype and your developer is looking into "more scalable options" then that's a classic symptom of procrastination. Again, get a sketch of the roadmap. If it's not the current item on the roadmap (or in some cases it might not even be on the roadmap) then don't bother with it.

    It's easy to fall into the time wasting trap. I have a start-up idea that I have been doing a bit of work on. The first thing my developer brain wanted to do was to jump into coding. What I really needed to be doing was building a very basic portal, reaching out to potential users and working on content. At that point, I was a ways from having to do any coding, yet I was spending time looking at what platform I should build it on. Time waster!

    I would give this another shot. If you now the developer is good, then maybe there is something holding that developer up. Talk it through and see if you can sort of start over with some sort of roadmap. Maybe the developer is stuck on something he is having a hard time with. You really won't know anything without better communication.

    If neither of you are drawing payments from this, then it's possible the project is just really low on his list of priorities. Maybe he would rather be doing just about anything other than working on your start-up idea. If the other half isn't passionate enough to be hitting this like a starving dog hitting a steak, then this probably won't work out. It's hard to find people who are as passionate about your idea as you are. If that's the case you either need to find something to pay, keep looking for another co-founder or just learn how to code it yourself. In the past three months, you could have learned a lot.

  2106. Design your focus - Read better, work better, sleep better, X better. 2013-06-16 18:20:33 Carlee
    "Great idea" - Continues procrastinating.

  2107. Digg Reader Update 2013-06-18 03:57:43 vicaya
    I've been procrastinating on migrating, hoping for a last minute change of mind from G :)

    One of the main reasons I stuck with G is searching of my 200+ feeds over the last 5 years. Looks like none of the alternative services would ever support that. GR's been increasingly faster for me as well, probably due to lighter load from people migrating off?

    Google takeout only exports a small amount of metadata (starred/shared etc.). I wonder if anybody already wrote a script to suck down complete feeds (must support gr:continuation), so it can be indexed later?

  2108. If Your Business Uses Rails 2.3 You Need To Move To A Supported Option ASAP 2013-06-18 11:05:52 eduardordm
    I've been postponing writing about this for a long time, mostly because I wanted to talk at railsconf before writing a post (who am I kidding, I just procrastinate a lot), having submitted the talk for the last 3 years without getting in I'll definetly write a long post about it.

  2109. Hacker School Soylent 2013-06-19 02:02:13 camdykeman
    So if starting tomorrow, you knew that your body only required you to sleep for one hour a night to maintain and repair itself instead of 7-8 you would continue sleeping 7-8 simply because you think its a good use of time?

    I doubt it.

    You might still lay around in bed on your days off, or you might stay in bed to procrastinate when faced with something to do that day, but arguing that it would still be a good use of time is extremely flawed.

  2110. Two dozen mathematicians wrote a 600 page book in 6 months on GitHub 2013-06-21 04:36:45 lubomir
    Even when there is only single user branching can be quite useful, too. When I was writing my thesis, I usually worked on different parts at the same time. Having each changeset in a separate branch made it easier, especially when I procrastinated by fiddling with various settings like margins, colors and page styles.

  2111. Ask HN: Why Does It Take "10 Days" To Be Unsubscribed From Marketing Emails? 2013-06-23 20:39:02 dylangs1030
    Thanks for the citation. It's a shame; this implies a lot of companies do this just because they're allowed to procrastinate by law.

  2112. Snapjoy (YC S11) is closing 2013-06-24 01:20:20 Dylan16807
    Oh they might have procrastinated but the decision should have been made around that time. It's not an excuse to say you wasted so much time deciding how to shut down the service that people need to get out out now now now.

  2113. Basic income as an answer to all out automation 2013-06-24 19:02:26 rjtavares
    I certainly can. Just thinking of the movies and TV shows I missed, the books I never read, essays I never wrote, recipes I never tried, places I didn't visit...

    (of course, I would procrastinate all of these things even if I had the time to do them...)

  2114. I’m young, inexperienced and a perfectionist 2013-06-27 22:04:20 heidar
    Solid advice. Split the problem into many smaller problems and start working.

    One thing to keep in mind though, TODO lists can give an illusion of progress and accomplishment[1]. That is assuming you split up the problem and create a TODO list out of it which seems like a reasonable thing to do.

    I remember a discussion on HN about procrastination quite some time ago and there was a comment which made me think a lot. The commenter basically said that he procrastinates by writing code, because that is what he loves to do.

    If you are procrastinating writing code by doing something else, perhaps you simply do not enjoy writing code and need to explore the world for whatever it is that you love doing?

    I am still not sure myself, I enjoy writing code but there are other jobs which I think I would enjoy more.

    [1] http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/10/todont.html

  2115. ArchiveTeam needs OPMLs and feed URLs to grab cached data from Google Reader 2013-06-29 02:28:56 drivebyacct2
    Haha, no one procrastinated on exporting their data now did they?

  2116. Getting all your data out of Google Reader 2013-06-29 03:13:18 DecoPerson
    Thank you for this! Now I can procrastinate on my own reader app for much longer :)

    Should we be concerned with errors like this?

        [W 130629 03:11:54 api:254] Requested item id tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/afe90dad8acde78b (-5771066408489326709), but it was not found in the result
    I'm getting ~1-2 per "Fetch N/M item bodies" line.

  2117. 8th Grade Twins take Astrobiology and Einstein Courses on Coursera 2013-06-29 09:26:22 markdown
    As an anecdote in the other direction, I love the fact that the courses have a pre-defined schedule and end date.

    Without deadlines, a serial procrastinator like myself would never finish a course.

    At Udacity, I've successfully completed the two classes I took when they were first released (and had deadlines). On the other hand, I only lasted around a week with the two classes that are under "open enrollment".

  2118. 8th Grade Twins take Astrobiology and Einstein Courses on Coursera 2013-06-29 11:05:23 sudont
    Because procrastination is the inability to deal with self-set deadlines. By definition, even: "the action of delaying or postponing something." Which means that a self-imposed deadline gets set back indefinitely, forever.

    I'm of the same mind as markdownsimple Udacity and iTunes U classes were ignored, but Jeff Leek's much, much harder Biostatistics class was something I completed relatively easily (the deadlines at least. And I did pass.)

    The sad truth is the majority of people (and I am one) are not suited for autodidactical learning. The motivation may or may not be there, but the ability to push forward as per Socrates' mythical student was told is not. Those deadlines, in light of human nature, are the killer feature.

    http://www.joyfulministry.org/socratt.htm

  2119. Ask HN: Would you consider this as a valid path to learn web development? 2013-07-06 01:55:15 tyng
    I just started down the path to learn web development a week ago (after procrastinating it for years). My only prior programming experience was some BASIC and Pascal lessons I took in primary school and a bit of self-taught HTML.

    I find codecademy.com to be a fun and well structured way to learn Python. To me it may well replace the "Python for Kids" book recommended in your blog post since codecademy is free and provides instant feedback on exercises (best way to keep the motivation high!). After completing the codecademy course I'll definitely get myself a proper book to learn the language in more depth.

    One thing I'm struggling with is to find mini-projects that I can build and practice with as I learn more codes. As a beginner I may come up with a mini-project idea without realising how big the project can get to or the level of skill is required. If you could suggest a few project ideas with incremental difficulty as well as novel ways for a beginner to think about programming would be really helpful.

    To me the most valuable part of your blog post was mapping out the Python > SQL > HTML/CSS > framework learning path. This was another question I had in mind ("what's next after Python?") because as a beginner I really had no big picture view of what skills I need to acquire. So thanks heaps for writing up the post and I look forward to reading your follow-up!

  2120. Hey programmers, we need to talk 2013-07-12 04:52:13 dylandrop
    I feel the writer wants me to feel bad about not working 100% of the time. What's so bad about procrastination, as long as we don't overindulge?

  2121. Anxiety: Nothing to Do but Embrace the Dread 2013-07-16 13:06:46 hosh
    A friend of mine teaching trans-personal psychology told me once that there is a difference between anxiety and panic. When you are panicking, the feeling is so intense that you don't know you are panicking. If you have the presence of mind during the experience to know you are experiencing this feeling, this would be anxiety.

    The rubber band thing works because it interrupts the usual pattern of feedback loop where the anxiety builds and feeds on itself.

    You mentioned breathing. You are talking about deep, yogic breathing? This is where you engage the diaphragm, ribs, collar bones, breathing smoothly, deeply, and quietly.

    In any case, I found that anxiety, like procrastination, is the symptom rather than the cause. Anxiety arises from deeper issues. Those deeper issues are addressable.

  2122. Where is the Android John Gruber? 2013-07-24 11:40:47 voltagex_
    Hey thanks. I've been procrastinating while trying to start a blog for ages.

    Do you think I'd have to stick to just Android? I've been meaning to make a post (or several) out of [1] this comment.

    [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6037640

  2123. I'm learning to code by building 180 websites in 180 days. Today is day 115 2013-07-25 01:57:17 ahmadss
    Consider reading a book called "The Now Habit". The author discusses fear of success/failure and the inability to finish projects, and deems that these fears are what cause us to procrastinate. Then he provides a plan/approach/framework to overcome these fears.

  2124. 10 Months at Harvard, Quantified 2013-07-25 22:36:30 houshuang
    This is very neat. I think this kind of time tracking can be very useful, especially for people in professions that are very self-directing, and provides a mix of short-term and long-term projects. I'm a PhD student and I've been playing around with setting up my own systems (http://reganmian.net/blog/2013/03/16/unobtrusive-time-tracke... and http://reganmian.net/blog/2013/03/29/time-tracker-one-week-o...).

    A bunch of the things he noted resonate with me, like noting the difference between time spent in the office, and time spent actually working (even when you are not procrastinating, there's all kinds of little things taking your time). I've not been as rigorous about setting goals and then sticking to them, but I did set up a "traffic light" system, aiming to hit 4 hours work on my PhD every day ( a typical "long-term" goal which easily gets buried under short-term commitments and things you can "cross off a list").

    I also have data that can let me show how long I work on things on average, at what time of the day etc, but I haven't dug into it yet... I see some great posts about quantified self people (like Sacha Chua http://sachachua.com/blog/2013/07/quantified-awesome-adding-...), but either they tend to use totally off-the-shelf programs like RescueTime, or they tend to write their own solutions... I'd love for the QS community to come up with some standards, for example a standard way of storing time-use data, and then some common libraries - I'd like to continue logging my time in whatever way works best for me, but if someone makes a really neat way of visualizing time spent vs length of chunks, I'd love to be able to run that analysis on my data too... R would be one nice place to host that.

  2125. Procrastination 2013-07-26 06:10:29 ksmith107
    I like the point this article made about planing ahead for your procrastination, but I feel like this article could have given more reasons of why to we procrastinate to help us battle it. Take brain brain fatigue as in example. I know that im much less likely to procrastinate if i do things right after I wake up and i have the energy to do things that I dont really want to do.

  2126. Passive Income Hacker vs Startup Guy 2013-07-27 00:02:07 lotsofcows
    "big and/or amazing things"? Raised confident, happy children while maintaining their own happiness you mean?

    I really can't think of anything else.

    Unless you're talking about fixing poverty, disease or violence on a large scale in which case I'm surprised you've got the time to procrastinate on here.

  2127. Passive Income Hacker vs Startup Guy 2013-07-27 02:05:57 kbenson
    > Unless you're talking about fixing poverty, disease or violence on a large scale in which case I'm surprised you've got the time to procrastinate on here.

    How does that make any sense? Unless he's raised money from or talked to people that have worked on some of the biggest world problems you're surprised he has time to post on HN?

  2128. Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself? 2013-07-30 00:10:55 kevutu
    Duty, deadlines, promises, anything that make me morally engaged does not actually get me to do good work as this drives me to procrastinate and do stuff at the absolute last minute.

  2129. Ask HN: I can't think straight, my life is in limbo, and I want to end it now 2013-07-30 05:08:43 gregorymichael
    I am so sorry you're going through this. Remember, you can always procrastinate ending it all, and do it later while you examine other options.

    There is a community at DevPressed[1] of developers who struggle with depression.

    I am a developer and gave a talk on my struggle with depression and the greater issue of Developers and Depression [2]. Email me if you'd like to chat - greg at baugues.com

    1. http://www.devpressed.com

    2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFIa-Mc2KSk

  2130. Passive Income Hacker vs Startup Guy 2013-07-31 23:35:21 lotsofcows
    What? By describing the mundane as "awesome" of course. Do you even read what you type?

    Twisted your argument? I'm ignoring your argument (I've just re-read the OP and I'm not actually sure what argument you're talking about) and picking you up on your odd choice of words.

    Re procrastinating, I have never seen a post on hacker news from anyone who is doing big and important things. To my mind, and please feel free to correct me, this strange state of affairs is probably because they're busy.

    Finally, to make it absolutely clear, as you seem to be having problems with this, I'm disagreeing with your abuse of the word "awesome".

    Do you always call people who disagree with you, "internet bully"? What's the difference (other than the banally obvious) between an "internet bully" and a "bully"? There's a lot of irony floating around for a guy who doesn't seem too clear on what "ad hominem" means.

  2131. Passive Income Hacker vs Startup Guy 2013-08-01 02:14:46 Ixiaus
    Do you even read what you type?! The fashion in which you are engaging me is distinctly not convincing me to see your point-of-view.

    You've been a dick this entire conversation; your first comment was sarcastic and an attempt at attacking personal character (am I wrong, or is that not an ad hominem when you respond to something someone says by attacking their character instead of directly dealing with what they wrote - which you're finally starting to do in this comment).

    Who are you to judge anyone on whether they've done big and important things? In my opinion, selling your company for millions is big! Brokering mergers between large corporations is big! Being the inventor of an innovative new technology is big! Does that mean they are now going to cure cancer? I don't know! Are those things important? YES because they are important to the people that experienced it.

    "as you seem to be having problems with this" you're still being a dick here; if you disagree with my diction then fucking say that instead of being a sarcastic asshole. Be courteous and offer a reasoned argument about why you think my choice of words could or might be more appropriate. You still haven't convinced me that my expression was wrong.

    There are people that disagree with me, then there are people that disagree with me and are assholes. The latter are people I believe to be an "internet bully".

    "There's a lot of irony floating around for a guy who doesn't seem too clear on what "ad hominem" means." you're still being a dick here and you still haven't offered any actually helpful knowledge. If my use of "ad hominem" really is incorrect why are you not trying to help me? Why are you trying to tear me down? I'm still not convinced that my usage of the "ad hominem" was ever originally incorrect:

    From the dictionary:

    (of an argument or reaction) arising from or appealing to the emotions and not reason or logic.

    From your comment:

    Unless you're talking about fixing poverty, disease or violence on a large scale in which case I'm surprised you've got the time to procrastinate on here.

    Is that not appealing to emotion (sarcastically attacking me) instead of providing me with a clear argument to tell me why you think "big and important" things should only include "poverty, disease, or violence"?

    If you don't care what I think or engaging in a meaningful conversation, then why did you even comment?

  2132. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 12:32:49 ronyeh
    Break tasks down into tiny chunks that are sooo easy that you don't need to procrastinate to do them.

    Then do them little bits at a time, and reward yourself for doing them.

    See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

    Lots of people procrastinate. I do too. Don't feel so bad about it. :-)

    Or, find a new hobby (like playing guitar) and then procrastinate on that. Spend time reading up on music, music theory, equipment... instead of reading reddit. Maybe you'll learn something new with your time wasting?

  2133. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 12:33:40 kstenerud
    I had the same problem. The standard school program was easy enough to just coast through, as were my first few jobs. At one point I was working on Monday and goofing off the rest of the week.

    What changed it? Probably some of it was age. Your outlook on life and what's important changes as you get older. I spent a fair bit of time talking to people 10, 20, 30, and 40 years older than me, and while I usually didn't agree with them, I did remember their words. After 10 years I was rather shocked at how my outlook had changed. Now it's coming up to 20 and I've definitely changed yet again. How do you achieve the wisdom of age without actually having to spend years aging? Beats me! But I sure learned to appreciate it regardless.

    Another thing that happened is I started taking on harder and harder things. It didn't matter what, so long as it was difficult enough that it would take me years to master. Boxing, welding, classical guitar, open source projects, running a business. I just kept adding things on until I didn't have enough time to even breathe. Then I somehow managed to find the time to get all these things done. And then I piled on more, until I finally reached the point where I literally did not have enough hours in the day to get everything done. Then I dropped some stuff until I felt comfortable again.

    Now I no longer have time for video games or TV (except for the odd time when I'm taking a sanity break, which is maybe once a week for a couple of hours). I have shit to do and a daily routine that gets it done. I had to organize my life because I had too much stuff to do! Now I deliberately carve out time to be with friends or do something crazy. Otherwise I'm busy at work, practicing one of my hobbies, or I'm at home on a Sunday, deliberately doing nothing all day because I've scheduled a "do nothing" day.

    So my advice to tackle procrastination would be: Fill your life with so much stuff that you can't afford to procrastinate (It's even better to get into a few things you can't get out of easily). You'll figure out how to organize yourself. Then you back off a bit to get some balance back into your life.

  2134. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 12:34:45 fmilne
    Definitely had a similar experience When I was still working from home. Working for 30-45 minutes and then play video games, work out, and even just clean the apartment.

    A tea timer by your desk is a great way to approach this at work, personally I find 15 - 20 minutes of work 5 minutes of procrastinating is good balance.

  2135. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 12:44:47 procastatron
    I don't know if I'm highly intelligent. I'd like to think so but I also feel like I'm really good at cheating the system. I can learn the basics of stuff really fast and then bullshit through while I slowly pick up more advanced things.

    I've tried adderall but it almost became a game to see if I could beat it. I would procrastinate even more than normal. Sometimes just stating at a wall for hours at a time

  2136. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 12:55:07 procastatron
    I think too much shit is probably part of my problem. I say yes to everything all the time and as a result I'm involved with literally every part of this startup. I've definitely made myself a Godin lynchpin but people are starting to lose faith in this silly wunderkinds ability to execute.

    Meditation is a good idea. I tried getting into it, ended up reading up on some weird sex meditation shit and went down the rabbit hole on that one. I really think clearing my brain several times in the day would help me.

    It's funny I've seen this list a hundred times but listed out here for some reason it seems to make more sense.

    Addy - hate how it kills my creativity and I try to beat it and convince myself it doesn't work Modafinol - my favorite drug but I tend to stay up for a long time and just procrastinate more. Would definitely be super helpful if I can beat procrastination first CycloBenz - haven't tried, will order

    I have found paracetam to be super helpful but it only works for a week or two before khans to cycle off it. I was on it about 2.5 weeks ago and did in 4 days what I normally have been doing in a month.

    I should start to exercise more...

  2137. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 13:50:42 greenyoda
    You didn't mention whether you find the work you're doing to be interesting or boring. When I'm working on something boring or unpleasant I also tend to procrastinate, but when I'm working on an interesting problem (sometimes even tracking down an obscure bug qualifies as interesting), I get absorbed in what I'm doing and don't get easily distracted.

    If you find your work boring, have you considered looking for a job that's more in line with your interests?

  2138. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 14:11:00 d0m
    It's hard, I've read most comments in this discussion thread and most of them aren't coming from procrastinators. But if I may say the only trick that worked for me... get started. That's the hardest part. But once you get started, even thought 99% of it suck, you'll find a part of the task that you want to continue and push yourself to it. And every time you feel like quitting the task, push yourself to do 1 more minute.. just one. And you'll find yourself addicted to a small part of that task that you find interesting.

    Whatever it is, dishes, work, making calls, paying credit cards.. just get started for 30 secs. The rest will fall into place.

  2139. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 14:13:48 zwegner
    > I know that I've been given a gift and that I'm a fucking idiot for wasting it, but I've just become a chronic procrastinator and it sucks.

    As someone in a rather similar position (my life has been fucked up in so many ways from procrastination), one tip I can give you is to get rid of this mindset.

    I feel horrible whenever I waste lots of time, looking back on how I spent my day, thinking "what the hell is wrong with me?" But the thing is, that attitude feeds much of the procrastination. I am an odd mix of being a total perfectionist, and really lazy, so it turns out that whenever I'm faced with a task that I don't really want to do, I'm quite adept at rationalizing ways to avoid doing the task. I think about possible roadblocks, or pretty much anything that would keep me from attaining my sought-ought perfection, and knowing that I'll have the same strong negative reaction later on that I always do, I just won't do it.

    If you beat yourself up over procrastination, you're just subconsciously teaching yourself to not even think about whether you're procrastinating or not. Whenever you try and shift from unproductive tasks to work, it's much easier to just stay with the short-term dopamine kick of reading the internet or whatever, rather than dealing with harder decisions about what you need to do in the long term to be happy. Yes, this is backwards. Your subconscious is not very rational...

    So, from my point of view, just do everything you can to recondition yourself to not hate working, and to not hate procrastination either. Just try to feel the bit of fulfillment you can get from writing code or whatever, basically just getting your shit done. Have patience with yourself, infinite patience, and know that it takes lots of work to get where you want to be, but it's worth it. You're the only one that can do this.

    BTW, if you're like me, a perfectionist to the core, consider that this comes from a deep-seated insecurity, a part of your brain that tells you that you'll never be good enough. At least, that's the way it is for me, and it's been that way since my childhood, as far back as I can remember. On this front, I'd just try to evaluate your emotional well-being in the most balanced and unattached way possible. Get help if you feel like it. As others have mentioned, meditation can be amazingly helpful here, and exercise too. Unfortunately, they're both quite prone to being procrastinated on.

    Good luck...

  2140. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 14:24:35 Houshalter
    Well I can not speak from experience enough to help since my own procrastination problems are quite bad. But this (http://lesswrong.com/lw/1sm/akrasia_tactics_review/) might help.

  2141. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 14:46:07 musicalentropy
    The next time you feel like wanting to procrastinate, have a look for that :

    http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Overcoming_Procrastination

  2142. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 15:13:00 Hoffenheimer
    I just finished reading Daily Rituals. It's a book about the work habits of famous writers, composers, artists, architects, and the like. One thing that caught my attention was how a lot of people we think of as great/prolific only worked 3 hours a day or for 3 hours at a stretch with a long break in between sessions. That number was very prominent throughout -- I don't remember the exact figure, but it was quite a lot of people. Off the top -- Sartre, Ingmar Bergman, Strauss, Mozart, Trollope, Thomas Mann, Carl Jung.

    Trollope stands out for he had this to say, "All those I think who have lived as literary men, -- working daily as literary labourers, -- will agree with me that three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write. But then, he should so have trained himself that he shall be able to work continuously during those three hours."

    That number might just be a biological limit. You might be working at full capacity already and your brain "procrastinates" in order to recharge. It's very difficult to tell when the brain is tired since you can't feel it, but wanting to do other things -- specifically things that take less mental energy like reading blogs/forums and playing games -- seems like a good signal of fatigue.

    One thing you can try though is to split up your day into different blocks and focus on recharging in the time between those gaps. Say, do 3 hours in the morning and 3 hours in the late afternoon and just completely relax and do whatever the hell you want in the meantime.

  2143. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 15:14:46 crawfordcomeaux
    I can absolutely relate. We're in the same boat and this is my personal cry for help, but more on that further down.

    I'm 30 and still where you are, except without money. I've only skimmed the comments, but I agree with those who say you may have ADD or ADHD-PI. For adults with ADHD (speaking as one who's done a bit of research on it over the past few months), medication is almost never enough. Adult ADHD is complicated further by coping mechanisms (ie. good & bad habits) that have been developed in response to the condition. Habits exist in our brains as reinforced neural pathways, so changing them is essentially like trying to rewire your brain. To my knowledge, there is no pill in existence that will do that.

    Side note about why I think you may have ADHD (which is simply ADD + multiple hyperactivity traits) based on what I've skimmed in the comments: procrastination (duh), highly intelligent, overcommiter, ability to hyperfocus (which is why you can slam out code, but also why you went down the "rabbit hole" away from meditation), info addict.

    Also, for what it's worth, I take Vyvanse 60mg in the morning & Adderall XR 20mg around 2PM. Vyvanse is awesome if it works for you.

    Anyway, I don't know what the solution is, though there have been good suggestions throughout the comments. Also, I highly recommend the book "ADD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life." Even if you don't have ADD, it has a lot of useful suggestions for approaching several of your issues.

    I do have an idea that I'm currently trying to test, though, which brings me to my cry for help...

    I'm building a system for myself to help change multiple bad habits at once, but I work much better when collaborating with a group & have nobody to work with. I'm attempting to break the conventional wisdom that you should baby-step your way through multiple habits. The CW exists because habit change costs willpower (ie. results in "ego depletion") and trying to change multiple habits saps your daily reserve of willpower too quickly. The system I'm coding is intended to mitigate this by removing the option of going through with an existing habit. Without the ability to perform a habit, there's essentially no willpower spent.

    The plan is to combine several different apps & APIs to: - detect when I'm getting distracted (via RescueTime, primarily) and restrict my computer usage (though I'm thinking it may make more sense to restrict by default & invert the restrictions as a means for enforcing break times) - detect when I'm on the computer/phone when I should be doing something else (via Google Calendar) and lock my out of both (via Prey & Find My iPhone) - detect when events occur that I want to attach habits to, such as decluttering one room when I arrive at home (via Find My iPhone) - ping my support group when I need it (just an idea...still needs fleshing out) - confirm task completion through different means (eg. check to see if a document exists if a writing task is needed, follow up on phone/email tasks, compare original image of clean kitchen with latest photo of clean kitchen when I'm supposed to wash dishes, or just confirm with others in the support system that the task has been completed)

    Currently, I'm building the system out using Huginn (http://github.com/cantino/huginn), but would either like to optimize the system so that it can scale for other users or build something similar in node.js. In the meantime, I'm developing Huginn agents for the needed APIs (and the API wrappers where necessary). But this is slow going and I have no means of generating income. Getting a full-time job means I have to spend my day attempting to keep from getting distracted, so I wind up without the mental energy to do anything else after work while still not being productive enough at work to hold a job. Since my parents refuse to accept this as the situation (despite 15 years of this pattern), I no longer have their financial support to continue working on this. I essentially have a month to find menial funding to build this out as a service for others, at which point I'll either need to give up pursuing my dream of creating a startup to join the rat race or join the military in the hopes that such a structured environment will correct things.

    Is this a project anyone would be willing to help me develop?

  2144. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 15:27:34 hfz
    I am a lot like you, and I've tried so many things. Tips, tricks, to-do lists, whatever.

    The one thing that sticks with me is to first truly understand the value of time. It sounds cheesy but time really is the most valuable resource in the world, and procrastinating is about the worst way to squander it.

    Also, even after coming at that conclusion, it's still a struggle, every day. There is not a day when you can magically be not lazy. It will still be there forever, but you can choose to fight it. It's a daily struggle, but absolutely worth it, though.

  2145. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 15:48:32 yason
    The complement of procrastination is wild passion. One who's capable of procrastinating with one sort of things is exactly the type of guy who's capable of getting some other things done if only he does things that call him on a deeper level.

    It seems that among the great scores in school you haven't bumped into anything would have ignited that passion in you. That is OK because schools are pretty much designed to kill all passion, and you're so young anyway. There are a lot of people who can't get things done because they aren't smart enough: it's always better to be a procrastinator in comparison.

    Procrastination is your way to reject activities that don't mean enough to you.

    Nobody procrastinates splitting and carrying wood if the heating of his house depends on it. Your behaviour is effectively saying that reading Hacker News is more meaningful to you than your work. That is a good hint: find work that you would rather do whenever you find yourself procrastinating at your current work.

    Another hint: you're suffering because you'd like to care about your work. THat's passion speaking already.

    You would like to do lots and lots of good work: you just can't get to it where you're working now. There are a lot of people who would kill for such a talent and go happily abuse the smarts you have so that they could only work for three hours and then go play Patience for the rest of the day.

    Also consider that three hours of real work per day is pretty average for the hours of a regular workday.

    Other people fake it, too, and work on looking busy, even subconsciously. Yet you can find people at the kitchen all day long, drinking coffee. Or browsing Facebook at their computers. It's all a subtle game where everybody knows that nobody really does productive work all the time but everybody also knows that they're not to admit it, even to each others.

    Note that this behaviour is not intentional: it's simply that people aren't generally wired to do creative things for hours in a row, day after day. What people can bear, for example, is 8-hour shifts on the assembly line five days a week numbing your mind, and then consider what even that does to them! Not to mention creative mental work that you can't force like you can force your muscles! I've talked about this with many people and the consensus seems to be that roughly four hours of real work per day means a good day and you're likely to just work the rest of the day wrestling with your guilt because you think you could do more.

    Thus, consider the fact what you do during the three hours is that what is important. Not the things you could've achieved, according your imagination, in the other five hours.

    Further, if you're working more than eight hours a day, it's no wonder you're super frustrated and trying to get out by procrastinating. You say you do "bullshit" for 7-8 hours and 3 hours of real work, that adds up to 10-11 hours a day. That's a lot of precious time spent for something you could've just done in three hours with much less stress!

    Finally, go Watch Office Space. Again. While it's supposed to be mostly funny it just happens that the movie hits the chord on so many levels that it's nearly creeping in its truthfulness.

  2146. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 16:33:14 jhuckestein
    I often struggled with this as well. When you go through life with practically no effort and somehow achieve many things that are hard for others, it's easy to feel guilty. Especially because most of our parent's generation lived their lives diligently working 8 hours a day, advancing their career, eventually settling down etc and that seems to be the expectation for us as well. I'd just not worry about it and live your life the way you think works best.

    One thing that helped me was to stop thinking "How can I get myself to work 8 hours a day?" and start thinking "What fun, useful things can I do with the 8 hours a day I'm not working.?" The only reason I read the internet and played flash games all day was because I was supposed to be at my computer, working. Overall that's a pretty low-fun and low-reward activity, though. If you accept that you won't work more than 3 hours anyway, you can do much more engaging/fun/interesting things with the rest of the time.

    You mention that you wish you'd done more sports. Great, start doing sports. With your income, you can easily get a gym trainer or trainer in any sport you'd like to learn. Set yourself the goal to complete a mini triathlon next year, join a recreational volleyball league or anything else you like. You can also learn how to cook really well, enroll in a language school (for human languages), volunteer to teach kids how to code, etc. Those are all things that you'll probably enjoy and that I'm much less likely to procrastinate. Learn how to play an instrument or sing (again, you can afford a teacher to get off the ground) or pick up a hobby closer to your work like electrical engineering. The possibilities are endless once you accept that you're not "supposed to" work all day; unless you want to, and that day will come.

    You can even take it one step further and just up and leave. Spend a few years traveling every corner of the world and earn your keep with a day or two of contracting each month. I know nobody who's done that who'd consider it a waste of time in any sense of the word.

    Hope this helps and best of luck. Don't be so hard on yourself.

  2147. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 16:34:46 Gnarl
    Dear procastatron (love that name!:),

    There are some excellent suggestions below and I admit I haven't read them all, so sorry for repeats. Here's my experience from combating the same problem:

    You can talk to your conscious mind all you want. Won't help. Your subconscious mind will reign supreme. Always. So you need to re-program the subconscious. Eliminate the emotional drivers behind your procrastination. See 2). below for one such method. Think of it as an unfair message bus. Without cheating, it takes a lot of work to pass messages from the conscious mind down to the subconscious mind but messages from the subconscious are effortlessly running your conscious life - and mostly, you don't even realize.

    So what to do? 1). calm your minds (both of them) through meditation. Sit for 12 minutes a day in a comfy, non-disturbed place, and focus on your breathing. When a thought pops up, simply acknowledge it and return to focusing on breathing. Resist the urge to pursue those trains of thought. This will strengthen your ability to focus.

    2). get familiar with EFT (Emotional Freedom Therapy). Its easy to do and as an offshoot from acupuncture/acupressure, it involves finger-tapping on specific acupuncture points on the face and torso. Many people dismiss EFT as silly pseudoscience but it does prove to be remarkably effective at eliminating undesired behavior by acting on the deep subconscious circuits. Its free so why not try it.

  2148. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 16:38:39 henningb
    What works best for me: Work closely with super-motivated people who inspire you. Procrastination goes down to zero. Interestingly, the effect lasts even after your project with these people is finished.

    Also, read http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2012/04/5-great-things-about-pr...

  2149. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 16:39:12 xyproto
    Life is not like a continuous road. Life has chapters. Even if you procrastinate now, you can be in a completely different situation for the next chapter. The trick is to try to make the good chapters last and keep making changes until bad chapters turn good. Also, try "going with the life flow" while keeping a healthy respect for situations you know have the potential to go wrong.

  2150. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 18:30:13 nisa
    Just my take it on it as a 29 year old with no money and a bag of procrastination issues and some traits that look like ADD (I've once got diagnosed for general anxiety disorder, no ADD, but never did a test for it):

    Technical solutions, like the one you explained never worked for me.

    I'd second some other commenters here that accepting oneself is the first step. And learning to look objectivly on yourself and accept that you fuck things up from time to time. Don't say that's why I'm lazy or that is because of X. Just note that you are doing something you know it is bad. And try to accept that. It's easier to deal with it.

    Things that helped me (that you could try before going down the military route):

    Heavy exercise (running 10km a day, martial arts training 2-3x a week). This is probably related to fear - without that level of exercise I'm feeling unable to even start with other habit forming activities. As others noted it's tough to keep sticking to it.

    Meditation/Relaxation: Medition is pretty hard for me. But doing relaxation techniques like progressive muscle relaxation or even yoga and then vipassana makes a difference for me. Never works without the heavy exercise for me through.

    As far as I remember when I was able to implement these 2 habits for a longer period of time everything else worked quite well or at least I was able to work on the issues. E.g. facing long worn in fears, structering your day. Learning to plan. Actually long term planning.

    If the level of stress or fear rises, everything breaks apart for me through. It's been a pattern for some years now.

    Also: Get some real friends, not people that talk only about their great ideas for apps with you but that are honest to themselves and also struggle with life. I'm always feeling that a lot of my issues are superficial when I'm around other people that are working on their problems. It keeps you grounded and gives you motivation. Maybe.

    Actually I don't have a solution. But if you want to feel better about yourself exercise and meditation worked for me.

  2151. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 18:41:40 rayiner
    Adderall is an amazing drug for people like you. Also, try getting a job in a field, say programming for banks, or management consulting, where you can't procrastinate.

    As for procrastinating life stuff: outsource everything. Get a maid, etc.

  2152. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 18:58:34 MarkCancellieri
    Long-term behavior-change is extremely difficult, but the strategy that I have been experimenting with recently and having success with is context-sensitive rules (commonly called "implementation intentions" by behavioral researchers). The form of these rules is "if-then," although I often phrase them in a way such that the "if-then" is implied.

    For example, like you, I was procrastinating far too much at work. This was driven mainly by two problems: 1) I'm somewhat addicted to the Internet, and 2) there are many things with my job that I'm either bored with or just uncomfortable doing. The result was that I would procrastinate by going on the Internet.

    I finally decided to make a rule: "No non-work-related Internet at work." Or in the "if-then" format: "If I am at work, then I will not use the Internet for non-work purposes."

    This rule has worked for me. It forced me to confront the discomfort that I was having with the task at hand. I also try to focus on completing only one particularly challenging or distasteful task that I have been procrastinating on per day, and I try to do it first thing in the morning. The positive feeling that it generates is amazing.

    I have adopted other rules as well, such as to lose fat. I have a rule to only eat during an 8-hour feeding window from 12PM to 8PM (intermittent fasting). While I am at work, I also only eat a huge mixed salad (with grilled chicken, hard-boiled eggs, and tuna salad) every single day. I don't allow myself to use the vending machine or to eat goodies that people bring in or eat pizza on Fridays (pizza day). When I'm not at work, I'm a little more flexible.

    I try not to design rules that expect me to be perfect all day every day. My rules are designed in a way that help me to be perfect only during specific contexts.

    I think the reason that setting rules for ourselves is so often successful is because it eliminates the need to make decisions. Every time you allow yourself to make a decision, you give yourself the opportunity to make a bad decision, which you will do at times of low willpower, which pretty much everyone goes through (willpower is an exhaustible resource).

    So my recommendation is to try to design some context-sensitive rules (i.e. rules that you will follow at certain times or certain places) and adapt them as necessary so that they work for you. Remind of yourself that your rules will make your life better and that you are free to change them if you find that they don't serve you, or else your brain might rebel at the perception of the pain of discipline.

    If your rules take a lot of willpower, they will eventually fail guaranteed.

  2153. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 20:19:32 read
    You might be procrastinating for the right reason: that you are currently working on things that are not that important.

    If you were free to do anything in the world, what would that be?

  2154. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 20:20:49 gaustin
    Re "DOWNSIZE". I have the opposite problem. If I have too little on my plate I procrastinate. If I am obviously in over my head I have no problem lining up the tasks and working hard on them until completion.

  2155. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 20:42:26 jpswade
    One thing that worked for me in the past.

    Get a post-it note and write 3 things you want to achieve today.

    Then work on those 3 things until they are done.

    If you find yourself procrastinating, just look at the post-it note to remind you what you're meant to be doing and restore your focus.

  2156. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 21:04:17 michaelfeathers
    If you need to build up willpower to do things, you should be doing different things. Find what you want to do. You still may have a problem with procrastination, but at least you'll be getting things done in a realm that matters to you at a deep level.

    The thing about "I could be changing the world" is more complex. That is one hell of a monkey to put on your back. What are your hobbies? What do you really enjoy doing? Yeah, maybe for where you are in life (young adult?) you have that urge to change the world but channel it through a passion. Don't even think about anything that furthers a goal, just pure enjoyment.

    As a kid, the architect Frank Gehry played with blocks and he went back to that play when he found his work. When physicist Richard Feynman was burned out, he stopped doing all physics until he saw a plate spinning in the air and started to compute spin just for fun with no sense of a goal. It reconnected him.

    It seems like you are in a prime place to explore that base level of play given your security in work. Do it and maybe you'll end up with what you want to do. Then you can move away from the chores or put them into perspective.

  2157. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 22:29:53 skue
    The fact that this has been going on for years, and that you feel the procrastination is holding you back from your full potential does sound like it could be ADHD, as others have mentioned. Also, ADHD tends to run in families. So if your dad is the same way...

    Most people associate ADHD with kids who struggle in school. But highly intelligent people can have it too. It still holds them back from reaching their potential, it's just that their potential is much greater.

    Here are some things to ask yourself:

    * Do you also procrastinate non-work things such as buying gifts, paying bills, calling people back?

    * What is your home like: Do you have a lot of half-finished projects, "piles", or chores that never get finished?

    * Are you always running late because you are busy doing other things, or underestimate what you need to do to get out the door and get to your destination?

    * Do people tell you that you frequently interrupt others when they are talking?

    * Would you describe yourself as a risk taker and more prone to high adrenaline activities? How the friends you keep?

    * Are you only able to focus with the help of caffeine, guarana (eg, Vitamin Water Energy), or other energy drinks?

    * Do you use nicotine to relax or be more focused? (If so, please stop and see a doctor.)

    * Do you use alcohol, not to get drunk or for the drink itself, but as a way to unwind or slow down at the end of the day?

    This is a good book: http://www.amazon.com/Driven-Distraction-Revised-Recognizing..., which reminds me of another question:

    * Do you buy/start a lot of books, but rarely seem to finish them?

    Read enough of the book to see if this resonates with you. If it does, the next step would be to talk to (a) your doctor if you have one, or (b) find a psychiatrist in your area who specializes in ADHD. The book can help you find resources.

    Edit: Just to be clear, this list is NOT meant to be diagnostic. Although I happen to have an MD, I am NOT a practicing physician no one should assume they have ADHD based on any list like this. I would only say that if many of these things hold overwhelmingly true for the OP, then it might be worth learning more about ADHD and finding a professional to begin a conversation.

    Yes, ADHD and meds sparks a lot of cynicism in some people. However, one reason I recommended that book is that the authors present a balanced approach to meds. One of the authors has ADHD, but doesn't find that meds make much of a difference for him (they reportedly are ineffective for 25% of adults with ADHD). But they have helped many of his patients and his own son.

  2158. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 22:38:37 procastatron
    When I take addy I just find myself trying to procrastinate even more. Except then it's concentrated procrastination

  2159. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 22:47:01 procastatron
    I think I've had this with everything though. Even things I really enjoy I find myself procrastinating about

  2160. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 22:55:31 procastatron
    I usually am at the office for 80+ hours a week. It could be burn out, but even when I reduce down to 40 hours I basically cut everything I accomplish in half. Somehow my brain realizes what I'm doing and I procrastinate just as much.

    I have realized some other effects from burnout, but I think this procrastination issue is something different entirely

  2161. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 23:01:52 procastatron
    I saw a school psych when I was in college and all it really did was piss me off.

    The guy spent 30 minutes asking me these types of questions except even more generic and then afterwards said "Yep, you have ADD".

    I hardly talked about myself and the way he phrased the questions made it super easy to say yes to all of them. He wrote me a prescription and I never got it filled because of how little I felt he actually had done. I've taken all kinds of ADD medicine from friends, etc but somehow getting a prescription from what seemed like a bullshit therapy session made me stop taking ADD drugs altogether.

    If you read some of my other comments, when I take adderall, ritalin, daytrana etc I end up just being more focused in my procrastination. It's like my brain says, "I know what you're doing drug, and I'm going to fuck with you"

  2162. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 23:34:50 daat418
    First thing that occurred to me while reading OP's post.

    Your symptom list is accurate. I'm ADHD and can account for all of these traits, save for alcohol abuse (I dislike alcohol in general and only typically drink Scotch, on occasion, and socially drink with co-workers).

    I'm 26 years old. I started my career in computing doing tech support. For at least a decade, I've been aspiring toward this ideal of "becoming a programmer".

    What worked for years was convincing myself that I still had plenty of time and my lack of progress could be attributed to [excused by] my upbringing. I grew up in South Africa and was forced into the role of "man of the household" from 14 onwards. Started working full-time at age 15 (at an internet cafe, where I discovered some new vices called "starcraft" and "counter-strike").

    I did not go to high-school. All that I am and all that I know is a product only of self-guided interest and study. My little job at the internet cafe granted me the gift of access to the internet after hours. After hour study sessions led me into a career in support and IT beginning at age 16.

    Fast-forward 10 years and I'm in, essentially, the same position I was in at 16. I'm still in support, making a pitiable salary. I'm still struggling to manage basic essentials (chores, paying bills on time, getting to work on time, study, motivation), addicted to computer games and in a relationship with someone that I cannot stand.

    What ADHD does that's so evil is that it both incapacitates you (unless you have a gun to your head - hence why I was able to pick up IT skills on the job) and blurs your sense of "real-time". The moment you allow yourself to baulk, procrastinate and so on, you essentially box yourself in more and more.

    Recently I started amphetamine treatment. So far, it has had a fundamental impact on all aspects of my life. I've picked up SICP and I've started my journey. It's no miracle drug and I am struggling at every turn, but it had made focus-management easier. If you find yourself nodding at the symptoms list get diagnosed as soon as possible.

  2163. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-02 23:38:23 thirsday
    I feel compelled to strongly disagree with all the people who are saying "You're not a procrastinator, you're just not doing what you love." Don't believe them.

    To start with, they seem to be assuming that there can only be one cause for this type of behavior... that you're secretly profoundly disinterested in whatever you're doing, and that pursuing something else would fix everything. I know that this is wrong from personal experience.

    Since I graduated from high school (8 years now) I've been a professional musician -- I've toured nationwide playing for other people, I've worked as a studio musician, I've recorded and produced albums, both my own and other peoples'. I've basically lived the dream job of anybody who has ever been the least bit interested in music... the money sucks, but overall what more could you want as far as spending your time?

    I procrastinated heavily through all of it, whenever I was faced with doing something hard (like finishing a song that didn't come easily to me, finishing production work on a friend's album [that turned out to be a fiasco], or actually sitting down and practicing my instrument [I basically never did]). Most of my time I spent sitting with my laptop on my lap, browsing the internet and reading tech blogs -- not doing things that would help me be a better rock star.

    I'm now a programmer, and in many ways it's a better fit for my skillset. The challenges are interesting, and the money is a hell of a lot better (most people who say you shouldn't be motivated by money haven't had a significant lack of money to compare it to). I still struggle with procrastination. When I'm faced with doing something hard, I... guess what... browse news and tech blogs on the internet.

    So what I love doing, and what I should actually be doing with my life is... sitting in my underwear reading articles on the internet and occasionally watching Hulu/Netflix? Because if I'm not "happy" being a programmer (exercising my mind and making lots of money) and I'm not "happy" being a fucking rock star (performing in front of people, expressing creativity, and having comparative freedom with my time)... what the hell else is there? I'm pretty sure there's no other secret profession out there that offers a radically different experience -- these two jobs are pretty much on opposite ends of the spectrum in many ways, and I've enjoyed them both... and I've struggled with procrastination and sheer laziness at both of them.

    My point with all of this is just to contradict the people who seem to imply that if you just find the right particular thing to be doing you won't struggle with this any longer, and that you are mis-diagnosing yourself. From my own experience, I would say that is absolutely incorrect. ...Now you may find areas where you may struggle with it less... I got the most excited about working on my own band and doing my own tunes when I was a musician, but I couldn't make a viable income doing just that. Providing for my family is also important to me.

    You and I have the same problem -- you're not misdiagnosing yourself. The good news is that it seems like there's tons of useful info in this thread. Work on the laziness / procrastination issues -- I'll work on them too. Hell, we can even work on them together. Once you feel like you've made some progress or at least understand the issue better... if you feel like you really would like to do something other than programming, THEN make a change. As somebody who has been a literal rock star, I feel compelled to mention that programming has a lot of things going for it.

    Comment back if you'd like to tackle any of the procrastination stuff together.

  2164. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-03 00:04:17 yungchin
    > unless there's a physiological difference in people like me

    I think there is: different people have differently tuned reward-centres in the brain.

    The book "the procrastination equation" by Piers Steel tries to capture those differences in equation form. Although it's probably faux-math, the key idea seems good to me: procrastinators are more sensitive to the time-until-reward dimension of a given rational choice.

    And of course, being physiologically different is not an excuse to procrastinate away. Once we understand the nature of the beast, we can game our brain (as the book describes), and (I hope) we can then maybe benefit from brain plasticity to get better at this stuff over time.

  2165. Youre Procrastinating Without Even Realizing It 2013-08-03 00:59:43 jrarredondo
    You were really learning through playing. Learning is an investment. Not all play is learning.

    Another distinction is that children are fed by their parents. So if you have a "parent" in your company who "feeds" you then you can play a lot (of course, until they realize you are 18 and kick you out of the house).

    OP's point is that you need to build code or sell code. If learning helps you do either one, then I think it is not procrastination.

  2166. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-03 01:10:18 zeidrich
    In my experience procrastination is a behavior caused by the reinforcement of perceived failure.

    In many cases, it's the desire to stop procrastinating that you are "failing" at, and that is discouraging. Failing to stop procrastinating makes the idea of stopping procrastinating more trepidatious. You can overcome this with willpower but that becomes exhausting. The fact that it is exhausting makes more negative associations with the idea of not procrastinating and reinforces the difficulty. Essentially, it's not that you're lazy, or that you're afraid of the individual tasks that you have to do, it's that there's a sort of mental hurdle that needs to be overcome to do "something" that you want to do.

    I have overcome this by slowly introducing very simple routines into my life. Routines that are all but impossible to fail.

    The first was to not worry about any commitments on Saturdays, but to relax and take a nap. After weeks of that, I was just generally having a better time on Sundays.

    I made a resolution to get coffee at a local coffee shop on Sunday Morning, with my wife if possible, otherwise by myself.

    I made a list of chores to do at home, very simple ones, and loaded it into wsplit (a tool generally used for timing speedruns in video games). The list is: - Put on Music - Clean Desk - Empty Dishwasher - Fill Dishwasher - Brush and Floss Teeth - Clean Table - Clean Counter - Clean Cat Litter - Vacuum Living Room The tool is restrictive, it doesn't let you go back, it only lets you progress to the next task. It also times you. I did this every day.

    I pick up flowers from a local flower shop on Mondays to put on the table.

    I invite my brother over for dinner on Thursday.

    I've made a list similar to the above for work.

    This all might seem stupid to an outsider. And it's not at all like I was living like a slob prior to this, but these are really juts exercises. The fact that these are decisions that I've made in advance means that there's no thought that needs to go into carrying them out. I don't worry about procrastinating when I'm doing my list of chores. I go home, I start the timer, the list tells me what I need to do, and I start doing it. My house is always in a state of cleanliness even if surprise guests come over, and the time it takes to complete the task shortens every day. Eventually, the task actually becomes a source of stress relief. I know it will take me 15-30 minutes, and my house will be presentable. I know I have something for breakfast in the morning on Sunday. I know regardless of my week that I'll be able to recover on Saturday. I never have to make plans for Thursday. I run a work routine twice daily, and I know that all of my e-mail will be read and my tasks and reporting will be captured.

    There are two caveats though. The first is that I have decided I won't feel guilty for the things that I'm doing. I'm not working now, I'm posting on HN. But I've completed my routine for the morning, so I know my status, and I have nothing looming that I need to do. I had some pressing things and I attended to them already because I was alerted to them when I was first doing that routine. Procrastination only happens for me when I'm trying (but kind of failing) to ignore the consequences of inaction, also it's exacerbated by the feeling of an unknown multitude of tasks hanging over me. My work routine is simple, always makes me feel more in control, but also makes me aware of what is actually really important, and what actually has to have immediate action taken. Because it's simple and makes me feel better, it's easy to accomplish. Because it alerts me to those things, it makes me address them before procrastinating.

    The second is that I have decided that while these things are tasks that I do in the evening, or on a Monday, or after lunch. They are not tasks that I _need_ to do every evening, every Monday, or every day after lunch. The completion of these tasks feels good, they are easy to complete, and I know when I can do them. However, this is not a routine that needs to be maintained. If I miss a day, or a week, or three weeks, I haven't failed anything, I don't need to "start again" and I can always go out on Sunday and get my coffee and sandwich.

    Ultimately the result is not to use my willpower to overcome procrastination. My goal is to reduce the need to use willpower to do most tasks, to make many tasks that remove stress a matter of routine rather than will. This way I conserve willpower for the leftover tasks that I don't have a routine for. Because I have saved that willpower, it's more likely that those tasks will succeed, and since I don't count the occasional non-productive moment as a failure, I've stopped feeling so much that I procrastinate.

    I'm sometimes unproductive, but when I am, I'm aware of the consequences and it feels like a decision. When I decide to approach a task, I don't have that guilty, hidden, procrastinating barrier to overcome. And not having to "beat" procrastination gives me that much more willpower to initiate tasks.

    This has been a slow process for me, over the course of a year. But the impact on my mood and my feeling of agency has been indescribable. While before I thought I was lazy, I just realized that I was really just exhausting myself - straining against myself.

    What I'm trying to do now is to mentally separate the resolution to do a task from the initiation of the task. Instead of thinking "If I decide to do this, I have to work" it's more like "This is something I need to do for this rational reason." and then "I will start the task that I decided to do." avoiding any consideration of what it might feel like. That's more challenging, but it's slowly working, and I'm starting to feel good doing "Things that I resolved to do" as opposed to "communicating with an irate client" or "fixing the issue that has been broken for so long I'm embarrassed that it's still not fixed". It just gets abstracted into a "Starting a task" meme, and generally when I start a task, and proceed to the next step, it ultimately gets completed. And fixing that embarrassing issue finally feels great. Resolving the issue with the client feels good. And if more issues come up, I don't worry about them, I put them on the list, when I get to my routine I evaluate them, and then I begin them.

  2167. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-03 01:48:13 skmurphy

       "We procrastinate when we've forgotten who we are"
   Merlin Man in Inbox Zero Notes (Sep-30-2009) 
   http://inboxzero.tumblr.com/post/201133278

  2168. Hacker News in the Terminal 2013-08-03 03:44:54 k2enemy
    My interpretation was that if you are reading HN in a terminal, you are probably procrastinating from work and therefore shouldn't get sucked in to the discussions that make this a great place.

  2169. Functional Programming with Python 2013-08-03 11:18:30 d0m
    Look, I love functional programming. I use it all the time and I procrastinate in the shower about the best to add currying to all my favorite languages. That being said, even after all those years, I still find this:

        expr, res = "28+32+++32++39", 0
    for t in expr.split("+"):
        if t != "":
            res += int(t)
    
    print res
    SO MUCH more readable than this:

        from operator import add
    expr = "28+32+++32++39"
    print reduce(add, map(int, filter(bool, expr.split("+"))))
    A couple years ago I created a library called Moka in python to make functional and nesting easier. That would be written this way:

        (Moka(expr)
       .do(string.split, '+')
       .keep(lambda x: x != "")
       .map(int)
       .reduce(moka.add))
    Still, the imperative version, althought it has state and feels hacky for a functional hacker, is still pretty damn clear and easy to read.

  2170. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-03 21:00:54 X4
    @procrastron Mind & Body are equally important. DO SPORT Regulary! 3-4 Times a Week at the same days every week. Your discipline will come over you and attack your laziness.

    I say that out of personal experience, so if you use only your mind to do your work, it will shut-off pretty fast to go into standby, because you trained that mind-muscle to be efficient (3h/day@work). After doing your sports, your mind will have to adapt and that will decrease your concentration in the first week, but raise it dramatically in the coming weeks.

    Hey it could be your workload too (idk you), in that case, ask for more ;) hahaha :)

    Hook up with a stranger, a friend, or go alone and try to find pals you can do your sport regularly with as a motivation.

    Just NOW you procrastinate AGAIN ;) Why don't you ask your family, Gf, or go to a Psychologist or Ergo-Theraphy or something, instead of asking the Internet. You know it's not very likely that we can help you, only you can help yourself.

    I'm not perfect myself and focus on everything, but the thing I need to do. My habit is to solve things generally and that leads me from A-Z and back to A, then after having everything done, I start with the job I actually have to do.. sucks

  2171. Why I'll be a solo founder next time 2013-08-06 01:54:52 qwerta
    Nice article but I disagree. I am very technical person and I really miss cofounder who would take care of social/business side.

    First heaving new born children gives me focus on work. Before I would procrastinate a lot. Now I have to turn my idea into business, or there will be serious trouble. Sure I can only give it 10 hours X 6 days a week, but that is enough.

    Secondly I disagree on remote location. It takes extra money (fast internet, video conferencing gear) and effort. But it also gives more freedom to choose best partner.

  2172. Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator how do I break it? 2013-08-06 06:06:28 michalu
    One thing that worked for me was to give up illusions about the quick fix. You won't kill procrastination tomorrow or anytime in the future, you can only develop habits that will be harder to break after some time. I like to see myself as an abstinent - it can come back anytime and therefore I stick to my routines and avoid any situations leading to procrastination. It's a life long process in my eyes and only consistence leads to change.

    What helped me was to develop a morning routine - I started with making my bed. Every day. I know myself - if I leave out one day I will leave out second day too and eventually fail. After a while I added cold shower, 2 glasses of water, workout, 5 min meditation and a healthy breakfast - to cut it short I have been working out every morning for last 6 months, not missing a single day.

    I created an excel sheet where I track if I miss the routine or not, the time I spend working and the time I spend studying something. I have it done for 9 weeks all on one paper - it works better that having a daily to do list because you can see your progress and how you've been doing so far, unlike with daily to-do where you can quickly forget you wasted last monday. ( I have it printed out - and I put it on a visible place. It works better, because once I turn on the notebook I get distracted about wanting to check my email and what to do next. I keep this stuff strictly offline )

    After 9 weeks I sum it up and take a week off. Over the last year my net working hours have increased 500% and so has my income.

    Another thing that helped was to change environment, clean up stuff, email, desktop the room, throw things out. I have put a K9 on my pc blocking porn, youtube, facebook, quora and every medium where I can read something about politics. I threw out the password and blocked even the email provider I have my backup email on. Sounds ridiculous right. Well I feel liberated, I just don't have to fight with the temptation anymore and it saves a lot of energy. And most importantly I actually do what I love doing every day. My life is much better since then. It also forced me to spend my time more meaningfully.

    Also note that I tried many things before and most have failed. This is what eventually worked for me as an individual ( yes my procrastination was that bad, I had to get that radical ) I remember feeling so hopeless I actually thought I won't change ever in my life, that I am doomed to be lazy. Well anyway I still have to remind myself I am a step from falling back and I still work on the improvement.

  2173. Beg HN: Please only report serious GitHub outages (1h+) 2013-08-07 12:02:12 derefr
    How do you carry on to the next bug-to-fix/feature-to-add when you're using Github Issues as your bug tracker? Or what if all you've got on your plate for the day is "review and merge everyone's pull requests to create our next release candidate build?" Or, even ignoring Github's extra features, what if you need to integrate a new prototype-stage third-party library, which is hosted on Github?

    Or, to be less charitable, and to assume some incompetence on someone's part (though not necessarily the developer doing the work)--what if you're trying to use bundle/npm install to set up a working environment for one of your codebases, but one of the dependencies is listed as a git ref of a repo hosted on Github?

    And honestly, this is all assuming you would "just move on to the next [whatever]." Most people will take any excuse to procrastinate. :)

  2174. Ask HN: What are you working on right now? 2013-08-08 17:27:18 ajuc
    I do 2d side scrolling game in html5. It's supposed to be arcade rpg, with quests, dialogs, and upgrading your ship instead of leveling up (maybe later I'll add skills like hacking). Moving works like in asteorids, but there's huge flying city to fly through instead of asteroids. Theme is postapocalyptic.

    I have working prototype using only canvas, and one using webgl, there's just tutorial and one simple quest and I need to develop better events system to write quests more easily.

    Demo is here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44884054/dema/current/ma...

    Quest system is using my https://github.com/ajuc/pefjs library - works similary to jbpm, but it's much simpler and has much less features (no subprocesses, no persistence, no transactions). I use slightly modified https://code.google.com/p/jsdot/ graph editor to create quests (nodes are waiting states, edges are transitions between states with conditions on them).

    The game works, but isn't fast enough, so now I work on using webgl for more stuff. For now I have nice way to draw huge tiled maps using webgl ( https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44884054/dema/current/al... ) - it's huge map of 4096x4096 tiles 64px x 64px each, and I only need to draw 2 triangles using 2 textures to do that.

    Now I plan to keep objects data in another texture, redraw to it each frame calculating physics and collision detection in fragment shaders, and draw static vertex buffer with that texture to have moving objects.

    I procrastinate heavily, should just make the game instead of all that tech.

    And I certainly need better graphic.

  2175. If programming doesn't make me happy, what does? 2013-08-09 07:45:43 CyberFonic
    I went through the same emotions as you. I still can't stop ranting "stupid programmers" whenever some program provides a bad UX. And I re-factor as a form of procrastination.

    But let me digress. Programming is like carpentry. Being a master of your tools is important. Better tools are often the answer, e.g. a nail gun is usually faster and more accurate than a hammer and a bag of nails. But the important thing is what problem are you solving and what are you building to solve that problem. There is a difference between building a kennel for your dog or a house to live in, etc. The skill-set is pretty much the same, but the needs and solution are different.

    Solving puzzles is part of the learning process. Building solutions to real problems is when you go pro. Some people will suggest scratching your itch. I would suggest look for hair on fire problems. You will find more than enough challenges and sense of accomplishment when you have solved one and ready to move onto the next.

  2176. Using Voice to Code Faster than Keyboard 2013-08-13 15:57:13 cturner
    It's very different for different programmers.

    I've worked with people who are skilled developers and who can't even touch type. They have a slow-pace, methodical way of working. Many look at the keyboard over glasses and hunt and peck. The professor who ported plan 9 to raspberry pi (recent video here) is an example of this approach.

    On the other hand, I have a shocking memory and can't hold context for long. Sometimes I come to write a piece of code and find that I wrote it last week and can't remember a thing about it.

    I work by crashing through. I stalk the problem, procrastinate, drink tea, write short essays about what's stopping me from getting started. Eventually I get the whole problem in my head, and then need to get it down and done before I get tired. When I'm in this state and I need to solve a problem that I could use a standard library function for, often I'll just hammer out code to make the problem go away (list comprehension, string manipulation and the like) in order not to cause any extra load on my short term memory or distraction. Raw typing speed is very important. A drop in pace would hurt a lot.

  2177. Ask HN: I can't seem to finish anything. Can I get some advice? 2013-08-14 03:15:58 sebkomianos
    Just do it.

    No, really. I think that most of the people that say "I can't seem to finish this", "I don't have enough time for this", etc etc have fallen into a trap because we are the first to experience this such interconnected reality that gives us the chance to read about, study, tinker with a lot of information.

    The solution I have found to this (not checked over years but working fine these last few weeks) is that I just make my mind and I just do what I decide. Do I say "I'll implement this feature this morning"? There is no facebook, twitter, email or anything else until I implement it. Do I say "I want to check what's happening in the world"? I set a goal for what I am currently working on - a goal that is short-term manageable, like "don't code the whole user profile for my app but at least write the skeleton" - and then I check what's happening in the world. Do I say "I'd like to study some physics"? I study physics. Do I want to procrastinate? I do so.

    No guilt. No chasing myself. No pretending to do work. Just doing it.

  2178. Get things done by procrastinating 2013-08-16 20:53:36 bjenik
    Background story:

    I'm currently working on a ToDo-App for the iPhone. The problem is, I'm not really working on it. Instead, I created all social media accounts I could potentially need for the app (if I hopefully finish it sometime). In addition to this, I rebuilt my personal website, redid my résumé and a lot of other stuff (like this side project). In fact I was quite productive - but not on the task I should do.

    To sum it up: Instead of working on a big task I got a lot of smaller ones done. So to get something done you obviously just need something bigger to procrastinate on. That's what this project is about.

    Now I'm really interested in your opinions - do you think this could work?

    (PS: English is not my first language - if there are any mistakes on the website please tell me)

  2179. Get things done by procrastinating 2013-08-16 21:35:17 codegeek
    Interesting idea. Btw, the default placeholders for Contact name and email address made me realize immediately that this site is using foundation for css (even without looking at the source) :). I have been playing with the same.

    Your landing page though is a little confusing. Ok so we can do more by procrastinating and then immediately you have the pricing table. I have no clue what it means. Yes you have a "how it works" section below but the pricing table needs to be somewhere else in my opinion.

    "When people have a big task to do they usually tend to start working on lots of other smaller things."

    Not sure if this can be generalized. When I procrastinate, i don't even do the small tasks. Heck, I will keep looking at that little light bulb that needs to be changed but I won't.

  2180. Google’s “20% time,” which brought you Gmail and AdSense, is now as good as dead 2013-08-16 23:00:01 ryanbrunner
    I'll even go a step further. I have a reputation as one of those people who has an ability to get things done at an incredible pace, but there's definitely days where I'm flat-out procrastinating and being lazy.

    For me, personally, and I suspect other people like me, it comes down to an ability to perform remarkably well under pressure, along with a lack of ability to perform well when the pressure is off. If there's no urgency to what I need to do, I find it very hard to commit myself to doing something.

  2181. Get things done by procrastinating 2013-08-16 23:27:19 graeme
    Your test balloon will be misleading.

    I have lots of stuff to do, and feel like I'm not doing it as fast as I could. I want to procrastinate less. I'm very much in the market for anything that helps me be more efficient.

    But I have no idea what your site does. I'm not saying that to be harsh.

    What I'm saying is: your test balloon is in no way indicative of the worthiness of your idea. You could very easily get a false negative, because people who are interested can't figure it out and don't sign up.

  2182. Get things done by procrastinating 2013-08-17 00:17:35 pit
    I think you're definitely on to something. I've thought about a kind of "procrastination redirector" where you have, say, a list of "bad activities" and a corresponding list of "good activities".

    For a simple example, you could change your hosts file so that news.ycombinator.com redirects to a tutorial for whatever new language/framework you've been dying to try.

    You could come up with a neural-linguistic-reprogramming-esque way of getting yourself to do just about anything: "Sitting on the couch? Why not walk one lap around the house?"

    Voila: a machine that nags the shit out of you.

  2183. Get things done by procrastinating 2013-08-17 01:33:18 pla3rhat3r
    Not sure anyone would buy into this since we all pretty much get PAID to procrastinate and this is asking us to PAY to procrastinate. Maybe if you gave away your product this would help increase signups? Wait, what!?!

  2184. Ask HN: I can't seem to finish anything. Can I get some advice? 2013-08-17 02:29:40 dholowiski
    This is not a conclusion I would jump to easily or quickly, but I have/had similar problems, and ended up being diagnosed with ADHD. I take medication now, and it makes a huuuuge difference with 'procrastination' and problems finishing things (and many other things too)

    That being said, you describe this as a 'subtle' problem - in my case it was intense, and causing huge life problems for me.

    I can't diagnose you no matter how much information you give me, but it might not be a bad idea to talk to a psychiatrist or a (properly qualified!) psychologist? You could also do some research on techniques for coping with ADHD - most of the techniques are common-sense, good practice, and if you don't have ADHD they'll be even more effective than they are for someone who does have ADHD.

  2185. Successful People Start Before They Feel Ready 2013-08-17 13:34:33 trekky1700
    Found this particularly interesting as I was using "not feeling ready" as an excuse not to start. I feel like with most people, they never quite feel ready enough to even start. Though readiness in these cases is usually just an excuse to procrastinate change and things that might be hard. I feel that for myself anyway.

  2186. What I Learned by Going It Alone 2013-08-18 01:49:10 jlees
    One of the valuable things about Pomodoro is just the forcing factor. You might have a bunch of random tasks with varying lengths, but getting into the habit of "I will work on X until this signal" forces you to actually start and get into the swing of work, rather than procrastinate.

  2187. What I Learned by Going It Alone 2013-08-18 20:18:07 asenna
    Great post Ian. I can totally relate to it and there are some fantastic tips that I need to apply to my work. I hope I can fix my procrastination and focus on one thing at a time.

  2188. Hack your motivation 2013-08-22 20:22:14 asgard1024
    Is there any good advice on overcoming procrastination due to social anxiety? Things like phone calls, dealing with unknown people, etc. I have a fear that I am not very knowledgeable about something (like law, or buying some stuff or service) and that others will cheat me, and it causes me problems. Interestingly, if I schedule a meeting, I am willing to handle it, but if I won't, I will try to postpone a lot. And even if I gain more experience in one area, it will then creep again in in another.

  2189. Hack your motivation 2013-08-22 22:20:59 arc_of_descent
    A great hack which I use (still not very good at it though) is the 2 minute technique in the GTD book. Although in the book, the author advocates it in a different manner, I prefer to use it to stop my procrastination.

    So I say to myself, let me just work on the code for 2 minutes, not more. And believe me, 2 minutes is a long time! By the time the 2 mins is over I don't even notice and continue coding. This also really helps me in guitar practice. Learning a new song, or a a lick is pleasant. It's the mundane repetitive exercises one needs to do to increase the strength and endurance of your fingers. So again I say to myself, let me just do it for 2 minutes. Believe me, on certain days, that 2 minutes ends up to 4-5 hours of practice.

  2190. Hack your motivation 2013-08-23 01:02:24 zeidrich
    I have been really focusing on my motivation and willpower lately. I used to have a very similar scenario to what you describe.

    What works for me is this: 1) Recognize that my willpower is limited, like a muscle it can be exhausted and needs rest. 2) Recognize that when I'm listless that it's not a moral failing, it's essentially my willpower being exhausted. 3) Never feel guilty for that feeling of listlessness, instead use it as an opportunity to rest. 4) Pay attention to what types of rest work most effectively. 5) Never try to override this rest unless it's seriously important. (And not everything can be seriously important). 6) Recognize that you don't need to feel driven to get things done. You need to do things to get things done.

    When I exhaust my will, I suck at maintaining priorities. I drive on feelings, and unless I can work myself up into a stress-filled frenzy, I'm going to do the things that I'm not supposed to be doing. However, if I do work myself into a stress-frenzy, I'm going to be working erratically and inefficiently and generally be a giant pain to be around. A lot of people live in this state to cope with these problems. Drugs, caffeine, distractions, over-exaggeration all help you maintain it.

    When I'm working comfortably with motivation to spare, I can choose a task and do it. I can make a plan and stick to it. I'm very efficient relatively speaking. The most noticeable thing though is I'm a lot less emotional about the things I'm doing. I'm not angry or irritated, but I'm also not really excited either. That's not to say I'm not passionate or really interested, but I'm calm. The sort of emotional outbursts are stressful, and just being under stress drains my will.

    The biggest difference I've noticed though is that when I'm able to work myself down into that calm motivated state, I'm less affected by trepidation and apprehension. I don't feel guilty about the things that I have been putting off; part of that is because I've committed to not feel guilty, but a large part is that I've got some control over my feelings. When I'm stressed and my will is exhausted, I hate myself for the things I haven't done. When I'm motivated I will pick something that has been cast aside for 3 weeks and just do what needs to be done, not feeling guilty or shameful, just continuing.

    The more I can keep myself in the second state, the easier it is. I don't get as stressed, so I'm less likely to fall back into the first state. So ultimately, the real challenge is how to get back to the calm motivated state when you're in the stress-frenzy state.

    The simple thinking is that "I want to get stuff done" so you push yourself to work harder and frustrate yourself that you are failing. But that generates more stress and makes it harder. The less intuitive path is to let yourself rest, and not let yourself get frustrated and stressed about it. Stop procrastinating and start resting. The difference between procrastinating and resting is really just that in the former you're worrying yourself over the things you're not doing.

    I've always had up and down moments. In my down moments I can be useless. So instead of trying to never have down moments, I try to make the most of them instead of struggling with them, and never spend my up moments regretting them. Over the long term this has lead to my down moments being not as bad, not as long, and less frequent.

  2191. Hack your motivation 2013-08-23 22:03:12 bippi
    I think this is all well and good, there are always things we procrastinate.

    However, I think if you need to run your life like this... maybe look at what you're doing, as a whole. I don't think you should have to hack your motivation, or anything else, to get it to work.

  2192. Calibre version 1.0 released 2013-08-26 03:24:21 Bulkington
    Vanity, mainly, along with the fun of pulling and exploring a title, and the feel and smell of a volume; and as others have mentioned, much of my scholastic head start came from the books in our family library. Was I precocious, or just a curious kid with a great resource at his fingertips? The latter, I think. (I moved into my father's study when my youngest brother was born and three boys age 4 and under in a small room was problematic--so I literally slept with books when I was learning to read.)

    I also know my kids don't read nearly as much as I did, so encouraging them to peruse the media server just isn't the same as letting them chill in the home library, and procrastinate from formal assignments by checking out the old man's books. (I will admit to dog-earing the naughty bits of some of my parents racy paperbacks.)

    Once expansive touchscreens are cheap, of course, we can display a virtual wall of bookshelves and instantly load a text on the device of choice, or even print on demand.

    And I also know I haven't bought a hard copy book in several years and I love being able to travel with a substantial library (and music collection). All I'll ever need is a little electricity to keep a tablet charged. (Assuming an easy way to move my collection to the next gen device.)

    Choice. Choice. Choice. (EDIT: Oh yeah--merci, Calibre.)

  2193. Im Thinking. Please. Be Quiet. 2013-08-26 15:54:43 strictfp
    While quiet time is good for concentration, it totally discourages collaboration. I end up over-analyzing things and procrastinate due to the fear of breaking the silence and collaborating. In my eyes team productivity actually drops in quiet environments. And all lone wolfs head off in their own direction. In short, a recipe for disaster.

  2194. Cannot Measure Productivity 2013-08-30 02:35:55 a3voices
    Also if you procrastinate a lot, you might end up learning something useful and get new insights that will make you more productive in the long run.

  2195. More Connected, Yet More Alone 2013-09-02 22:00:19 robtoujours
    I found I was really, as another poster said, "disappearing into smartphone-land" at every available opportunity. My procrastination levels went through the roof, as I previously had only a dumb-phone. I have an iPhone (4) now but have found out to keep the distraction stuff to a minimum. Apple make it quite easy, can't speak to Android.

    Just go to settings->restrictions and turn off app installation, safari, itunes, and whatever. When it asks for a passcode, ask a good friend / family member / SO to type one in and remember it if you need it back at any point.

    So now I just have "core functions" of a phone that are useful in a non-distractful way, and a few other relevant apps.

    Core functions: - Camera - iPod - Camera - Notepad - Calendar - Reminders - Clock, alarm clock - Calculator - Maps (well, apple maps) - Weather - Email - Phone and text

    These functions are actually really good, as they bring together what were formerly separate devices into your pocket, but they don't really change your behavior. You're still a person, not a zombie.

    Then, I have some additional functional apps:

    - Sleep cycle (upgraded alarm clock) - Torch - Google translate (for travelling) - TripAdvisor, AirBnB (ditto) - Duolingo (for learning French) - Online banking app - Facebook Messenger (I see it as an extension of SMS) - WhatsApp (as above) - Soundcloud (basically an online iPod) - Skype (phone) - SkyScanner and - Couple of online shopping apps (eBay, Amazon, RedLaser)

    So all of those extra apps are things which actively improve my life and/or are "lifehacks" bridging me to the real world - instead of going to the bank, I go to my online app, and so on. Saves time.

    That's pretty much it. The standard apps replace a whole bunch of devices and books. The extra apps come in really handy. But with Safari disabled, and having not installed all the trendy "social" media apps, I'm still connected with the real world. I don't feel I'm missing much.

    The only bum note is that certain useful apps - like Google Maps - have inbuilt web browsers which are easily accessible. So I can't use them. It would be nice if developers respected the "Restrictions->Safari" setting instead of ignoring it.

  2196. Australian opposition vows to implement Internet filter by default 2013-09-05 16:22:22 ballard
    It's a moral panic [0].

    If filtering doesn't happen immediately, fear may be exploited and politicians will have to find something else to procrastinate on rather than tackling real issues (poverty, health care, budget waste).

    [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic

  2197. On the Symmetry between Microsoft and Apple 2013-09-07 04:02:26 saltyknuckles
    I feel like its just one of those days where you have to turn something in but procrastinated and said "Fuck it, I'll just compare Apple and Microsoft". Slow day...

  2198. Ask HN: How to best acquire theoretical computer science knowledge? 2013-09-08 00:54:35 lawn
    I agree.

    Education will not teach you anything, but it will give a great opportunity to learn. Many will simply learn enough to get through exams and then promtly forget everything again.

    You will also get introduced to concepts and areas you would never even think of exploring otherwise. I thought graph theory sounded boring, but now I enjoy it. Formal languages and automata theory? Physics? Electronics? Hardware design? These are topics I would never have explored if it wasn't for going to university.

    Artificial intelligence, compilers and operating systems are topics I probably would have explored, but I sincerely doubt I would go as deep as I have.

    Also do not underestimate the effect deadlines can have. Procrastination is a constant evil in my life somewhat negated by school forcing me to do things.

  2199. Pushed to the limit as a banking intern 2013-09-13 00:38:39 enraged_camel
    College students who pull all-nighters do so two reasons:

    1. They tend to be terrible at time management and prioritization. They procrastinate until the last minute and then have no choice but to cram.

    2. They do it to create a narrative that can protect both their ego and their image. "I failed the exam despite pulling an all-nighter - it was just crazy hard!" sounds a lot better than "I failed the exam because I'm dumb" or "I failed the exam because I didn't start studying until the last minute."

  2200. Pushed to the limit as a banking intern 2013-09-13 01:23:30 nilkn
    I did pull a few all-nighters in college, and it was generally the crappiest work I did in my whole college career. I learned the least from it and in general developed a distaste for whatever it was I was doing during the all-nighters

    It was also pretty rare. In the vast majority of classes I took, an all-nighter was never necessary so long as you didn't procrastinate. It was just in one or two classes where we'd unexpectedly get assigned huge projects at the end of the semester.

  2201. Wikipedia links to HN 2013-09-15 23:56:06 spindritf
    Among them an article on Taskwarrior[1]. We are now an officially recognized authoritative source on procrastination. I don't think anyone could question that.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taskwarrior

  2202. Just go home 2013-09-18 21:29:34 hawkharris
    I no longer have to sit at my desk pretending to complete tasks, as the only person I am cheating is myself.

    A job is not about individuals in the workplace. It's about people contributing to an organization to make it better: asking for work when none seems to be available; helping co-workers; coming in early and staying late.

    Whether you work for a large corporation or you run your own company, you'll have to think about your whole team, not just yourself, to succeed. And when you think about procrastination from a group-oriented standpoint, workers always cheat themselves by pretending to work.

  2203. Quantify yourself (without selling your soul) 2013-09-19 23:47:58 sfrjay
    The problem with the 'quantified self' is that more information doesn't necessarily lead to better outcomes. Even in cases where the stakes are high and information seems essential, like pregnancy and childbirth, more monitoring isn't better. That's true of 'routine' ultrasound monitoring during pregnancy (http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199309163291201) as well as heartbeat monitoring during birth (http://evidencebasedbirth.com/evidence-based-fetal-monitorin...).

    What does work is identifying cases where there is genuine cause for concern - symptoms for healthcare patients, lack of ability to complete tasks for procrastinators - and collecting the data needed to determine if/when intervention is required.

    The challenge for the quantified-selfers will be to sort the signal from the noise.

  2204. How to Use Structure to Become a More Effective Entrepreneur 2013-09-20 02:00:17 lnanek2
    Especially when day to day tasks are used to procrastinate. Hmm, doing x is hard, why don't I check my email instead...

  2205. How to Use Structure to Become a More Effective Entrepreneur 2013-09-20 02:24:09 davidwparker
    It's based on Brian Tracy's book "Eat that Frog!" which is a great book on stopping procrastination.

    http://www.amazon.com/Eat-That-Frog-Great-Procrastinating/dp...

  2206. NES Programming Tutorials 2013-09-20 09:17:33 jimzvz
    Sounds like fun. Perhaps a productive way to procrastinate.

  2207. What I would have written 2013-09-26 11:23:48 bigiain
    'and every fucking thing I think about, I also think, How could I fit that into a tweet that lots of people would favorite or retweet?'

    That, as I see it, is the problem not twitter or 140char limits or any of the other stuff Dustin raises, it's the desire for external validation (and I can't help but imagine him furiously clicking reload on his own blog post to see how fast his Kudos score is climbing)

    My takeaway/advice is - try to recognise when you're being manipulated by gamification techniques and choose to be aware of them and ignore/resist them when it's in your better interest.

    Does anybody _really_ think Picasso would have painted iPad trifles for immediate social media validation, instead of starting and completeing Garon la pipe? I _seriously_ doubt that - from Wikipedia: "At the time of his death many of his paintings were in his possession, as he had kept off the art market what he did not need to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, such as Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works."

    Picasso _didn't_ paint for the twitterati - he painted for Picasso. Dustin should write for Dustin - not for Twitter. He's allowing himself to become distracted from achieving what he wants at achieve. That's not Twitters fault. Procrastinators gonna procrastinate (he said hypocritically while wasting time on HN)

  2208. What I would have written 2013-09-26 12:11:26 snowwrestler
    I liked what comedian Louis CK had to say on this subject recently:

    http://teamcoco.com/video/louis-ck-springsteen-cell-phone

    My experience is that writing long, insightful pieces of prose is just hard, miserable work. People do it because they feel compelled to, not because it's a fun way to relax. So it's easy to procrastinate or avoid it, especially if there aren't any external demands or deadlines to meet.

  2209. What I would have written 2013-09-26 15:14:53 lmm
    >My experience is that writing long, insightful pieces of prose is just hard, miserable work. People do it because they feel compelled to, not because it's a fun way to relax. So it's easy to procrastinate or avoid it, especially if there aren't any external demands or deadlines to meet.

    Is it a problem if they don't? There are now many, many insightful essays on the internet; one could spend a lifetime reading them and barely scratch the surface. If you were actually writing for the attention it gets you, rather than for the sake of the writing (and the comment about favourite or retweet makes me think that's his real motivation here), and then you find a more efficient way to get that validation, isn't that a good thing? The internet won't miss what you didn't write.

  2210. We're creating a culture of distraction 2013-09-26 21:38:41 reneherse
    Powerful stuff. I've noticed that my "long form" mental focus has gradually declined, I believe beginning from about the time I began using a smartphone a couple of years ago. It's now so bad that if I can't improve it through developing good habits, I'll be ditching the smart phone for a dumb one, and finding other ways to curtail short-form reading and internet browsing :)

    A relevant plug: My brother and I are developing a web app to help with this problem of distractedness. It's a to-do list manager that encourages mindfulness by helping you monitor procrastination and training your ability to steadily focus. Launching sometime this fall: http://fleur.io

  2211. Java to Scala converter 2013-09-28 00:54:09 agibsonccc
    I'm plenty aware. I just want to migrate my whole codebase to scala. I like the JVM itself, but would like some of the features of scala. My main point is I've been procrastinating, but this could be a great motivator.

    I've also worked with intermixing the different JVM languages including clojure, working with SBT, etc.

    Good points have been raised that it wouldn't be idiomatic scala though.

  2212. Revenge of the lizard brain 2013-09-28 17:48:22 kristofferR
    I disagree actually. It's obviously not a legitimate scientific hypothesis, and shouldn't be presented as such, but it's still a really useful way to think about procrastination.

  2213. Why Free Software Is More Important Now Than Ever Before 2013-09-29 07:58:13 rmrfrmrf
    I would highly encourage anyone who hasn't heard Richard Stallman speak before to look up a few interviews with him before reading this article. This article is written exactly how he speaks, so the tone and cadence are much more dynamic if you have the proper background.

    I have to say that Stallman very recently inspired me to start contributing to open source projects. A few weeks ago, I made my first (one word, lol) contribution to an open source project on Github. As minor of a fix as my code was, it felt really great to be part of something like that. It also caused me to do a lot of introspection: I found myself, up until that point, becoming flat-out bored with "consuming" content. I now find myself, rather than frequenting (ok, I still frequent) HN, looking for open questions on StackOverflow to answer or finding open source projects to contribute to. I wonder if that's a sign that, eventually, communities like Reddit and HN will be usurped by social media sites that focus less on consumption and more on contribution. Based on my recent experiences with contribution, I strongly encourage everyone else to do the same; it's really a much more rewarding way to procrastinate!

  2214. To-Do Lists Don't Work 2013-09-30 00:57:21 therandomguy
    I have tried todo lists on and off. It definitely works for me in the short term when I have a lot going on. Recently I started using an app called Swipes. It has been working great so far. I think it holds up because rather than fighting it, easy procrastination mechanism is built in.

  2215. Procrastination should be solved by lighting fires, not filling buckets 2013-09-30 20:46:47 NoodleIncident
    Yesterday, I happened to come across a particularly inspiring reddit post about about determination and drive. Objectively it's rather silly, but I left that window open anfd got to work.

    No less than five times that day, I switched over to my time-wasting site 'work'space to procrastinate, saw the post, and decided to keep working instead.

    I got a lot more done yesterday than I had planned on. I think that there's definitely something real here.

  2216. Procrastination should be solved by lighting fires, not filling buckets 2013-10-01 00:09:38 doorhammer
    Agree.

    If there's one thing my brain is good at, it's recognizing patterns that bore it and ignoring them.

    If my brain can quickly postpone any number of relatively important reminders I have going off on outlook at any given time, I'm going to bet it would shut down a daily reminder to reevaluate procrastination.

    I'm also not sure a daily reminder that I'm going to die would help subdue the constant existential crisis I've been in since I was 18. I have no idea if that's a good or a bad thing (that's part of the crisis) but it sure does make things more complicated than they need to be :P

  2217. Procrastination should be solved by lighting fires, not filling buckets 2013-10-01 01:00:59 GFischer
    I've been in the red for a while, and I still procrastinate a lot :( .

    I do have a 9 hour work, and I'm trying to do stuff on the side, but I end up not using the time after work productively.

  2218. Procrastination should be solved by lighting fires, not filling buckets 2013-10-01 08:32:05 joeevans
    The reason a post like this will get so much action on a site like hacker news is that programming sucks as an activity, and alternative activities are more interesting.

    Thinking about programming is fun, finishing a program is fun, solving a little programming puzzle can be fun, but programming in general sucks as an activity.

    That's why programmers procrastinate, because programming sucks.

  2219. Ask PG: Any new thoughts on single founders + YC? 2013-10-03 21:03:17 moron4hire
    I don't think lacking a partner should prevent you from working on a project, but lacking the right kind of partner can prevent your project from realizing its potential.

    I'm an engineer, I could sit in my house and work for months on end making amazing things that never see the light of day. It takes more effort than I have on half of the days out of the year to release things into the wild[1]. I need a co-founder that complements me in this aspect, someone who is very good at pushing things out in front of people and getting attention for it. If I were to pick up another technical person, we'd just do the same things I'm already doing: making things without releasing.

    I'm an artist, I can be very creative when it comes to procrastinating important, administrative tasks, i.e. paying taxes and such. I need someone[2] to push me, prod me, maybe even just do it for me. Another technical cofounder isn't going to pick up that slack, they'll want to work on code.

    And if I take any of these people on as partners, the only way the project wins is if they're in it for the long haul, if they are as dedicated to it as I am.

    So there you go, a very tall order: find someone who does not share your skills but has their own that can help you (so has an increased likelihood that they are not in your social circles[3]), and is committed to the project in the same way you are (this is a slog, just try people out and dump them if they don't work, no hard feelings, just move on). As with all issues of luck, it's about perseverance and riding the waves as they come in.

    But the difficulty of finding that person/those people doesn't mean you stop working.

    [1] I pay the bills with consulting gigs, so my clients force me to release on that stuff. Also, I'm forcing myself to learn how to build a blogging followership, as an education in marketing.

    [2] Not necessarily a cofounder, but an accountant can be expensive. So, I'm paying an accountant for the big things and trying to get better about not procrastinating. "Trying" means "attending coaching sessions", not "talking about trying".

    [3] So I'm forcing myself to socialize with non-technical people. I'm not going to any more programmer meetups. I'm instead going to things like CreativeMorning, or just chatting up the local business owners who run their own shops. Really though, the 6-degrees-of-separation rule applies, and it's really more like 4. The more people you get to know, in general, the more likely you'll be connected to everyone, so there is at least a non-zero chance you can find suitable people, if you persevere.

  2220. Melatonin 2013-10-04 22:37:44 jtheory
    I don't have personal experience with it; but my sleep schedule is horrible (I tend to stay up to 5am on alternate nights), so I may give it a try to enforce a normal bedtime, and kick the procrastination monster down a bit (if I don't have the option of doing the unpleasant work at 2am, it's far easier to force myself to do it during normal hours).

    But: see here, this is very relevant: http://hpmor.com/notes/98/

    Search MetaMed (a few screens down) for Eliezer Yudkowsky's experience with a sleep disorder (his normal day is 24.5 hours): after spending years trying a whole laundry list of solutions including melatonin, he finally paid MetaMed somewhere north of $5K for their analysis, and got a solution using melatonin that worked (but was not the normal approach to melatonin supplementation).

    "their best suggestion, although it had little or no clinical backing, was that I should take my low-dose melatonin 5-7 hours before bedtime, instead of 1-2 hours, a recommendation which Id never heard anywhere before.

    And it worked.

    I cant #&$ing believe that #$%ing worked.

    (EDIT in response to reader questions: Low-dose melatonin is 200microgram (mcg) = 0.2 mg. Currently Im taking 0.2mg 5.5hr in advance, and taking 1mg timed-release just before closing my eyes to sleep. However, I worked up to that over time I started out just taking 0.3mg total, and I would recommend to anyone else that they start at 0.2mg.)"

  2221. After 180 Websites, Im Ready to Start the Rest of My Life as a Coder 2013-10-05 23:02:31 jarnix
    Please post your resume on LinkedIn and stop talking about you ! The motto is "stop talking, start doing". What you did is not extraordinary, you just had time to lose and that's what you did. Basically you just procrastinated 180 days. If you want to code, then do useful applications, not another tic tac toe.

  2222. This is Why You Spent All that Time Learning to Program 2013-10-07 20:26:31 fnordfnordfnord
    All of that is true, but it isn't as bad as it once was. You can buy a 100 MHz oscilloscope for ~300 USD now; cheaper than an old used Tek, and better. Resistors are so cheap, buy a kit of them. Since the internet, not only can you get parts cheap, you can get them pretty quickly too; though, I have to admit though, my progress on a weekend project was halted Saturday because I had procrastinated ordering a few parts.

    At least for basic electronic circuits, or even simple software projects, the difficulty becomes apparent when you move outside your normal comfort zone. Debugging even simple software is quite vexing to newcomers; I heard someone say it's like a blind person learning to paint portraits (though the one who said it wasn't blind).

    >The power available in free debugging tools is equivalent to a 6 figure rack of electronics equipment.

    They always charged too much for that crap. Thank goodness for open standards and cheap digital stuff.

  2223. Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness (1932) 2013-10-09 00:05:08 d23
    Something happened to me yesterday that I haven't quite had the time to figure out.

    I'm normally the introverted "stay at home and relax" type, at least during the week. I frequently want to get home from work as early as possible to play video games, play music, or read. The only problem I've had lately is I've had little motivation to do the creative parts (e.g. creating music or programming something).

    But last night I went to the gym after work, making me get home an hour later than usual. Then I went out to an open mic with some music friends and had food and beers. Then I came back home and played video games for an hour or so. Then I managed to actually write music for another hour and a half.

    It was weird, because normally I'd feel like I had a huge block of time in front of me (in theory, "relaxing"), so I could do whatever I wanted. But the catch was that I actually wouldn't do them! I'd procrastinate, and feel like I wasn't using the time "best" way. Last night was so different, and I felt really energized this morning.

    What's the takeaway? I don't know yet. Maybe I'll try to do more. It was fun.

  2224. Nest introduces their Smoke Detector 2013-10-09 16:27:36 danbmil99
    sorry, but you are ranting fucking nonsense. The fact that you think everyone should just do as they are told, does not make them do so. No one in their right mind would leave an alarm enabled that is destroying their quality of life due to pets or a child sleeping. They will disable it and forget/procrastinate on fixing it.

    The truth is, products like this will save lives. Screaming like a neanderthal in favor of Jurassic tech that people disable because it doesn't do its job right is not going to decrease mortality due to fires.

  2225. You can increase your intelligence 2013-10-10 04:15:15 larrys
    "Here I am wasting time/procrastinating."

    Interesting though that there is no data with regards to how much time people spend on HN and whether it results in success or not. Or just adds to entertainment, knowledge, or enjoyment.

    Even anecdotal although I do know there are some outliers like tpatcek and patio11 that have benefited. But we don't know how that compares to time that they spent.

  2226. You can increase your intelligence 2013-10-10 04:55:26 lgieron
    In my opinion, the urge to procrastinate is just our brain telling us that the kind and amount of effort we're demanding from it is not natural. People aren't meant to spend 40+ hours a week sitting behind a desk and concentrating on stuff they have little connection with. Marx wrote about that (the alienation of workers) 150 years ago.

  2227. Poll: How many people here use Reddit? 2013-10-10 05:09:58 jypepin
    I use it mostly to procrastinate and look at kitty pictures.\nI'm subscribed to ruby, rails, programming and the main "hacker" subreddit, which sometime offer nice articles I don't find on HN (I rarely go further than front page).

    A friend had a really good experience with a side project that made it to one of the programming subreddit front page and it brought thousands of visits that day.

    I think HN still offers more quality, but some subreddit are close.

    Just my 2c :)

  2228. Dave Eggers made me quit Twitter for a week 2013-10-11 03:26:18 visakanv
    Eh. My own procrastination and the horrible ad hominem in the local political discussions on my feed got me off Facebook for over 2 months, and on minimal Twitter (use it for work-related stuff). Definitely at least a smidgen more newsworthy than quitting Twitter for a week.

    AMA about my great sacrifice

  2229. Inspired by the 180 websites I will understand 52 academic papers in 52 weeks 2013-10-14 00:53:29 vignesh_vs_in
    I'm going to push commit every single day. And write an article per week.

    Is there a easy way to stick the promise and not procrastinate?

  2230. How Seinfeld's Productivity Secret Fixed My Procrastination Problem 2013-10-14 08:36:40 OvidNaso
    Your no different than the people this normally works well for. Being in the "zone" for most people is a very pleasurable activity. If one could sit down or start running and immediately be there, procrastination would be a much smaller problem. It is precisely this unproductive, introductory stage that this method is compelling you to complete in order to get past. By forcing 15 or however many minutes a day you are hoping that more times than not this period will transition into one of productivity in which you don't need to time or force yourself to do more. Some days this won't happen and you can quit after 15 minutes. But for some it equate to more long term productivity sessions per week than strictly scheduling each long term session.

  2231. How Seinfeld's Productivity Secret Fixed My Procrastination Problem 2013-10-14 15:07:39 yason
    Same here but I don't really consider it a problem.

    I work on personal projects a few days or weeks at a time and then after solving the first set of big problems I generally let it slip and lose interest. The source code lives on my hard drive and then one weekend next year or a few years later I remember what I had been writing and I come to revisit it. Maybe I rewrite the program or extend it up to the next level, or just look at it and think "That's where I was, mentally, in 2010; I think I've made progress since, I'm not the same programmer anymore."

    I place no intrinsic value on finishing the projects itself because then they would start to resemble work and I want my hobby projects to be fun.

    At work I procrastinate too but that's mostly doing the more interesting tasks or tasks with the highest impact first and the less interesting tasks only when really, really needed. So I don't basically procrastinate, I just prioritize.

    I think procrastination is prioritizing, really.

    And sometimes you prioritize complete idling over doing anything at all which I think just tells that you were trying to do the wrong thing because if you weren't you would have forgotten to eat while staying up doing it.

  2232. Welcome, Freshmen. You Don't Deserve to Be Here 2013-10-16 02:29:00 wizzard
    I am strongly thinking about encouraging my kids to take a break before college if I think it could be beneficial to them. If they're rocking it in high school and eager to dive into four more years, then maybe I won't bother, but that seems _highly_ unlikely.

    Maybe they'll be great students and just need a break, in which case I might suggest a backpacking trip and/or internship. Or maybe they'll be unmotivated students barely scraping by in which case I might send them into The Real World to earn money towards their education (and find out why an education is important).

    I've thought a _lot_ about why I didn't do very well in college (beyond the obvious procrastination), and what might have helped, and filing those thoughts away for my own kids.

    The only problem is that kids want to be with their friends, and if their friends aren't taking a year off then it might be hard to convince them to break away from the pack.

  2233. I dont have any connections 2013-10-18 03:49:53 qwerta
    For self-founded entrepreneur procrastination is the worst enemy.

  2234. Whats New In Python 3.4 2013-10-21 05:59:49 nemothekid
    Python 3.4 is out and unfortunately I still can't write Python3.

    Is there anyone else who is still procrastinating moving their workflow to Python3?

  2235. Poll: Where are you currently living? 2013-10-21 10:35:44 hiharryhere
    Will be interesting to see how this progresses as diff timezones wake up. It's pretty Aus heavy at the moment as people like me procrastinate in the office.

  2236. How to Build Willpower for the Weak 2013-10-24 14:57:08 mistercow
    Something I've yet to see explored is the difference between negative and positive willpower. For example, I find it very difficult to motivate myself to do something I don't want to do, and easy to procrastinate. But it is relatively easy for me to have the willpower not to do something that I do want to do.

    On the other hand, many people seem to have the opposite problem; they find it relatively easy to do things that are unpleasant, but difficult to restrain themselves from indulging in the things that they enjoy.

    Of course, you can have a mix of both problems, and it might vary based on what makes the activity unpleasant or pleasant. If something is physically addictive, then someone with strong restraint might find an exception there. And if a task is stressful or painful rather than merely cumbersome or boring, someone with strong proactive willpower might still have difficulty with it.

    But I think it's worth investigating because it seems plausible that these are entirely different problems conflated by language. And it seems likely that totally different strategies would be needed for managing them.

  2237. The Nootropic Why: An Essay by Abelard Lindsay 2013-10-27 02:01:49 jotm
    "Procrastination became just a lack of dopamine. Scatterbrained moments became low-choline moments. Wondering about the meaning of life was just a lack of serotonin. Excessive emotional sensitivity was usually not somebody else being a jerk but just a lack of GABA."

    Sorry, but it's not that simple. It's nowhere near that simple. And playing with the levels of neurotransmitters in the brain is, while definitely useful, just a blunt force approach - like using a hammer to drive in uneven screws...

  2238. Does life end after 35? 2013-10-31 03:47:56 dimkar
    In some cultures 32 or even 35 is the age when a person is started to be considered mature. Why so much fuss about the age? 'Start when ready and don't procrastinate' is the moto I like.

  2239. Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned Rockstar sues Google 2013-11-01 13:44:31 dchichkov
    Linux is an ideal development platform. Mac is an ideal procrastination platform ;)

  2240. Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned Rockstar sues Google 2013-11-01 16:13:25 Munksgaard
    With the amount of procrastination that happens on my Linux computer, I fear the day I'll have to work on a Mac...

  2241. Linkedin's Response to My "Phishing with Intro" Post 2013-11-02 08:39:21 x0x0
    please don't parrot nonsense like "responsible" disclosure; it mangles language to normalize behavior these companies want (what's the opposite of responsible? Not letting companies sit around and procrastinate while users are or may be being exploited is therefore irresponsible.)

    I'm not necessarily saying people shouldn't disclose first, but labeling it as responsible is grating.

  2242. The Pomodoro Technique: How a Tomato Could Make You More Productive 2013-11-03 23:32:05 marvin
    It's so crazy that people spend so much effort creating self-help books to increase productivity. If you have a problem with procrastination, it is a simple question of self-discipline or alternatively, knowing your own limitations. You can't just read your way out of this problem.

    The technique described in this post is more or less the exact technique I naturally use myself in order to get things done. Sometimes, it doesn't work. Usually, this is because I am over my work capacity for the day. In this instance, the only thing which works is to either slog through and get terrible productivity per hour, or just take the rest of the day off. The latter is usually the best option, which results in better concentration the next day. But eventually, it really comes down to just sitting down and getting stuff done. If you are consistently unable to do this, maybe you should consider whether you are in the right line of work?

  2243. The Pomodoro Technique: How a Tomato Could Make You More Productive 2013-11-04 00:07:06 michaelmcmillan
    I started using the Pomodoro technique about two months ago and my productivity has boosted. An overlooked advantage is that you typically end up doing other productive tasks in your 5-minute break. Personally I often find myself cleaning, making my bed, taking out trash etc.

    One of the top comments implied that this technique is primarily for those who procrastinate. This is not necessarily true, at least not in my case. There are studies (apologize for the lack of sources, on the bus) that show that your brain - although it may not feel like it - stagnates in regards to concentration after 25-35 minutes.

    This technique can therefore force you to split up your work into intervals causing your brain to rest. To me this has proven to be very effective, especially during programming. You will be surprised how quickly you return to the "the-zone".

  2244. Why most published scientific research is probably false [video] 2013-11-04 04:23:50 epistasis
    >Work often gets cited without being either replicated or invalidated.

    I'm not sure why you're bringing up this fact, which is not at all inconsistent with my comment. What's your implication?

    >Do you do any kind of research? You seem to have an unrealistically rosy perception of the scientific process as it happens concretely.

    In the past decade, I've spent probably 70% of my time on scientific research. At this moment I'm procrastinating from writing a letter of support on a grant. What, in particular, do you think I'm unrealistically rosy about?

  2245. What planning tool did you use for writing business plan for your startup? 2013-11-04 07:15:44 YuriNiyazov
    I think his point is that you are thinking about it wrong. Finding the right document template or correct organizational mindmap is a way of procrastinating; you should just start typing/writing.

  2246. Why most published scientific research is probably false [video] 2013-11-04 08:05:33 pygy_
    > I'm not sure why you're bringing up this fact, which is not at all inconsistent with my comment. What's your implication?

    In that case I may have misunderstood your point. What I mean is that, for a paper with 100+ citations (which, in some fields, is not rare), most of them are not verified by the authors.

    > In the past decade, I've spent probably 70% of my time on scientific research. At this moment I'm procrastinating from writing a letter of support on a grant. What, in particular, do you think I'm unrealistically rosy about?

    The self-correcting nature of the process is very slow in most cases. Bad results end up being forgotten for minor findings, but for things of mild interest, it may linger far longer.

  2247. Few successful entrepreneurs blog 2013-11-04 20:47:16 lucasnemeth
    ... Well, but you probably are procrastinating. Writing a blog is a creative effort. And in 10 minutes you only can write a very short or unoriginal blog post...

  2248. Features Firefox should implement to weaken Facebook's stranglehold of the web 2013-11-05 23:28:11 gesman
    People have an organic need to procrastinate and Facebook satisfied this urge of the weak.

  2249. What Long Hours Really Mean 2013-11-06 17:27:20 kamaal
    I think the article is missing a very important point. Forced long hours are disastrous. But there are plenty of projects where people automatically put in long hours because the experience is rewarding. Either the money is good, or the project is interesting, or there is tons to learn. That varies from person to person.

    This is yet another thing that I see with regards to procrastination. It automatically seems to vanish every time I work on some interesting projects, or if good money is involved. If you are unconsciously procrastinating for no good reason, may its a good sign that you find that project no longer rewarding. And its time to move onto something else.

  2250. The Monster Truck Madness 2 website has been taken down 2013-11-07 02:10:37 sarreph
    This goes to show that Microsoft employees, too, procrastinate on HN.

  2251. Slackware 14.1 is released 2013-11-08 20:42:50 vasquez
    Personally I use Xmonad for my desktop (all servers are headless, of course -- running screen but tmux looks interesting). It's a no-nonsense tiling WM for managing all your xterm windows. I also have dmenu installed, launching apps directly from the WM is more convenient than you'd think.

    I guess the two of you refer to not having X installed at all, but while it does provide some distractions, I can't see myself getting shit done (i.e. procrastinate on hnews) without a real browser.

  2252. My Biggest Takeaway on 37Signalss New Book on Remote Work 2013-11-11 08:46:49 DigitalSea
    I think companies need to move past the whole "no remote working allowed" thing. Old style management coupled with fear of procrastination are two reasons many companies don't embrace remote working. If you have proper management and metrics in place, it's easy to ensure remote workers are hitting targets and putting hours in; source control, time management, Google Hangouts/Skype for meetings, email. There is no excuse.

    Marissa Meyer seems to be stuck in the old world of IT thinking herself. While she's taken Yahoo! to a better place because of her leadership, Yahoo! have lost a fair share of remote talent because of the rules she put in place banning remote working. Tonnes of companies embrace it (Github for one) and it opens up your recruitment opportunities 100 fold.

    The only downside of remote workers is that they are separate from the core physical team, so they don't nearly get close to enough opportunities to partake in social bonding and that rapport you establish with your co-workers getting to physically speak to them in the office and eat lunch with them. Remote working means you are detached from the company culture which depending on the place could either be a good or bad thing. If a job is just a job to you and you are good at what you do, then this is hardly an issue.

  2253. Empty-Stomach Intelligence 2013-11-11 13:49:19 jamesrom
    Hunger works for me. I'm less likely to procrastinate if I'm hungry. I can concentrate better. I can more easily tune out everything else.

    Music : Ears :: Hunger : Brain, at least when concentrating.

  2254. Hipster CEO 2013-11-18 02:14:57 shovel
    Congrats Ger - looks like a lot of fun. I'll give it a spin when I can find some more time to procrastinate.

    Have you noticed how Apple appears to butcher the resolution of the screenshots you upload there?

    I saw the same thing. I created delicious .png shots in sketch and Apple turned them into shitty lossy jpegs that look hideous.

    I even happen to have used the same Intro Inline typeface as you so this is a reproducible glitch. It's a shame because it reflects poorly on us as makers, as well as Apple. For a company whose entire model is based on elegance, I'm surprised they do it.

  2255. Read less HN 2013-11-18 08:24:12 peteforde
    Some might find it interesting that I consider part of my job as a tech strategy consultant is to keep up with what's happening on HN.

    I try not to open every link or anything, because I procrastinate just like everyone else. However, some of the value that I provide my clients is knowing about changes to their competitive landscape before they do.

    Tightly coupled with both experience and a willingness to offer strong, thoughtful opinions on the day's tech news, I am often able to be the most honest and disconcertingly knowledgeable person at the table... all thanks to scanning HN a few times a day.

    I owe much of my livelihood to your often link-bait posts, so thanks. :)

  2256. Ask HN: Advise me about my \"startup\" – pdfcv.com 2013-11-24 02:23:02 smartwater
    The screenshot on your homepage is blank. It should be filled in to allow users to imagine their own resume in its place. Showing users the placement of unknown elements certainly won't get them to sign up. You show it off under templates, but most won't get that far.

    Spend the next year iterating the product into something with a clear value proposition, and you might have a business. Everything you do from this point on will be of your own doing. Bringing on other people, trying to build partnerships, etc. with a product that isn't completely fleshed out is a waste of time. It's just a creative form of procrastination.

  2257. Why GNU grep is fast (2010) 2013-11-28 21:12:22 quizotic
    > Make it do less.

    Yes, but less in a particular way. It's important to skip processing stuff that can't matter in the end. In this example, skipping over bytes that can't matter because the end doesn't match. In DBMS, it's important to skip over records/columns/values that can't contribute to the answer.

    The surprising realization in optimization is that procrastination is a virtue. Lazy beats eager.

  2258. Ask HN: Do you use N + Enter to access Hacker News? 2013-11-30 03:42:25 olefoo
    Yes; and it is unfortunately the entrance to the "dark playground" for me.

    See procrastinate.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">http://www.waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procra... for the full expansion of the dark playground.

  2259. Why Procrastinators Procrastinate. 2013-11-30 04:44:37 a3voices
    If I didn't procrastinate, I never would have learned about Bitcoin, which has made me quite a lot of money. So I don't think procrastination is always so bad.

  2260. Why Procrastinators Procrastinate. 2013-11-30 07:11:31 jds375
    Great drawings. But seriously, I think tracking your progress helps avoid procrastination. Marking a calendar or a goal tracking app like Everest are a good way to keep on top of things.

  2261. Why are software development estimates regularly off by a factor of 2-3? 2013-11-30 09:41:01 gnarbarian
    Hardware engineers have more clearly defined requirements, It's also well understood by everyone that you can't just change the design halfway through production with no additional cost. Hardware engineers clients are mostly other engineers who know their shit very well. Hardware engineering is also more formalized with a larger percentage of engineers actually possessing relevant degrees with common well established means of communicating and thoroughly clear phases of development for a project.

    People hiring consultants to build them software are generally non-technical. On most projects the following problems may occur:

    Problems With Clients:

    1) They don't konw what they really want.

    2) They are bad at communicating what they really want.

    3) Not enough people from the organization are brought in to weigh in on their needs / actual duties.

    4) Too many people are brought in, many with conflicting interests. (bike shedding). [1]

    5) Critical omissions are made regarding idiosyncrasies of their infrastructure that are never brought to light until far too late in the project.

    6) people trying to change the direction of a project late into development

    7) complicated/redundant policies or procedures which are incompatible or inefficient to implement using the tools the client requires you to implement them in.

    Problems with Consultants / Contractors:

    1) Over confident estimates

    2) They are bad at estimations / unfamiliar with the tools required to do the job

    3) They are bad at communication / rooting out the the real problem early

    4) Unable to detect confusion/bullshitting from a client or are unwilling to investigate it.

    5) PMs who make promises they are unable to keep

    6) PMs who do not understand the details and make decisions without consulting those who do

    7) Developers who avoid asking the client for clarification

    8) spineless developers/PMs who screw themselves to avoid confrontation

    9) Procrastination

    [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law_of_triviality

  2262. Ask HN: How do I stay \"on\" all the time? 2013-11-30 18:21:18 robertjwebb
    Procrastination happens when you reject a large long-term reward (the joy of finishing a project or solving a problem, or becoming successful in business) in favour of a smaller short-term one (partying, playing video games).

    The latter activities are often more enjoyable while high so by introducing the option of smoking weed into the mix you are effectively increasing the appeal that the short-term rewards have, making it less likely overall that you will choose the long-term ones.

    I suppose you can always use it as a reward ("if I work hard Monday -> Thursday evenings then I'll get high and chill out on Friday"). I'm sure that a lot of people who are successful do something like that (replace weed with any other vice or enjoyable activity).

  2263. Facebook is the 21st century tech equivalent of cigarettes 2013-12-02 01:38:41 croisillon
    As a non-smoker currently reading Allen Carr's "Easyway" in order to find a solution against my procrastination problem, I completely understand the parallel but I don't agree. Facebook might be OP's habit to kill time but this works equally good with any Twitter, Reddit, or even HN. The problem (for addicts) is that those websites constantly stream some short new items, easily read, easily forgotten. It's the same dynamic indeed as going for a smoke instead of doing some work but it's not exclusive to facebook and facebook is not killing you.

  2264. Has StackOverflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity? 2013-12-05 15:45:11 patrickg
    (Not read the article yet, just answering to the question for myself.)

    I sometimes use stackexchange network (more precisely: tex.stackexchange.com) to provide many, many answers and I have spent hours over hours there, mainly to procrastinate. So, before reading the article, I'd say it evens out. But stackoverflow really helps me a lot.

  2265. People Don’t Actually Like Creativity 2013-12-07 02:14:26 jerf
    There's an old saying that actions speak louder than words; I've come to believe it's phrased too weakly. Especially when it comes to determining what a person believes, words verge on useless. It's easy to assert that you believe procrastination is bad, but if your actions don't show any change, I don't consider that as you really believing it.

    I do not believe that repeated assertions are a bad thing. A huge amount of self-discipline amounts to just this sort of hack, where your forebrain tries to figure out a way to basically trick the hindbrain into doing what you want. I also think that in order to optimally use these techniques, its important to understand what you're doing, and to clearly see and understand the discrepancy between actions and words. So I do not intend pointing out the mismatch between words an actions as a criticism, but as an observation.

  2266. Successful People Start Before They're Ready 2013-12-07 04:26:08 UncleChis
    Inspiring. I think the main point here is that: if you want to start something, and you procrastinate because you think you are not ready, then think again.

  2267. Ask HN: Which daily habit has affected your productivity the most? 2013-12-08 18:25:29 sytelus
    no procrastinate setting in HN

  2268. What kind of procrastinator are you? 2013-12-09 08:03:44 pyduan
    On a semi-humoristic note, there's also John Perry's Structured Procrastination theory, which won him the 2013 Ig Nobel prize in literature:\nhttp://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

    Basically, be productive by doing important things as a way to procrastinate on even more important things. He wrote it as a humoristic essay but I actually find one of the tips quite useful: instead of trying to beat procrastination by taking on less responsibilities in the hope you'll finally be able to uphold them all, take on more tasks so that even when you'll inevitably fail to do some of them, you'll still have achieved much more than if had challenged yourself less in the first place.

  2269. What kind of procrastinator are you? 2013-12-09 10:11:18 bonobo
    I find myself guilty on that last strain of procrastination: feeling so anxious about being late on a deadline that I end up delaying it even more, closing the loop.

    Gathering the courage to face the task didn't work so far. Every time I try tackling it I feel it drains so much energy from me that I soon give up, only to feel more guilty afterwards (and with even less disposition to face it from the beginning once again)

  2270. Occupy Google: Income Inequality Backlash Hits Silicon Valley 2013-12-12 06:33:50 robomartin
    This has nothing to do with dumb vs. smart, lazy vs. workaholic or privileged vs. unprivileged.

    It has to do with the fact that decisions in life have consequences. I can't help myself and have to quote a fantastic line from Star Wars: Your Focus Determines Your Reality.

    Coincidentally, I had a long conversation with my oldest son, now in High School, last night.

    He screwed up in a big way. He was given a book project a month ago. He had to read "To kill a mockingbird" and annotate it profusely. He read the book over several nights but procrastinated when it came to the annotation work. The work was due today.

    On Sunday he came to realize he made a big mistake. What did he do? He stayed up 'till 2:00AM every day to get the project done. He decided to do this on his own.

    Neither my wife nor I made him do it. He recognized his mistake and made the decision to right it entirely on his own. Up until yesterday afternoon we had no idea why he was working so hard. I have never been a micro-manager, professionally or at home. I assume and expect responsible behavior of others and, of course, try to lead by example. So I asked my kid if he really needed to stay up late doing this work and, when he said "yes" I just got out of the way and supported him by staying up, making tea and generally being there for him. I would get down to the bottom of it once he got done.

    He got done last night. We had a talk. He is getting an A in English. This was extra credit work he didn't need for grades and didn't really need to complete. Yet, he told me he had committed to doing the work and explained how sorry he was he procrastinated and to such a degree.

    I think my reaction surprised him. He's never screwed up on anything to this extent. He thought I might be angry or disappointed. The summary of a two hour conversation boils down to this:

    In life we are guaranteed to make bad or non-ideal decisions from time to time. Not one person is immune to this. What matters in life; what defines a man is how he chooses to deal with these mistakes. Some will cave in and sink into a dark hole of self pity and agony. Some will find every possible creative way to deflect the blame and rationalize what happened as being someone else's doing or fault. And yet others will look you straight in the eye, own the problem and do whatever is necessary to fix it.

    I said: "Son, you screwed up. You took responsibility for your actions and worked incredibly hard to make good on a promise you made to yourself and nobody else. You didn't need to do this for a grade. You already had an A. You did it because you are becoming a man with high values, morals, ethics and honor. I am proud."

    I almost cried when i said this. It is an incredible feeling as a parent to see your kids make the right decisions.

    In a country like the US the whole business of income inequality has two facets.

    The first is that of Liberal politicians manipulating the masses because it is far easier to get them worked-up en-masse with stuff like this and then you get their votes...by e millions. That's the nasty reality of the Liberal party: They benefit directly from low education voters' suffering because that is easy to convert to votes. This is the oldest trick in the books and it is not monopolized by US politics. I lived in Argentina for a while and learned quite a bit about their Politics and history. Evita was known for sending trucks into poor neighborhoods to give out blenders, refrigerators and other vote-buying crap. At the same time they kept the poor down because, not surprisingly, without them they'd get no votes. Things are not done the same way here but it really is the same. Pit the masses against the successful, throw them a bone here and there (minimum wage, union pay and pensions, etc.) sit back and collect the votes. It's sick. It's all about pandering and manipulation.

    The other aspect of the income inequality situation has to do with a massive change in the work ethic of the American worker and American youth over decades. We have devolved into an entitlement society where people want it all, don't want to work hard for it and everything is someone else's fault.

    When I owned an electronics manufacturing business I made it a point to hire students from the local junior college. I would say maybe one out of ten, if not twenty, had a reasonable work ethic. I had a couple who stole components and expensive tools (crimpers, etc.). Others screwed around and played on the Internet if nobody was watching. In general, most were down-right disappointing in their performance and attitude towards the job. A select few were absolutely exemplary. I have no doubt the will become valued members of society.

    What will become of the rest? Once they realize their mistakes in life, rather than work hard to correct them they will fall back on the simple idea of blaming it on others. They will undoubtedly become tools of the only political party that will roll down the street handing out virtual blenders and refrigerators. They will scream bloody murder at someone like my son who will get where he is going because he worked hard, made good decisions and, when he made bad ones he busted his ass to own and fix them.

    It's about the decisions you make in life and whether or not you are man (or woman) enough to own them.

    Your Focus Determines Your Reality.

  2271. Are Your Programmers Working Hard, Or Are They Lazy? 2013-12-13 12:32:19 vidarh
    I have a spreadsheet I use now and again to log in a similar way to what you do, but I additionally classify the time into work/personal/study/procrastination etc., and which charts the time breakdown.

    Occasionally I will run it for a day, or even up to a week, check the breakdown, and pick goals to improve on, run it another week etc.

    Running it all the time is too time consuming in itself, but occasional "checkpoints" help ensuring I maintain good habits etc.

    Would never show it to my boss though - I feel confidentiality for those kinds of things are necessary to ensure you're absolutely honest with yourself. I'd happily recommend people working for me do the same, including withholding it from me.

  2272. Amazon said to launch Pantry to take on Costco, Sam's 2013-12-14 02:14:13 X-Istence
    I am a 25 year old single male, and I am a Costco member. Mostly because I believe in their employment practices, and the quality of the products.

    Where else can I get meat that I know has been properly inspected (and if it hasn't, Costco will remove it from the shelves)? Buy fresh vegetables at a cost lower than my local King Soopers or Safeway.

    Amazon will never replace those for me, also, being 25 I tend to procrastinate, I don't have time to wait for Amazon to ship me cleaning supplies. When I am out I want it now, drop by Costco I get it now... that's important to me. I don't think Costco has anything to be afraid of.

  2273. The problems I am facing with being able to work whenever I want 2013-12-16 08:27:45 chrishynes
    I've been working remotely with flexible hours for several years now, and I've come up with a couple things that help maximize productivity:

    - Work in blocks, and don't let email/browsing/meetings interrupt that

    - If you can at all help it, don't check email or have meetings until your first block of work is done. Getting up and right into work is very productive and minimizes impulses to procrastinate. If you check email, you get in a different mind space and can easily start following rabbit trails until you suddenly realize most of the morning is gone and you haven't done any real work.

    - I work best early in the morning or late at night

    - Having a specific item in mind is key when starting a block of work. Either one item that will take the entire period, or a list of smaller things to knock out.

    - Figuring out what to do should be done at a separate time from actually doing the work. If you start to work, and then have to figure out tasks, you tend to procrastinate. If you know what you need to do, you can get in the zone and just do it. Spending a block on planning also allows you to get in the zone with that. If you try and context switch back and forth between planning and doing, you end up being far less productive.

    - A mid-day nap gives my brain time to rejuvenate and get ready for more work. It also lets me get up early and stay up late (to hit my most productive times) while still getting enough sleep.

    Based on that, my typical schedule has become:

    - Get up early (say 6am) and work until noon in a solid block. That 6 hours is more productive than an 8 or 10 hour day when you have to go in the office, since its uninterrupted undistracted work.

    - At noon, take a break, hit the gym, grab lunch, and take a nap

    - After the nap, spend the afternoon catching up on email, integrating with the team, and polishing off any loose ends from the morning block

    - If I feel I didn't get enough done in the morning block, I've got another uninterrupted stretch from 8 or 9 until midnight I can spend on work, research, or hobby coding. At that point, its easy to keep coding -- in fact, I'll usually have to make an effort to stop myself at 11 or 1130 so I can have time to relax and read a book, so my brain can calm down and stop coming up with ideas while I'm trying to sleep.

  2274. Ask HN: Help, I'm stuck on HN 2013-12-16 18:33:04 peshkira
    It seems that you don't have an interesting project in your daily work and you "procrastinate" by trying to find something interesting and useful on HN or similar. While this is at least not wasted time (as opposed to wasting the same amounts of time on social networks and or image/gif sites).

    My advice would be to start or join a larger project that you are interested in (something open source may be).

    Note that I assume, you don't have a day job and thus you have larger portions of spare time. If you do have one and you find yourself being stuck on HN or similar, then it seems you are bored of your job. Talk to the responsible and find something new you can work on.

    Either way, this will give you new perspective and you will find yourself occupied with something you like working on, ultimately leading to spending more time on things you consider productive.

    The many tools that are proposed here are definitely useful, but in the end if you have a lot of free time, you'll always find a way to "procrastinate".

    cheers and hopefully you figure it out soon :)

  2275. Ask HN: Help, I'm stuck on HN 2013-12-16 20:32:32 some1else
    When I notice 'procrastination by self-education', I take a step back to see if I'm exhibiting any other symptoms of depression. We're part of the new curiosity-junkie generation, that is getting all that they ever craved for and more from the internet. It's very easy to entertain yourself or keep yourself busy, in order to defer facing the issues that are causing the anxiety that drives us to this behavior.

    Go out. Meet a friend. Do some physical exercise. You need to add more to the mix, until you get a healthy balance going. From there, getting into a 'flow state' should be much easier and you should start seeing useful applications of the knowledge you're gathering.

    I found it very helpful to move in with two friends (an industrial and graphic designer). We'd notice when suspicious patterns started to emerge, and bail each other out from time to time. So far It's going great, we just don't let anyone get stuck. We've worked together on a number of projects since, even very successful ones.

  2276. Ask HN: How do you deal with being burnt out? 2013-12-19 15:53:45 sn0v
    Okay so I've read through some of your other comments, and I've been there myself (procrastinating by means of Counter-Strike).

    I'd say the best way to get over your burnout would be to choose a more relaxing hobby - some people play a musical instrument, some people like working out, some people simply like getting some fresh air.

    Next, enumerate your immediate goals on paper (getting that remaining 10% done? What steps can you break that down into?) and assign deadlines to them - by dinner time, by tomorrow afternoon etc.

    Choose a distraction free space (if working with other people is what you like, hit the local library/coffee shop) and get cracking!

  2277. oDesk to merge with Elance 2013-12-19 16:17:49 weland
    > There's a huge wave of consolidation in the industry in the past 5 years. Just last year freelancer bought vworker.

    I really hope oDesk - Elance won't go the same way freelancer - vworker went.

    I used to have an account of RentACode, a long time ago. It was mostly a good experience, considering the state of freelancing back then. When my significant otter got fired, I dug the account and handed it over to her -- it had a bunch of good reviews and some of them were for tech writing jobs, so I though it would be useful to her (she's not a programmer, she does marketing).

    RAC had, in the meantime, become freelancer.com. The first thing it did was chew through the money I still had in my account -- two or three hundred dollars the withdrawal of which I had procrastinated for a long time, keeping them there in case I'd suddenly decide to take new jobs on RAC (then vWorker) again. I didn't get anything other than automated answers from their tech support, and eventually settled for that being dead money.

    Now freelancer.com is a scammer's heaven. It doesn't have escrows by default, the rounding of of fees is done quite liberally, there seems to be no mechanism to stop automatic bidding (with ridiculous sums that do nothing but bring the average bid price down, since it's obvious that whatever is behind those posts is never awarded a project), and their support for disputes is unhelpful at best.

    My gf is actually still unemployed and still gets projects on Freelancer every once in a while, but after being scammed twice -- with copious help through lack of reaction by Freelancer -- both her and her clients generally eschew its payment system altogether. She usually insists on a 100% milestone on Freelancer.com the first time she works with them, and then it's PayPal all the way.

    The eschewing of the payment system seems to be quite generalized, because their lack of reaction and real buyer and seller protection basically means people end up paying fees for something that is then little more than a glorified job advertising website, since it otherwise fails to offer anything for the (hefty) fees they take.

    Freelancer.com is a pretty sore sight nowadays. I browse its range of contract offers every once in a while; there's generally nothing for me (I do systems programming and embedded stuff -- people don't usually hire freelancers to write operating systems or make gadgets, unsurprisingly), but most of the projects and most of the bids depress me. Ads along the lines of "looking for an app expert", looking for reasonably non-trivial applications that work on a gazillion of platforms, awarded to poor people for sums that seem small even to me.

  2278. Ask HN: How do you deal with being burnt out? 2013-12-19 16:36:34 notastartup
    your explanation makes a lot of sense as to why I am procrastinating.

    I've just made a list (16 items already but going to limit myself to 10 tomorrow to be realistic).

    the 20 minute time span is actually a good idea, i tend to take too much time working on something.

  2279. Letter From A Psychopath 2013-12-21 00:02:21 pbhjpbhj
    Interesting - my social anxieties exhibit themselves mostly in when I have time to think about it then I "psych" myself out.

    If someone calls me on the phone then I can have a good conversation, palpations and sweating aside. However if I have to call someone then unless I do it immediately whilst suppressing the desire to think about what I'll say I go to complete mush and procrastinate my way to distraction. Mainly it's one-to-one I have a problem with.

  2280. Ask HN: How do you do your To-Do list? 2013-12-28 01:19:24 rickyc091
    Evernote - Weekly To Dos.

    Command, Shift, T - Creates a checkbox and then I write the task.

    At the end of the week, I copy over the list and remove everything I've done and keep the ones I still plan on doing, but I've procrastinated on.

  2281. Ask HN: Do you know anyone who left the tech world and found happiness? 2013-12-28 01:49:26 dfraser992
    Shortly after the first Internet bubble broke, I quit my horrible job and went to film school. IT was no longer fulfilling, or was at least a headache, and I needed to do something different.

    After film school, I needed money to pay for film school... so I tried to get back into IT. San Francisco was still in the doldrums, so it was stressful trying to find a job and I kept fouling up interviews. I eventually made my way down to LA and lucked into a good contract job there. But I found myself really beating myself into the ground - development was taking so much out of me, I couldn't manage to work on anything else, like screenplays... I was going through burnout but couldn't see it at the time. The compulsion to do a good job was taking over and having a great client didn't help.

    Fast forward a decade to now, and I am getting completely out of IT now. I've spent the last 4 years being professionally raped by a full blown sociopath and the reason I couldn't see it was because I was having to put all my chi / focus / energy / whatever into doing the work - it was now a serious compulsion instead of the enjoyable 'get paid for my hobby' thing my career started out as. And being manipulated didn't help... This process I now see had started 10 years ago but I, like always, pushed myself to keep on the same track instead of forcing myself to go through the stress of change. So I've lost a decade of my life here...

    I may be projecting, but "work, gym, sleep" sounds like you are starting to do what I did. Don't! It's a slippery slope. I wish to heck I'd reached out to HN like I see all these other people doing and asked for advice... If you still like web development, great, keep up to date at least out of pure interest, but it does sound like you need to do something different, if only for awhile. Changing gears will only help if you are getting habitual in your work life.

    Pick something interesting in web development, just one or two things, and become an expert at it - at some point you'll be able to get paid to do it no matter if you have a degree or not, just as long as you are prominent in some fashion in that particular ecosystem. Being a generalist like me is only good if you like working for small companies and doing everything only "good enough" versus being the "expert" in one thing for a company. Most companies only want square pegs they can hammer when they get past a certain size....

    I'm guessing you are late 20s, early 30s? It is about now then that people start asking themselves "what do I want to really do when I'm 40ish?" I didn't listen to myself unfortunately - procrastination. So if so, you still have the time to make a mistake without too much consequence - one's life is like the software design cycle (sort of). If you think your life is like the waterfall model... every mistake in your 20s will haunt you forever (i.e. the women who have a checklist for Prince Charming). But life really is more like evolutionary design or maybe agile... try to view things like that.

  2282. Ask HN: How to increase self-discipline as a self-employed person? 2013-12-29 21:07:52 ThomPete
    Discipline comes from routine.

    Here is a possible routine.

    1) Wake up at 7 at the latest

    2) Take a shower

    3) Get dressed

    4) Eat breakfast

    5) Read mails and news

    6) Join #startups on freenode to have some company

    7) Say good morning to everyone there (I am blackwhite)

    8) Start working

    9) Have lunch

    10) Back to work

    11) Stop at anytime between 5-7

    12) have dinner.

    13) Procrastinate some more or do some more work.

    14) Get to bed at 12 the latest.

    Rinse and repeat....

  2283. Ask HN: How to increase self-discipline as a self-employed person? 2013-12-29 21:22:30 ak39
    In my experience I've noticed that lack of discipline is related to two things (both of them subconscious). Lack of discipline strikes me when:

    1. I can easily predict what the end goal of any of my current project is ... and it is less than what I want for myself. So I procrastinate the inevitable. As if delaying it will somehow miraculously make it worthwhile after some time has passed. Waiting for an epiphany to salvage the fait accompli?? I am not sure. This is all of course subconscious. I don't like where my current project is leading me to so I watch sitcoms or come to give unsolicited HN advice. (Not really)

    2. I subconsciously avoid facing my burn-rate. Burn-rate is a function of time and can be both direct financial (material) as well as opportunity costs. Facing it is single most terrifying thing for me. My unfounded fear is that it paralyses me. On the contrary.

    The solution to 1 is to write down a single page or picture of where your current project fits into your bigger goals. If I can see this type of plan clearly for my current (boring) project and its global context is something I am easily reminded of regularly, I galvanise into action - no matter how boring.

    Promising a deadline to your client is also a good way to work towards it. Nothing like a nagging email or phone message asking about your progress to get your arse into action.

    The solution to 2 is to keep sight of your overheads by again writing a single page of your costs (burn-rate) as a function of time. And there's always a burn-rate. Planning for 3-6 months in my case seems sufficient. Make a poster of this and stick it where you can't miss it.

    Hope that helps you too.

  2284. Ask HN: How to increase self-discipline as a self-employed person? 2013-12-29 22:02:08 k-mcgrady
    This is a huge problem for me. The best solution I have found is to schedule every thing. I look ahead at the next week and what I need to get done and then schedule it in Google Calendar. I name the events 'Coding (Project Name)'. Typically I do a longer 4-6 hour session in the mornings and focus on projects that have a lot to be done on them still. In the afternoons I schedule a 2-3 hour session and work on projects that I'm finishing up on and doing minor work on. I'm a huge procrastinator ("watching multiple seasons of sitcoms" really rings true with me!) but this has helped me quite a bit.

  2285. Ask HN: How to increase self-discipline as a self-employed person? 2013-12-29 23:20:44 shubhamjain
    Although the personal freedom is enjoyable but a certain amount of self discipline seems necessary, otherwise, you start putting off more and more work in an inevitable way when you are not in the mood, or you want to watch the latest TV show episode, perhaps.

    With my first remote job, I was often distracted by lots of stuff, procrastinated a lot because of no schedule and the result was I had to work even on weekends, full time to make the ends meet.

  2286. Ask HN: How to increase self-discipline as a self-employed person? 2013-12-30 02:21:40 teleclimber
    The Pomodoro technique is the only thing that worked for me after everything I tried.

    I think it works because it's a positive-reinforcer ("do work and complete Pomodoro" as opposed to "don't procrastinate so you can do work").

  2287. Ask HN: How to increase self-discipline as a self-employed person? 2013-12-30 03:46:41 thelogos
    Fish oil and vitamin d3 is so important that it's impossible to elaborate everything in this comment. I used to have a bigger regimen but have cut down to these 2 plus sodium r-lipoid acid.

    1. Most modern livestocks are raise on grains and soy. Their meat do not contain enough omega-3, a simple fact. Farmed fish's omega 3 content varies depending on their diet.

    2. Many people have the misconception that the skin can synthesize vitamin d3 from any kind of sunlight. Not true.\nGlass blocks most of UVB and only let through UVA. So sitting in a windowed office won't work. \nSome of us live in cold places and wear clothes that cover most of our skin on the rare occasion that we do go out.\nThe skin needs UVB photon to transform 7-dehydrocholesterol to vitamin D3 in a 2-step process. \nIt gets even more complicated when you take into account the level of melanin in your skin. Not only that, only certain spectrum of UVB carries sufficient energy to photolyzed 7-dehydrocholesterol. So that means your skin has to be exposed to sunlight at certain time of the day.

    The thing to understand about these deficiency is they occur very slowly. The process is very insidious because the brain and body is great at adapting. It comes to accept the abnormal as normal. Depressed people come to accept their condition as normal and unchangeable. Most of them don't even realized they're depressed. They can't imagine a different reality or mental state. Just like people who procrastinate can't see how someone else can be so productive. When you're socially isolated, it turns into a downward spiral where no one can help you.

    About stimulants, I don't like using them. But I've come to accept that they're necessary. We humans just weren't made to sit in one place and stare at a screen for 12 hrs+ a day/5days a week.

    So far I haven't felt any crash from the nicotine patch. Caffeine, definitely, but the crash is nowhere near the level of Rx stimulants. Caffeine crash is much more mild and tolerable. I'm not convinced on the safety of modafinil.

    The point to all this though, you need to keep your testosterone high so you can pull yourself out of a hole if you do fall into one. People who work 12hr+, racing on stimulants everyday, eating bad food and not getting enough sleep will inevitable burnout.

    If you live right, there's never a desire to drink or take any substance to "relax".

  2288. Your body wasn’t built to last: a lesson from human mortality rates 2013-12-31 00:22:31 jowiar
    I don't particularly want to die, but knowing it's going to happen makes life a whole lot more interesting. For me, the looming finitude of life keeps my inclination to procrastinate in check - Why do today what can be done tomorrow? Because otherwise the things to do add up faster than the tomorrows on which to do them.

  2289. Ask HN: How do you focus? 2014-01-01 11:15:39 jbl
    - Only work on something as long as I'm productive on it\n- When I stop being productive, it goes to the end of list and I pick up the next thing and repeat

    For big tasks where procrastination might be more of a problem, I put something like "work on x for 10 minutes" and make it a repeating todo until the due date. That way I don't pressure myself into getting some big component done. I can make myself feel good about consistent progress.

    I also found that diligently tracking my time on tasks has helped. Now I have a better sense, more or less, of how long common tasks take and can better gauge the time commitment before starting. Before I had data, I think I put off a lot of things or let myself get distracted because I thought something would take an hour when in fact it only takes 15 minutes.

  2290. Snapchat Phone Number Database Leaked 2014-01-02 03:42:08 fat0wl
    like other people are saying -- HN is news by committee. just try to post a joke on here one day & see how many rapid downvotes it gets if you ever need proof of how lame & uptight the HN crowd can be once they hit that 500 rep.

    i posted a joke on a comment of someone going "This. A million times this." the other day cuz that is the most melodramatic, overused, annoying, lame textual meme... the joke was pretty innocuous & immediately got like 5 downvotes.

    I don't mean to hate too hard cuz it is what it is, i dont care about my karma, & obv its good enough that i still read articles here but posters being annoying/hypocritical/oversensitive/humourless/feeling that they are the protectors of society... very common on HN. I think it is some facet of the nature of people thinking they are real sophisticated by reading HN for some odd reason (basing this on all the wannabe devs I know on social sites who make it a point to mention it constantly in posts like "my fav sites to procrastinate on"), whereas there are lots of higher-level programming communities out there who seem to have less of this self-seriousness.

    that said, occasionally there is that nice moment of a few reasonable people chatting each other & introducing to tech they may have otherwise overlooked. I'm heavy into Clojure & the other day a Lisper on here pointed me to freenode to get community help rather than SO, for example. It's all percentages, I guess :-/

  2291. Ask HN: Burned out on software development & looking for an offline job? 2014-01-02 07:23:38 dfraser992
    I starting burning out about 34 - I'm 44 now - and I wish I had made the effort to start transitioning. But I'm very good at forcing myself to go on death marches... life got in the way and was distracting as well. The latest stupid crap has finally convinced me to really start, however. So don't procrastinate - I really hope you don't.

    Usually, in one's 30s, you start trying to figure out what you really want to be doing for the last half of your life. I quit my job after the first Internet bubble broke and went to film school, something I'd always wanted to do, but after film school, I decided it was "practical" to stick with IT. Writing screenplays is a little too much like programming, and it really doesn't pay as well... Anyway, such is life.

    What would you be doing if you suddenly became 18 again, but kept all the life knowledge you have accumulated by now? Do you feel the need to do something completely different or perhaps just something to the "left" of software development? Any sort of writing is to the left, I think, as a lot of the skills in IT are applicable to the writing process. Something different would be the acting classes I took last year - i.e. try to develop the subordinate side of your personality - more 'artistic' stuff, more feeling than the thinking. Acting actually involves a lot more analytical processes than one might think, but you still have to get in touch with one's 'feeling' side so I found it all useful.

    At this point, I'm starting to think seminary school sounds interesting, as it is aligned with a lot of my intellectual interests. There is a monastery in Belgium that brews beer, and they need help as demand is growing and the order is shrinking. Spending my life making beer sounds fun!

  2292. The Best To-Do List: A Private Gist 2014-01-03 03:42:07 moron4hire
    I've spent a lot of time thinking about TODO lists and trying different solutions. Eventually, I settled on a very specific means of using good, old, pen-and-paper.

    I think probably the most important feature of the TODO list is that it gives you mental clarity. Both the popular book "Getting Things Done" and a career couch I worked with for several months talk about the importance of clearing the mind before being able to begin work in earnest. If you have "do the laundry" stuck in your head, it's going to be a major hurdle for getting through work. So, having some sort of system to capture everything that needs to be done is essential for staying on task with work.

    So that means that the most important feature of TODO is capture. Any system that imposes overhead on capturing items for your TODO list will eventually fall out of habit. You'll start to mentally prioritize which things go on the list and which things do not. That ultimately defeats the purpose of the TODO list, to get things out of mind, squirreled away in a safe place.

    Thus, very formal issue trackers like BugZilla or Redmine (or anything else that has a separate "issue entry page") are far too cumbersome for capture.

    But being streamlined on capture is not the whole solution. Having used sites like PivotalTracker or Trello, I've fallen into traps of recording TOO much. Certain pie-in-the-sky tasks will sit in the list for months on end, getting no closer to ever getting worked on. It then becomes its own mental burden, worrying about whether or not certain TODO items will end up in that moribund pile. I even tried writing my own that had an arbitrary limit to the number of items I could enter. It just didn't feel right. It was always too easy to just bump up the limit and keep adding items.

    So with all of my experience with various activity and issue tracking systems, I went straight back to pen and paper. My system is very simple, but it is not from lack of design. Its simplicity is the design.

    I use an ink pen on a yellow legal pad. The pads are cheap and readily available. The ink requires strike-throughs for error corrections. I write in two columns, but only to be able to use all of the paper. There is no semantic difference between the two columns.

    I do not number things, unless I'm in crunch mode and am working very fast through a series of items. I am more likely to underline the high priority items, rather than number them. I don't think it's really possible to prioritize things any more than "things I'm working on in the next few hours" versus "things I'm not working on soon." Anything more than that really calls into question the entire concept of priority for me. It's easy enough to scan the list and figure out priority as I work. I can also rewrite the list with higher priority items at the top if necessary. Usually it's not necessary.

    Completed items get scratched out, fairly heavily. The goal is then to fill the page with ink. It becomes a motivating factor to finish the last few items on the list.

    The list is limited to 2 columns only and is not allowed to spill on to a second page. I rewrite the list either once a week or (more often) when the page is full to remove the completed items. I did three columns for a while, but it started to develop a deadpool at the bottom right end of the page, so I went back to two columns. Multiple pages would be even worse, and would make it harder to scan the total list. That basically means I'm limited to a max of 50 or so active items on my TODO list. I've found that, if I need much more than 50, then I've failed to manage my work correctly. The desire to record more is a signal that I'm procrastinating things and taking on too many commitments.

    And that's it. Any other feature of TODO list tracking is either too restricting on capture or too enabling on over capture. Pen and paper is it for me.

  2293. Lock Picking – A Basic Guide 2014-01-03 08:59:51 sitkack
    I am going to make a new word, "learnacrastinator", "learnicrastor" (feel free to fix/expound). One who learns a subject or skill while procrastinating studying for another.

  2294. Lock Picking – A Basic Guide 2014-01-03 09:34:57 umanwizard
    Fixing bugs in a large open-source project while I should have been studying for major exams was what landed me a Google Summer of Code position, which (I assume) is what landed me an interview at a major tech company.

    Safe to say that a huge proportion of my current income is directly due to "productive procrastination" :)

  2295. How Scarcity Trap Affects Our Thinking, Behavior 2014-01-03 09:36:44 tom6a
    PG would say the type of procrastination in the NPR article (missing the vehicle registration date) is "good" procrastination.

    http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

  2296. How Scarcity Trap Affects Our Thinking, Behavior 2014-01-03 10:30:46 goggles99
    >BYLINE: Each September the state of Massachusetts asks one thing from "Scarcity" author and Harvard economist, Sendhil Mullainathan, to renew his car inspection sticker and each year this recipient of the MacArthur Genius Award does the same thing. He's really busy, so on each day leading up to the expiration of the sticker, he tells himself he'll attend to it the next day.

    This guy has a serious logic flaw in his way of thinking. It scares me that there are people out there teaching economics in supposedly prominent schools.

    It was not scarcity that affected his thinking. It was his irresponsibility. By scarcity of time, the author is including things like watching television, writing a book on the side, ETC. This is a simple case of procrastination.

    These are optional things in the same way that someone with a meager income can live in relative comfort in America (never go hungry, wet or cold), Then they decide to buy a fancy new car (though nothing was wrong with their older model Honda). Now they have created a scarcity because they suddenly cannot afford to pay their rent.

    It was not the scarcity that affected their thinking and behavior, it was self indulgence and irresponsibility that caused the scarcity if the first place.

  2297. Lock Picking – A Basic Guide 2014-01-03 10:47:54 Kluny
    I saw a great point in some article the other week about why Ph.d students end up doing all these incredible things in their free time - it's all an elaborate way of procrastinating from finishing their theses.

  2298. Bullet Journal: An analog note-taking system for the digital age 2014-01-03 14:14:07 rsivapr
    From http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

    >I think the way to "solve" the problem of procrastination is to let delight pull you instead of making a to-do list push you. Work on an ambitious project you really enjoy, and sail as close to the wind as you can, and you'll leave the right things undone.

  2299. New Year's Resolutions for SysAdmins 2014-01-03 14:21:16 Ecio78
    I should "Finally learn IPv6" but I know that I will procrastinate again and again..

  2300. Lock Picking – A Basic Guide 2014-01-03 16:19:27 oceanic
    "educrastination" - the act of learning something while procrastinating about doing something else.

  2301. An open letter to hobbyists by Bill Gates (1976) 2014-01-07 11:34:02 null_ptr
    > Twitter is the place where I laugh, whine, work, schmooze, procrastinate, and flirt. It sits in my back pocket wherever I go and lies next to me when I fall asleep.

    I can't for the life of me understand why people choose to publish their entire life to an amalgamation of online strangers.

  2302. Some Thoughts on Productivity 2014-01-08 03:49:09 ismaelc
    One trick that helps me be productive is to expect that I won't finish an entire task in one sitting. I used to have this problem of procrastinating because I want to finish a task in one go. Now it's easier to break up work into chunks and work on them separately, knowing that eventually they'll all be finished (not working up myself too much in expecting I can finish them all).

    I also found this book "Your Brain at Work" really helpful, especially in the chapter about what gets us motivated (a bit of anxiety coupled with novelty helps).

  2303. The New York Times Redesign is Live 2014-01-08 22:37:19 mseebach
    It's not "bosses v. designers", it's a newspaper failing to grasp that when you put a newspaper online it doesn't have the same visual constraints a printed newspaper have. Either that, or it's the newspaper totally getting that they do need to look like that to not confuse the heck out of the large constituency of readers that are slightly older and less tech-savvy than the Reddit crowd.

    But yeah, I'm with you, I'm pretty far down the procrastination list before I open a newspaper web-front-page.

  2304. To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair 2014-01-08 23:18:28 quarterto
    This is basically a stripped-down article version of The Now Habit [0], without the good bits, such as guilt-free play, the idea that you should set aside time to do whatever without constantly thinking "I should be working", or the Unschedule, where you mark down the times you actually did good work.

    [0]: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Now-Habit-Overcoming-Procrastination...

  2305. To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair 2014-01-09 00:06:31 michaelochurch
    What's bizarre about procrastination is how much it derives from irrelevant past experiences (negative ones) that, in truth, have little or nothing to do with the activity being procrastinated. Some failure or embarrassment that is hardly related to the activity at all gets dredged up, not always consciously, and becomes paralytic.

    In the process of doing work, people are generally happy and can even get into a flowful state. That's even true for most people with mood problems-- if they can get themselves there. But the anticipation of work or change or even playful activity like exercise is often an anxiety-ridden negativity-fest. Cleaning an apartment isn't so bad; but the anticipation and feeling of having to do it brings forward all those negative emotions like, "how the fuck did I get to age <X> and still have to do my own cleaning? Why can't I get my goddamn shit together and take ownership of my career?" It's much easier to just do the damn cleaning: even high-status, rich people have to do it sometimes, it's not a big deal. But the mental and social prison of "having to" clean makes that menial task 10 times worse than it really deserves to be.

    I think that people have to reprogram themselves to "just do" instead of fussing about how their work will be evaluated and how long it will take and what might go wrong. That kind of nonsense makes it hard to do anything.

    My suspicion is that procrastination (like depression) was adaptive to our primordial existences as pack animals in hierarchies that were brutally enforced. Depression (low libido, physical lethargy) is an adaptation to low status and scarcity-- inappropriate to modern life, but it probably helped our ancestors survive periods of transient low status. Procrastination also seems to be something that we evolved to defer ambitions (especially while young, and unable to succeed in a physical fight) during periods of low status so we could survive into better times. It's the "I'm not ready to do that" reflex. It's incredibly maladaptive to modern life-- in which social status is mostly undefined and a little internal confidence can go a long way-- but given our "winner-take-all" society in which most people lose, it's not surprising that it's at epidemic levels.

  2306. To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair 2014-01-09 00:13:35 j45
    Motivation isn't an eternal flame waiting to be discovered, it can be a daily practice of reminding similar to showering and eating, if we don't do it, our thoughts and feelings tend to stink.

    This article stuck out to me in providing relatively clear and immediately applicable strategies that could be a lot closer to a first principles of addressing procrastination.

    Knowledge is not power, acting on knowledge is. Remembering to remind yourself to imagine the future feeling of accomplishment, building momentum with small items, and practicing forgiveness might be a realer challenge for many.

    An interesting question that this article leads me to wonder is, how do others here remind themselves of their big picture, their why, that leads them to keep their flywheel spinning?

  2307. To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair 2014-01-09 00:24:32 terhechte
    I just took the small comics from the sidebar, and put them as my desktop background image. I find they give particularly short but useful advice as to how to proceed once procrastination attempts to strike.

  2308. Poll: Was HN Being Down An Improvement Or Problem For Your Day 2014-01-09 00:45:32 AnEro
    Since I naturally procrastinate it helps me stay in the routine I am forming, with out relapsing. I usually visit when I feel like I need a break, but I feel guilt free since I feel like I learn something while I am here. So I would say the value it holds is aiding me in my productivity by helping control of my emotions.

    ALSO no worries I like talking about it; I think its cool someone cares or is interested! :D

  2309. To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair 2014-01-09 01:02:32 dasil003
    Definitely some good stuff in there, a lot of those are techniques that I've discovered on my own. But the big problem in talking about procrastination is that it's caused by so many different things. It might be anything from small fears to 30,000 foot problems in your life which may intractable in the short term. Assuming no true pathology, the key is really self-awareness and stopping the productivity drumbeat long enough to peel back a few of the top layers of your own psychology.

  2310. To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair 2014-01-09 01:49:51 mathattack
    The irony of all these procrastination articles appearing on HN is not lost on me. :-) For better or worse, the "Just get started" approach works best for me.

  2311. BMW shows off 'drifting' self-drive cars 2014-01-09 02:04:51 sk5t
    I agree this is a very superficial article, although it is somewhat relevant to folks interested in self-driving vehicles. Despite regular procrastination on Jalopnik, I hadn't previously heard about self-driving tech applied to anything in the motorsports arena.

    Nevertheless you raise a good point re. the fluff content here and encroaching redditification. Lately a lot of "witty one-liners" have appeared up in the comment section, and downvote-enabled HN users should feel a duty to discourage them.

  2312. To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair 2014-01-09 02:09:18 joemaller1
    To stop procrastinating, open HN, see article about procrastination, pause, close window and go back to work.

  2313. To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair 2014-01-09 02:17:04 codezero
    Dr. Pychyl advises procrastinators to "just get started, and make the threshold for getting started quite low."

    That's like telling a depressed person to just feel better. I've tried a lot of things to help with procrastination but very little works, this is just another thing to try that maybe will or won't work.

    Also, personally, I've never had the "suffering" from failing when I put things off, so it's hard to believe that this method would work for me :(

  2314. To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair 2014-01-09 02:24:35 elwell
    Title should read: "To Stop Procrastinating, Get Off Hacker News"

  2315. To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair 2014-01-09 02:31:46 codezero
    Yeah you're right, but I think this doesn't work quite as well for the larger projects which are the crux of most procrastination issues.

  2316. To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair 2014-01-09 02:37:02 nisa
    That's the problem. I had some suffering from procrastination. Suffering does not exactly helps against it. A self reinforcing feedback loop so to say.

    The Now Habit has solid advice. But it takes a lot of effort to implement that advice.

    Get yourself together first. Sleep! A minimal Schedule! Rituals! Build a structure for yourself. If you fail here assess yourself and build up a structure for your in small steps from there. This works for me. If it does not work re-examine the situation, adapt. You need a minimal structure before you can even start to working on yourself.

    Learn about stress and how it affects your mind and your body.

    The basic idea is to switch your mind into a more mindful state so you can act conscious. You don't need meditation for that. That is in my experience too complicated if you have bigger issues. But these mindful moments. Work towards them. Their effects multiply.

    Nothing will work without effort. That's a sad truth but a little momentum (even if it is external) can go a long way.

    No need to be perfect. No need to aspire some vague world class. Just do the next logical thing that needs to be done. If this thing is to big, divide and conquer. Iterate.

    Ah well... honestly would be nice if my words would help. Without being able to act upon it's all just talking and no walking.

  2317. To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair 2014-01-09 03:02:45 wonderzombie
    Well, that's the trick. (Serial procrastinator here. Hello!) You can't think of a large project as a large project. Otherwise you'll never get it done. It's impossible by definition, because a larger project is a composite of a number of smaller tasks. So sometimes you end up having to trick yourself with "fix a typo" or "change this class name" or w/e. It has to be small and stupid enough that the activation cost is as low as possible.

    Easier said than done, of course. Did I mention I'm procrastinating?

  2318. To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair 2014-01-09 03:12:51 randomdrake
    Interesting.

    I have difficulties with procrastination as well. I don't recall having met anyone in our realm who says they don't have some difficulties with it.

    Generally, I agree with what the article is saying. I have found my own ties to procrastination and emotion; specifically anxiety, which the article touched on.

    I think the suggested approach from the article is missing something that I have found to be important for personal growth and also applicable to startups: you must be able to measure your progress. The process of measuring the progress should be easy, if not automatic, and the ability to digest the measured progress should be just as easy.

    My blog post from last week[1] shares my personal experience with how I've implemented the approach of measuring (and hopefully defeating) anxiety tied to my procrastination. I go about describing my process to turn those anxieties into actionable and measurable goals that sort of turned into my resolutions for the year.

    [1] - http://randomdrake.com/2014/01/02/destroying-personal-anxiet...

  2319. To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair 2014-01-09 03:19:08 cma
    But who is going to clean your apartment under an open-allocation world utopia?

    I do like your idea about the origins of procrastination, but like almost all evolutionary psychology, it is too easy to make up stories to explain things. Occasionally there is something concrete from the fossil record to work from.

  2320. To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair 2014-01-09 03:31:10 sjf
    Anxiety, which is at the core of procrastination according to the article, is not like depression. Making small progressive advances builds confidence and eventually leads to recovery. The most effective treatments for anxiety (CBT, exposure therapy etc.) are based on learning to work through the discomfort.

  2321. To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair 2014-01-09 04:05:13 SonicSoul
    also can't go wrong with Brian Tracy on such topics

    http://www.amazon.com/Eat-That-Frog-Great-Procrastinating/dp...

  2322. To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair 2014-01-09 04:23:20 kroger
    No book has helped me overcome procrastination more than Steven Pressfield's "The War of Art":

    http://www.amazon.com/The-War-Art-Through-Creative/dp/193689...

    Instead of overanalyzing procrastination, he identifies the invisible but real force of Resistance and how to deal with it.

    EDIT: grammar

  2323. To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair 2014-01-09 04:43:50 tcfunk
    I find some of this advice to be really silly.

    Telling someone with procrastination issues to "Just get started" or in other words "Stop procrastinating" seems as effective as telling someone with a smoking habit to "Just stop smoking".

  2324. To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair 2014-01-09 05:11:44 praptak
    Unschedule is a reverse psychology trick - a schedule where you fill in the play, not work. Being in the gap between periods of play motivates you to start working. Also, google it.

    I have not actually tried Unschedule so I cannot really recommend it but I have read "The Now Habit" and it is the most high-level anti-procrastination book. It goes straight to the root causes of procrastination, IMHO.

  2325. To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair 2014-01-09 05:22:16 septerr
    One of the causes of procrastination is perfectionism. The fear of not meeting your own high standards probably affects HN readers more than anything else.

  2326. To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair 2014-01-09 09:11:10 dpweb
    I'm so bad with procrastinating, in fact I'm avoiding work right now! I've found virtually all the books and blog posts useless, but this one really made me think differently.. http://www.amazon.com/Self-Discipline-10-days-Thinking-Doing...

  2327. To aspiring indie devs 2014-01-09 11:03:59 rajat
    Basically, if you accept that your first 10 games will suck, and you don't try to make your first game fantastic, then your first 10 games will suck. Worse, you might get good at developing sucky games. For most developers, not just game developers, it's likely that their first some number of projects will suck.

    I always thought that the mantra about your first 10 games will suck was a way to take the pressure off you and get you to develop a game. The problem is that we psych ourselves out; we don't develop anything because we're too fearful about making a bad game, and we procrastinate, and we hem and haw and never develop anything.

  2328. To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair 2014-01-09 14:50:58 mistercow
    I was pretty disappointed in this article. Rather than offering any new insight or techniques, it was just a reiteration of well-known techniques, each of which I've personally found to be barely helpful at best, and counter-productive at worst. The "time travel" technique in particular is actually just my default behavior, and only serves to reinforce my ugh fields.

    Beyond that, all the article offers is a piece of jargon to name the obvious motivation behind procrastination: doing something to distract you from an unpleasant obligation.

  2329. To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair 2014-01-09 15:00:45 mistercow
    >Also, personally, I've never had the "suffering" from failing when I put things off, so it's hard to believe that this method would work for me :(

    That's the worst. A lot of people with ADHD (myself included) find that the stress response of an impending deadline is an extremely effective medication. It's a horrible way to live, but it reinforces itself by getting results.

    That said, "just get started" is the closest thing to useful advice this article offers. Thinking about how good you'll feel when you finish a task barely qualifies as a "strategy", thinking about how bad you'll feel if you don't finish the task is exactly the kind of automatic response that causes procrastination, and "easy things first" is the kind of behavior that quickly leads to a todo-list you can't even bare to look at.

  2330. To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair 2014-01-09 18:40:24 unstabilo
    In my case procrastination is/was a symptom of perfectionism. This article was an eyeopener for me: http://coastalcenter.org/overcoming-perfectionism/ .

  2331. 4K is for programmers 2014-01-10 16:00:24 kayoone
    Id say in terms of productivity it adds almost nothing because the biggest things holding a programmers productivity back have nothing todo with display size. Better get rid of interruptions, procrastination, bad tools etc.

    That being said programmer happiness is elemental and a 42inch 4K screen would add to that for me :)

  2332. Money and wealth 2014-01-10 23:40:02 gizmo
    Until you've figured out what to do with it, just buy shares VTI. Vanguard Total Stock Market. Or get the admiral version if you're in the US. Essentially it's a tiny fraction of ownership of all publicly traded companies. As long as the economy doesn't go completely down the drain it's a very good place for your money. It's not the optimal place for your money, of course, but compared to sticking your money in a checking or savings account it's a no-brainer.

    Figuring out what to do with your money isn't easy. So until you've got a good plan, go with a sensible default. That's VTI. Every day you procrastinate on this you're simply burning money.

  2333. An Open Letter to HN from EFF, Demand Progress, and Cory Doctorow 2014-01-11 03:11:28 bushido
    Maybe we need to take the shawshank redemption approach "Still, I'd like to try, with your permission. I'll send a letter a week. They can't ignore me forever."

    Let's build automated tools allowing people to send out letters, signed petitions, emails, faxes, pre-recorded voicemail etc.

    That would would potentially eliminate procrastination.

    Just a thought.

  2334. Supercomputer takes 40 minutes to simulate 1 second of a human brain 2014-01-13 00:23:37 moron4hire
    If we simulate a human brain as a way to make computers solve new types of problems, then we will have bored computers who procrastinate solving problems in favor of playing WoW.

  2335. How Baby Boomers screwed their kids 2014-01-13 03:29:00 wonderzombie
    Regarding distraction, may I posit that the author has the causality reversed? What if many people are seeking dopamine, et al, because they're already unhappy? There was a piece on procrastination which suggested that some procrastination is an attempt to treat one's unhappy mood, and it seems to me there are plenty of reasons why Gen Yers might be unhappy.

    The economic outlook for many Gen Yers is quite bleak. Despite having attended college, many people end up working retail or otherwise low-wage jobs. After hearing that you're supposed to "follow your dreams" and that all you really need to do is "believe in yourself and you can accomplish anything," it's not unreasonable to imagine why this generation feels left behind or alienated. I know people who blame themselves even though, in one case, their job (environmental ecology) was vaporized by the housing bust.

    So they're[0] "entitled" because they want what the consumer-driven economy tells them they deserve, what they've been told to demand from life, and what their parents had. But they ought to be happy with less than the previous generation had because, well, them's the breaks.

    I'm sure I'm not the first, I predict Gen Y will become something akin to a lost generation. Sometimes you need to take a shit job to survive, but if you're interested in upward mobility, nobody wants to see shit jobs on your resume, esp not among the professional class.

    It's ironic because retail jobs, for instance, are often hard work! However there's little prospect for long-term gain. What's the point in thinking long-term when you're working a job deliberately engineered to make workers replaceable? There's nothing inherently wrong with such a job, but maybe it's not so mysterious wonder why kids seem more mercenary or prefer to live in the moment.

    If I had to guess, I'd say this offers some explanation both for popularity of tech and finance. If you can afford a degree & can hack it in those industries, you'll probably do well. If you can't, your prospects (depending on where you live) are considerably more variable.

    ---

    [0]: I say "they" because I'm somewhere between X and Y. I remember a time before the Internet, ubiquitous digital media, and cellphones, but not before home computers.

  2336. Why Infinite-Scrolling in Mobile Apps is Destroying Content Consumption 2014-01-13 23:16:11 omaranto
    It won't help everyone overcome their addiction, but some people just need a tiny bit of friction to stop reading. The brief moment where you need to click "Next" instead of scrolling can be enough for you to realize you've had enough. I especially like HN's design, where not only is there pagination but the "next" link doesn't take you to the next page it only gives you a page that says "link expired". if you really, really want to keep procrastinate you need to refresh.

  2337. The Productivity Cycle 2014-01-16 23:36:51 Uncompetative
    When I read one of these Lifehackery blogs with a section that is entitled 'The Nap Month' it makes me feel that the author was procrastinating and trying to justify behaviour they felt guilty about.

    I have zero caffeine in my diet, try to sleep between 7 and 10 hours a night - the latter is preferred when I am learning new concepts as it gives my brain a chance to rewire. Walking will stop my sedentary work from leading to constipation more than high-fibre alone.

    Really, the secret to productivity is understanding the nature of the problem you are working on. All too often you can think it is all about solving X when in fact it is more about Z. No one really sets aside sufficient time to take stock and review the trajectory of their work so that they smooth the path that lies ahead with proper insight into what constitutes the essential aspects of the solution. As a designer it is vital for me to list every feature I aspire to include and then rank them mercilessly in order of most essential constraining and ultimately eliminating subsequent dilemmas of choice further down the list towards those aspects that would be nice to have but are not essential should you run out of time.

    Even if you don't know enough about a highly ranked feature in this list its position in the list should not be influenced by your ignorance of it. It merely represents an area of on the job training that you need to budget for (or realise that you have no time to learn about, in which case you should probably ditch the whole endeavour and pick a project more suited to your skill set, don't pretend that you can reshape your design without it as it will just remind you of its compromised state each time you test it and make you unhappy with your craft).

  2338. Coding tip: Leave your code in a broken state 2014-01-17 06:57:23 krstck
    I won't leave code intentionally broken, but I always save some small trivial task for the next morning to immediately get into the swing of things. I really like being able to come in first thing and get something done, even if it's small. If the first thing I have to do requires a lot of deep thinking, I'm likely to procrastinate.

  2339. Ask HN: I've done absolutely no work since December 15th 2014-01-17 08:47:11 unstable013
    :) I think I understand your position, because I'm living it right now. I've found that at times like this, what helps is:

    * Actually take a day off, don't pretend to be productive, actually walk away and don't feel guilty about it. Everyone needs a break.

    * Get some perspective. Take two steps back, and remind yourself why you're doing what you're doing. Screw, 'becoming a success,' there's a bigger reason that you're making something. Tumblr has fan mail posted all over their fridge [http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/4f0e2ff7ecad04b0640... ] and, I've printed out and stuck up some positive facebook comments and emails from our users. It's a lot harder to procrastinate when you know that you have an audience.

    * Start over something. There's mixed opinions on this, obviously you should try to get it mostly right the first time, and iterate rather than scrapping and restarting at a whim, but sometimes the invitation of a blank canvas can get you over the wall.

    * Embrace your ritual. There could be something, some process that you use when you need to get started on something... As counter-productive as it seems, whenever I'm about to start a big project, I sit down for a night and clear my harddrive, and set up a fresh installation of my Linux distro... the act of 'cleaning out my workbench,' frees me up to start working again..

    And finally, I'd point you at [ http://hellenroxx.com/fighting-cam-burnout/ ] which I found yesterday... it's slightly NSFW, but surprisingly relevant to our problem.

    Good Luck,

    Jean-Le

  2340. Coding tip: Leave your code in a broken state 2014-01-17 10:09:49 barrkel
    There are two separate problems.

    One is getting something easy to gnaw on, to get into flow, to remove the inclination to procrastinate.

    The other is picking up where you left off.

  2341. Value is created by doing 2014-01-18 00:25:24 thrush
    This is exactly what the Lean Startup talks about. Granted, I feel like the post was targeting the topic of procrastination more so than anything else. By Sam's logic, brainstorming and analyzing your business's market would fall under the territory of "doing", while reading and writing on hacker news may not.

  2342. Ask HN: I've done absolutely no work since December 15th 2014-01-18 03:12:27 rosenjon
    How is that going to solve the problem? The procrastination comes from a fear of failure. Your suggestion is to go take a mindless, shitty job, thereby suggesting this is what's going to happen to him if he fails? First, that's probably not the likely outcome of failure, and second, it's not going to help the fear of failure.

    Call it a "vacation", or a "break", or whatever you want. But you have to step away sometimes in order to clarify your thinking. Startups are a marathon, not a sprint. Despite all the lean startup craziness, nothing truly gets built in a day, a week or a month. If he has literally made no progress in a month, then something needs to change. Personally, I think the most effective thing is a change of environment. His office has become a toxic place to go during the day and procrastinate. He needs to get away from it and do something else for a bit, and then come back to it with fresh eyes.

    Here are some further suggestions for what he can do to regain some balance.\nhttp://zenhabits.net/the-10-essential-rules-for-slowing-down...

  2343. Ask HN: How to break this cycle of procrastination? 2014-01-18 14:00:22 TheHydroImpulse
    I've definitely been in that situation before. Whenever it is goes like "I'll do Y, then I'll do X, after Y", where X is the more important thing to do, it doesn't happen. That's why whenever I catch myself saying that, I stop, I don't do Y but actually do X.

    Instead of saying you'll code after another article, or another game, etc... you should instead code before those things. Just the act of sitting down and doing it is enough satisfaction and makes me motivated even more, conquering procrastination.

    Anyways, that worked for me.

  2344. Ask HN: How to break this cycle of procrastination? 2014-01-18 15:05:35 akg_67
    Make yourself feel guilty as much as possible and break your routine by introducing a new non-coding non-computer activity in between your guilty pleasures. Based on my experience with procrastination and trying to break it, how about your modify your procrastination little bit as suggested below.

    > "Okay, a new day, let's start. let's check hackernews first. great neat stuff. alright one more article and i'll fire up my ide and terminal." <

    Before playing counter strike, Fire up your IDE and Terminal before going to next step. Make sure you maximize your IDE and Terminal to fill all the screen space. Then take a quick little walk in the room/apt/house. Come back to screen and if you want to still play counter strike, minimize your IDE and Terminal (don't close any of programs or switch to a different desktop view). If you still wants to play counter strike, go ahead play.

    > "okay i'm tired now, time to play some counter strike. lets play for 30 minutes.

    oh I SUCK at this game just like I'm sucking at not procrastinating. this guy is talking trash time to show him who's boss.

    crap, it's been an hour. now im hungry. lets eat." <

    Before going to eat, Open up your project and source code file that you want to work on. Make sure again the screen is completely filled. Go eat something away from screen. Take a walk around the room/apt/house/neighborhood.

    > "alright now im full, i need to relax and check hackernews again." <

    Come back to screen and if you want to still check hacker news, Write a few lines of code. And then check hacker news.

    Sooner or later, you will start to feel guilty seeing the IDE, Terminal, Project, Source Code file on your screen every time you come back to your computer and start doing more and more coding.

  2345. A peek inside Exist, our quantifed self app close to launch 2014-01-19 18:32:57 MakeUsersWant
    I don't quite see the problem this app is solving (beyond initial curiosity). Some wild ideas, not necessarily good ones:

    * Everybody knows enough sleep is a good thing, but not everybody has a productivity chart to make its importance visceral.

    * Provide early warning signs to rest before you get migraine. Common triggers are stress, hunger, fatigue, hormone levels (medication), indoor air quality and lighting. A common early warning sign is an unusual appetite. The facts are known, but their importance varies and not everybody is sufficiently self-aware.

    * Automatic goal tracking for Beeminder, because that increases the chance you achieve your goals.

    * Prevent procrastination: Is it possible to infer mood from your data, e.g. movement patterns, after some initial training? (The food industry can measure feelings amazingly well in their food design labs.) I know I'm much more likely to procrastinate when I'm low on energy. Right now, I'm trying to notice that earlier and take a break or fix the underlying problem.

  2346. Ask HN: How to become productive programmer? 2014-01-19 19:32:33 dlsym
    Stop procrastinating on HN. Start finishing your project.\nNow.

  2347. How To Survive A Death March 2014-01-20 02:43:21 justin_vanw
    There is no good advice for someone in that situation. The best advice for someone in that situation is to not get into it next time, if there is a next time, because you are totally fucked up and down and sideways right now.

    Now, if you are obsessed with death marches to the point of replying to every comment on this thread, like thenomad, my advice is stop spending all day hitting reload and waiting for someone to post on hackernews so you can jump in and defend death marches, and go read a book on project management or study or work or do anything besides procrastinating, which is probably the root cause of why you end up in that situation all the time. Learn to do work when there isn't a gun to your head.

  2348. How To Survive A Death March 2014-01-20 04:18:19 watwut
    My advice would be: starting dead march anytime sooner then last week and half is irrational. I do not believe authors estimate of three weeks 80 hours, that is too long too much. It may feel good, but it is not a good idea. First, you need to keep clean head and think eg.)\n* prioritize and cut everything non-essential,\n* being organized is not waste of time, but do not overdo it,\n* prioritize again and cut everything not super essential,\n* sleep enough hours,\n* eat regularly and real food,\n* take short break after every longer subtask (!short - measure it!),\n* be conscious: if you find yourself staring at the screen or procrastinating, then it is good time for short break,\n* use the above breaks for short but intensive physical activity,\n* socialize less then usually, but find some time to socialize anyway.

    Important:\n* have good testers and let them check for regressions as often as possible. Really, they are more valuable then new programmers on team.

    If you need to achieve something exceptional, you need to think clear above all. The idea "wait we do not have to do it at all" saves more time then all clever hacking in the world. And if you do not sleep and do not eat, you will not be clever anyway.

    As for last point, most people need to talk. If they do not get to talk out of work, they tend to get more talkative in work. That means a lot of wasted time. The last thing you want is to unconsciously use team meetings to satisfy your communication needs and waste everybody's time.

    It is ok to bundle things together eg. run to grocery store for food (3 in 1: physical activity and break and food).

  2349. Forget Setting Goals. Focus on Systems Instead 2014-01-20 06:45:59 xux
    The problem with focusing on the system is that it gives you an excuse to procrastinate. Last set too hard? Well I workout everyday anyways! That bag of chips is irresistible? Well I ate healthy all week!

    The Goal vs System approach work for two distinct types of people. If you generlaly like laid back, passive work (ex. stable job with a a few nice sideprojects, worksout everyday, has a nice rythmic life), then the System approach is for you. You're already pretty content with your life, and everything you do should work toward maximizing stability and hapiness.

    The goal approach is different. If you're a frequent procrstinator; if you have brief bursts of productivity followed by long lulls of laziness; then goal is for you. Goal forces you to deal with situations that you'd rather procrastinate, essentially keeping your energy in check.

    For most entrepreneur, I'd imagine the second approach would work better.

  2350. Forget Setting Goals. Focus on Systems Instead 2014-01-20 10:03:20 calinet6
    This doesn't discredit goals, they're still very useful, and your process must align with your goals to help reach them.

    The way you'd think about procrastination, for example, wouldn't be to simply set goals of productivity, but to find the underlying causes of your procrastination. Often this is a lack of organization, a lack of system to determine what to do next, a physiological issue, a lack of time to meet your basic needs, or a lack of ability.

    All of these have systemic roots, and systematic solutions. Improve your system and get your tasks out of your head (GTD), fix your metabolism (systematic exercise, diet, etc), change your schedule to make time for your unmet needs, or systematically learn skills that allow you to progress faster.

    Systems thinking isn't about ignoring goals, but rather about solving the roadblocks, which are usually systemic in nature due to the natural complexity of human nature.

    Rarely are solutions so simple as "want your goal harder." Look one or two levels deeper, and you get into systems thinking, and you find better solutions that are more effective. You still have to want your goal, but you'll be more successful at actually reaching it.

  2351. Forget Setting Goals. Focus on Systems Instead 2014-01-20 13:18:10 cpayne
    I'm not sure I agree. You've missed the 3rd point the author made: Build feedback loops

    Sure you can procrastinate or eat that bag of chips - if your system sucks, then your system sucks.

    His last sentence: Goals can provide direction and even push you forward in the short-term, but eventually a well-designed system will always win. Having a system is what matters. Committing to the process is what makes the difference.

    If you are a procrastinator, how will goals help? Everytime you miss your goal, wouldn't you just push off to next week / month / year?

  2352. Forget Setting Goals. Focus on Systems Instead 2014-01-20 17:00:16 xux
    What we're discussing here isn't how to maximize happiness. An entrepreneur's job isn't to be happy, it's to get things done.

    I specifically bring up entrepreneurs because 1.) I assume most people here can connect and 2.) it's one of the professions where short term productivity fix (2-3 years) is more important than bringing a lifetime of "fixes"

    Yes you can solve your underlying procrastination problem. But assuming it's an underlying psychological issue, can you genuinely undue decades of "damage" in short enough timeframe to run your company?

    Simply put, there just isnt' time for you to accomplish whatever habit you didn't have before but want to gain by using a system. That's why a system is great for people who are fine with a stable, long-term job. But for an entrepreneur, a "quick fix" solution of using goals will get you further.

  2353. Ask HN: Help, How to deal with severe ADHD as a programmer? 2014-01-21 03:22:38 AnEro
    I have adhd and I suffer the same problems! I am currently in university (IT-Networking security), I do use medication and meditation. I find that motivation is the hardest part of everything even with the medication!

    This helps with my motivation:\nhttp://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-se...

    Become a Morning Person:\nhttps://medium.com/life-tips/621b93619b30

    Quick tips(things that help me):

    - 43 folders method of organization

    - Actively tell your self when you forget or procrastinate, its normal just get back on track and smile

    - Make habits through repetition (spend that time regardless if you are able to do it or not)

    - Your will power is finite make sure have small meals and a snack half way through each to keep energy up

    - Making decisions is very tiring, so be forgiving

    - Make everything smaller- if you can reduce the information the easier it is for you in the future

    - Always tell yourself: it is easy, it will take no time, get a little done, you don't have to finish it just start it

    - Have a beer or do something else like watching tv while trying to start a new habit or task, even though you won't get much done you have done more that you would have with out it!

    Sorry if my grammar is terrible, or if this wasn't what you where looking for! It really helped me out to list it all :D

  2354. The tools that define us - Building a tool culture 2014-01-22 02:26:51 rwhitman
    It guess the counterpoint to this is that tools are fun to build and it can be easy to fall into the trap of spending too much time building tools instead of other priorities. I've seen a lot of developers over the years use tool building as a way to procrastinate on more important tasks (myself included), or build things that just become obsolete and useless within weeks

  2355. Ask HN: Help, How to deal with severe ADHD as a programmer? 2014-01-22 05:00:14 malandrew
    Try the pomodoro technique[0]. It may seem cheesy, but it's a good way to flex your discipline muscle. You basically choose a task and focus on it for 20 uninterrupted minutes at a time.

    Once you've mastered going through 20 uninterrupted minutes and can do it easily every time you have small definable task that fits in a 20 minute slot, go ahead and start working on controlling the procrastination time that might occupy the spaces between your 20 minutes of productivity. I've heard a lot of good things about rescue time[1]

    [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique\n[1] https://www.rescuetime.com/

  2356. Django vs. Flask for a long-term project 2014-01-23 06:23:34 bkeating
    This last past year, at DjangoCon US • Chicago, I had the pleasure of sitting at the same table as Jacob Kaplan-Moss for the Speakers dinner prior to the conference. Very cool experience. My first.

    I brought up Flask and asked him what he thought of it. I had recently used it for a project for the first time and likely only did so because I was SUPPOSE TO BE FOCUSING on Django and preparing a talk about it. So naturally, I procrasinated and did everything but. It's been on my radar for awhile. I was attracted to it by it's documentation. Turns out, I really enjoyed it. It felt familiar because I've used Django for so long. I brought this up at the dinner table.

    Jacob said something that took me by surprise. I can't quote him exactly--the wine and drinks were too good that evening, but it was something to the effect of "Flask is what Django should have been". Another fellow from our table chimed in and added "If only Django had existed before we created Django!" What he ment was, without Django, Flask wouldn't of had such a clear and smooth start. Django taught us a lot.

    What I took from this was, both have their place and we have a lot to be thankful for, especially coming from the Django community. In regards to longevity, I think community is a major factor but these two technolgoies are both under Python, and I think the Python community at-large is what matters here. Hearing what Jacob had to say on Flask was sobering. There is no end-all-be-all, and both of these technolgoies have more in common than not.

  2357. Reasons to compete in this year’s Battlecode programming competition at MIT 2014-01-23 16:31:29 stevearc
    Competing in Battlecode was one of the best things I've ever done. Yes, it's great experience. Yes, you'll become a better programmer. Yes, it's a lot of fun.

    But you learn things about yourself. Battlecode was my first love. It was the first code I wrote that I really poured myself into. The hunger for victory, the desire for perfection, the frantic last-minute hacks and patches...a lot of emotion goes into this competition, and I was not expecting that. I was an unmotivated, procrastinating slacker in high school. After doing Battlecode I saw what I had in me. I saw that I really could work, and work hard. I could work hard and love it! That has been life-changing for me.

    I cannot recommend this competition enough. Participate, put everything you have into it, and Battlecode will give back.

  2358. Killing the Crunch Mode Antipattern 2014-01-23 16:34:31 dzink
    This is the oldest battle in the history building anything. I can't even count the number of reason's I've seen make that happen in large companies, startups, homework projects, everything.

    - procrastination (trying to get in the right mood/alignment of stars before getting work done)

    - burnout

    - senior architects forecasting the work of junior people

    - sales teams selling the world without consulting the execution team that has to build it from scratch

    - management that doesn't know what it wants

    - management that doesn't know technical constraints

    - management that doesn't know how to manage

    - tech teams not knowing what they're doing but being confident they'll figure it out

    - unrealistic, arbitrarily set timelines

    - realistic non-arbitrarily set timelines

    - lack of skill awareness

    - lack of self awareness

    - politics

    - lack of care for the outcome

    - greed

    - misaligned incentives (compensation for time spent working instead of outcomes or speed of work)

    - a really good TV show running at the same time

    - lack of team morale or discipline

    - perfectionism

    - and my favorite:

    Team staying till 11pm every day for three months because of a boss who stays till 11pm for three months, trying to outstay them so he can have fun with his mistress.

    Until you have the luxury of outcome ownership in place of task ownership, crunch mode is hard to love. When you become a product owner, deadlines become your best friend because they force both you and your team to optimize the work, avoid feature bloat, and get creative about your approach to the problem.

    I set a crunch time for myself every day I start working on a new feature. No going to bed until I get a functioning solution, even if it's not the best ultimate scenario. While I'm sleeping, beta users are verifying my assumptions (if they like the feature, I polish it. If not, I've only spent a day in the wrong direction.)

  2359. Emacs, naked 2014-01-24 13:53:33 TeMPOraL
    Thank you! :).

    Could you tell me (or open an issue on Github) how it breaks other plugins?

    Meh, I have lots of changes to add, but I keep procrastinating here on HN instead...

  2360. If Immunity Project (YC W14) succeeds, they'll offer AIDS vaccine for free 2014-01-24 15:21:14 procrastinatus
    I'm sorry. I think the idea of private funding for research is interesting, but this really seems like a scam.

    1. Zero people on the team or among the advisors have any experience doing research in molecular biology or virology. \nCheck for yourself: http://www.immunityproject.org/ ("Meet the Team")\nThey have an anesthesiologist, a bioinformatics guy, oncology researcher, epidemiologist (who studied HIV, but mostly from a community medicine perspective - e.g. things like gels and microbicides), 4 marketing/biz people, a media strategist, a general pediatrician, and another marketing person.

    2. They have zero publications and no references to even preliminary data. Anyone can say they have "very successful mouse data." If these guys are actually scientists, why don't they talk about their science - their site is 100% marketing jargon.

    3. By not going through the NIH, this group is not required to release any information about their technology to the public.

    4. It's not trivial to do HIV research. If you are working with the virus, you are required to work in a bio-safety level 3 unit. Do they have approval for this? Is there any reason to think that the FDA will approve their trials?

    5. What is this mysterious "final experiment" they need to do before starting the FDA approval process? (https://pledge.immunityproject.org/the-free-hiv-aids-vaccine).

    It really seems like these guys are just trying to make money from the suffering of others. I find the use of stock images of poor children to be exploitative. Perhaps the NIH is not funding them for a reason. Who would fund someone before they've shown any evidence whatsoever that their technique works.

    Okay, I'm off to go fundraising for my Malaria Vaccine Initiative with my fantastic preliminary animal model data from my lead marketing anesthesiologist. If the NIH won't fund me before I have data (I just need to do that one first^H^H^H last experiment), maybe random people on the internet who don't know anything about science will.

  2361. Ask HN: Should I remind users that their card is about to be charged? 2014-01-25 02:09:52 lifeisstillgood
    Imagine a situation where you took the card details, but they had to login again after the free trial to keep on using it - re-approve the payment as it were.

    You would know then that those customers really wanted your service.

    After that it really is just a question of degrees about how far you are prepared to go to make money off people's procrastination.

    The fact you ask suggests this troubles you - so be as upfront and honest and clean and clear as you can. And maybe cut back on the food bills...

  2362. Ask HN: Why is Karma so unfair on HackerNews? 2014-01-25 14:20:59 interstitial
    It's just fake internet points. "Unfair" presumes there is some sort of intent to engineer fairness at HN when it appears they are just trying ton engineer tailored content. It's best to find a start-up or side project to work on instead of worrying about internet points. But HN is a great place for procrastinating coders.

  2363. How to cope with “idea overflow”? 2014-01-26 05:54:55 zackmorris
    A few thoughts on this from my own life, after spending 11 years writing a video game and failing to finish a dozen others:

    * The one time I used agile methodologies in the workplace, we had a team (implementation is more expensive than idea so add workers)

    * I have over 200 column ideas for my upcoming blog, but will have to let 90% of them go and find peace with that (can't do everything)

    * Profit, in fact income itself, generally comes from finishing things so I have to decide between optimization and eating (good, fast, cheap - pick any two)

    * Consider looking at your ideas from a meta level, see if you can project out where the ideas will finally fall (see the forest for the trees)

    * If it's troubling that you form a solution that invalidates the current problem, perhaps try to see that as a positive (work at your level)

    There are probably a bunch more but I don't want to get quippy. I struggle with a preponderance of ideas to the point where I alienate people and am bad with time management and money. It's a bizarre first world problem that most people don't seem to understand. That's why I love Hacker News! And kind of a P.S: I'm realizing as I get older that my short game is terrible, for example, I struggle with the timed skills tests on freelancing sites but throw around esoteric computer science concepts easily, so a big part of my inability to finish anything is that it's hard to communicate what I see to other people and I get outvoted. Then when my heart isn't in what I'm working on, I procrastinate. I'm trying to find projects that I'm passionate about because challenge isn't the problem, it's my own attitude.

  2364. Show HN: Spark School – Codecademy for hardware 2014-01-26 09:52:51 jonesetc
    Added myself to the list. I hope it turns out nicely.

    Messing with hardware is one of my biggest procrastinations. I always decide that I'm going to stop fiddling with programming languages that I'll most likely never use and start fiddling with some home automation. However, I've never done anything with hardware, so I look for more hand-holding than I can ever seem to find. In the end I end up trying another safe experiment. I feel like this is in part because hardware costs money, which was hard to come by until my graduation last year. Anyhow, I think something like this could really be a good start for myself and hopefully others who may be daunted by hardware as well.

  2365. Using your computer as little as possible? 2014-01-26 23:39:04 Uncompetative
    Although it could be classed as procrastination. What I ought to be doing is so incredibly dry that I need to give myself a break most of the time and only work on it when I feel inspired. Case in point, I am supposed to be specifying notation and semantics for tensor operators in the multiparadigm programming language that I have been working on for many years, but yesterday I really didn't feel like it so chose instead to write about the problems Nintendo were having and how they should have built on the success of the Wii with a familiar interface based upon a pair of wireless Nunchuks, rather than alienate the casual market with a cumbersome touchscreen that they couldn't expressively gesticulate with. This led me to hunt for images and YouTube videos to support my argument. Doing this from time to time has improved my writing ability:

    http://www.eurogamer.net/profiles/Uncompetative/comments/164...

    I don't feel there is any merit in Facebook / Twitter, but then I haven't got any friends / social life. I suppose I should have a blog for what I write in various fora, but I'd have even more trouble believing that anyone was reading it and I may start making less of an effort with my writing as a result.

    Really anything I do that distracts me from boredom stops me slipping into depression. Luckily, I have no work deadlines...

  2366. Yalo – Lisp OS running on bare metal x86-64 hardware 2014-01-27 06:47:12 d0m
    That's the kind of projects I think about in the shower or when I'm procrastinating.

    I need to hack on X.\n - Current editors suck, I should create an editor.\n - Current languages suck, I should create a language, and I'll build my editor in it.\n - Current OS suck, I'll write the OS in my editor using my language.

    Meh, maybe another day, 2 hours later X is hacked in python using vim.

  2367. How to Make Time for Your Side Project 2014-01-28 00:50:33 crypt1d
    I always felt the solution to my procrastination is something a lot deeper than just "stop watching TV and get organized". Call it lack of motivation if you like, but I don't watch TV shows because I find them too interesting, I watch them because my brain "defaults" to this action whenever I try to argue with myself to do something useful.\nI found out that trying to consciously make yourself do something doesn't really help. What does help however, is making a firm conscious decision and moving the action to a subconscious level. Basically when your alarm rings at 5AM, you need to stop that little battle that goes on in your head and just get out of your bed like its business as usual.

  2368. How to Make Time for Your Side Project 2014-01-28 01:25:26 giantrobothead
    I was going to write an insightful response here, but lunch time came up and well, I'll get to it later. :)

    Seriously, though, I've found that procrastination is my\ngreatest hurdle to overcome. I always think: "I'll get to\nit later", or "There will always be time to get to that". \nInvariably, all that time ends up getting away from me and I feel down on myself for not getting to said project/essay/whatever.

    So, when you have an idea, act on it. Don't wait, because waiting will kill that nascent idea as surely as anything.\nMake time, even if it's just a few minutes, it will end up benefiting your project in the long run.

  2369. How to Make Time for Your Side Project 2014-01-28 01:42:21 michaelrmmiller
    I actually just went through a lot of this. Despite loving my day job as a software engineer, it was so creatively exhausting and draining that by the end of the day, all I wanted was to relax. I couldn't find even the desire to work on the things I'm passionate about. I think that was the most upsetting part to me.

    I'm very risk-averse but finally worked up the courage to quit and spend my time doing what I love: writing music. I'm slowly bleeding through my savings, but it's worth it. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I never gave composing a fair shot. In the end, the biggest risk is actually to your ego. There's always another job out there, particularly if you're a software person.

    I'm still nervous about the whole thing and worried about my prospects. I still procrastinate. But damn, I'm just much happier these days!

    Finally made an account after years of lurking just to say this. Believe in yourself and take a leap. Sometimes it's just what you need to rediscover yourself.

  2370. The Great Code Club 2014-01-28 02:00:39 asgard1024
    Neat, but I would prefer something similar to Alcoholics Anonymous. A self-support group for people who already have personal projects, want to work on them, but are either lazy or procrastinating or paralyzed by analysis.

    Although I would probably not pay money for either.

  2371. How to Make Time for Your Side Project 2014-01-28 02:12:05 megalomanu
    I'm working every mornings (it's very hard at the beginning to sleep earlier, but after some time, it's so delightful to recover this natural rythm), and I use the pomodoro technique, but with days instead of minute.\n4 days of work, one day of total laziness. These moments of laziness are very important to me, they help me to regenerate but also to find new ideas and to question myself. I think that we should not overlook the virtues of boredom ... and sometimes, procrastination. Everything is a matter of proportions. Procrastination is not that bad.

  2372. I Built a Social Network for Food and Here’s How I Did it 2014-01-29 21:07:36 twobits
    a) You are amazing and inspirational. Congratulations!

    b) As a person struggling with procrastination, and goal setting/choosing, I would like to ask you some qs about the 1 site / day for 180 days, thing. It seems to me as an interesting "reach your goal, without setting hard (sub)goals in between"(?)

    If I understand correctly, you set out to code one site per day, without specifying beforehand what you would do each day? Every day you said, "ok, today I'll do this"? Was it difficult to choose between possibilities, and how did you address that? Where there end conditions for the day's goal? Or you just went as far as you could? How did you manage to stay focused on the day's project, without branching off to various tangents? Were some days under- or overwhelming, in their difficulty?

    ..Sorry for the wall of text, but any experience/advice/insight, would be greatly appreciated. ..Congratulations, once more.

  2373. Living in retirement: Seven things I wish I could tell my 35-year-old self 2014-01-31 12:05:59 jonhinson
    So much cynicism in these comments. As a 27-year-old, I found myself nodding at almost everything stated by the author. Perhaps I don't fall into the same category as most other HNers.

    1. Stay married to the same person.

    I married my wife right out of college (age 22) and we were and still are serious about the "til death do us part" bit. We realize that a strong marriage is something that takes hard work on a daily basis. Are there cases where this just isn't the best route to take? Absolutely (e.g. abusive relationships, unfaithful relationships, etc).

    2. If you’re going to have children do it before 35.

    Our daughter is now 14 months old and we have a 529 set up for her. I'll definitely be pushing for an in-state public school.

    3. Choose a career you can imagine doing for 35 years and stick with it.

    I love being a software engineer and I can't imagine working at a different company than I do now. I'm constantly challenged and learning new things while being part of an amazing team.

    4. Secure a job with a defined benefit pension, ideally one with a union that protects you from the wiles of a topsy-turvy job market.

    This is where I diverge, albeit not necessarily by choice. I contribute to my 401k which my employer contributes a generous amount. I am not a member of a union.

    5. Find a financial advisor you can trust.

    This is one area where I've procrastinated. I've read a lot of personal finance books and blogs, so I'm not entirely ignorant, but I do need to find a competent professional to look after my finances.

    6. Buy the best house you can afford.

    I didn't quite follow this advice, as we decided to buy a house below our means, but it is in a great area, brand new and plenty of space (2100 sqft). I don't view buying a home as some sort of investment (i.e. I went in to it not expecting any significant return), but we bought towards the bottom of the market with an amazing interest rate. On top of that, we're paying almost the same exact monthly payment as we did on our apartment that was 1200sqft while putting equity into something. It does help that we're out in the burbs.

    7. Years before you retire, develop long-standing interests that are not outrageously costly and that don’t depend on your job or your family.

    I think this is great advice.

    Many comments are saying this results in a really boring life during peak years, but I don't see that. We eat out at great restaurants, have travelled internationally, are involved in our community, actively engage in hobbies individually and together, spends a large amount of time with friends and family, etc. I suppose it's just a matter of different strokes...

  2374. Living in retirement: Seven things I wish I could tell my 35-year-old self 2014-01-31 12:37:26 saryant
    > 5. Find a financial advisor you can trust.

    > This is one area where I've procrastinated. I've read a lot of personal finance books and blogs, so I'm not entirely ignorant, but I do need to find a competent professional to look after my finances.

    The problem is most financial advisors are just salespeople. They don't have your best interests at stake, they're just looking to get you into whatever product gets them the best commission.

    Personal finance is not complicated, at least for those of us of average means. Max out your tax-advantaged accounts and keep costs low. Invest early, invest often and stay the course through a crisis.

    A financial advisor will load you up with mutual funds charging >1% annual expenses. Vanguard index funds are as low as 0.05% and historically are more likely to outperform a given actively-managed mutual fund. Over your lifetime, that's a difference of hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs.

    John Bogle, founder of Vanguard, says "buy the entire market and hold it forever." You don't need an advisor to do that.

  2375. Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it cool? (February 2014) 2014-02-03 17:31:17 f_gergo
    I popularize app-less procrastination killer: http://spiniot.com

    Short story:

    1. immediate effect of your effort is always fun

    2. spinning something gives you that immediate effect

    3. earlier phones were easy to spin, smartphones are like a brick, we wanted to change that.

    I invited a psychologist to explain why ~600 users like to have a spiniot on their phones. He came up with these 3 ideas:

    - immediate effect of effort gives you a rare positive sensation

    - contrary to angular forms circular forms are engaging, when spinning your smartphone, you draw several colorful circular forms

    - adults play for the same reason as kids

    During occasional breaks, spinning your smartphone gives you a short but fulfilling positive sensation. After that you don't feel the urge to check all the usual distracting sources of procrastination (news, twitter, email...) and you are motivated to get back to what you were doing immediately.

  2376. How to beat procrastination 2014-02-05 01:27:15 bitcuration
    The mystery of procrastination is essentially you've lost the compelling, whether is it external or internal, motivation or obligation, deep down you absolutely hate it since it has turned into a pure taxing to your brain and your subconscious has seen through it accomplishing it is not attractive to you.

    The reason procrastination occurs is because a viable escape does not exist while you've been constantly attempting.

  2377. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 13:34:49 dhon_
    On a side note, I just listened to this audiobook "The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging and Postponing"

    http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Procrastination-Lollygagging-P...

    A humorous take on working with procrastination, not against it. Short, but highly recommended.

  2378. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 13:55:13 prostoalex
    The Now Habit is also good reading on the subject of procrastination http://lifehacker.com/5658620/the-now-habit-overcoming-procr...

  2379. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 13:56:42 thelogos
    I feel like procrastinating is such a common human condition that it's really not about you but about the work you're putting off.

    When I was in college, I would put off doing lab reports until 6am in the morning. Watch youtube, surf the web for 30 minutes and actually work for 5 minutes.

    But there was a reason. It was boring drudgery. Now that I get to work on my own project, I code almost all day. \nWhen I eat, I think about my code. \nWhen I brush my teeth I think about my code.\nBefore I fall asleep, I think about code.\nMy code is the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning.\nI usually can't wait to finish breakfast and start working. So much for that ADHD diagnosis.

  2380. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 14:17:06 sv3nss0n
    I wouldn't have read this article if I were not procrastinating...

  2381. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 14:32:46 yason
    The word "work" is too often confused with "paid work to do boring things, because nobody would do them for fun" these days. And then people wonder why everyone is procrastinating at work.

  2382. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 14:52:40 dvirsky
    Welp, those were a good 2 minutes of procrastination

  2383. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 15:04:16 esalman
    Procrastination comes from lack of motivation. Address that first.

  2384. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 15:05:32 codezero
    Whoa, sorry, read up about procrastination, it has nothing to do with lack of motivation and often has much more to do with anxiety and failure to account for long term negative consequences versus short term positive gains.

  2385. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 15:39:15 crististm
    Actually, reading any article about conquering procrastination is better than doing actual work :)

    (but this article is good and short and it reminded me that your focus should be not on the immediate but on the long term)

  2386. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 16:35:27 hueving
    Yeah, perfect title, just add a couple more words...

    "How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go Garbage Collect"

  2387. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 17:09:48 lelandbatey
    Indeed, I'm like this in that I am nearly non-functional for things that I'm not interested in, but highly functional in things that do interest me. I highly recommend speaking to a doctor about this, as I was able to find medication that's helped me tremendously (I still procrastinate, but I can also actually focus without crazy anxiety-ridden pressure).

  2388. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 17:14:22 Lionga
    Procrastination comes from many reasons. Motivation can be one of them but often it is not the reason

  2389. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 17:15:12 n1ghtmare_
    I couldn't help but think I'm procrastinating while reading it (+ reading the comments) ... Ahhhh !!! I better get back to work !

  2390. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 17:37:51 exizt88
    Any article on procrastination that contains a to-do list is a procrastination-feeding item itself.

  2391. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 18:11:56 smprk
    I find there is a common theme in the ZenHabit's post we are all commenting on, PG's post that you have shared, and many other things I have read about procrastination. All these readings take me back to the fun and simplified explanation of procrastination posted here on quora - http://qr.ae/h6VWJ

  2392. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 18:17:46 praptak
    In the same vein: structured procrastination.

    http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

  2393. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 19:06:36 ibuildthings
    I do empathize with the original article a lot. I used to have/still have a strong fear of failing, especially in intellectual tasks. According to my own introspection this is primary angst that caused/causes me to procrastinate. There are two major references I often go back when I find myself paralyzed.

    One being an advise I got from one of my PhD advisors: All creative tasks might appear that it requires enormous amount of courage and effort. But usually it is more like a kitchen sink heaped with a lot of unwashed dishes. Chances are that once you wash one dish, you will end up cleaning the full lot; and you often get a strange form of pleasure while you are performing the task.

    The other one is this essay http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~psargent/Mills_Intell_Craft.pdf on intellectual craftsmanship by Wright Mills. I do now a days actively collect memories of pure immersion and pleasure I experienced while my craft got exposed and exploited to its potential. The thought of me improving as a craftsman, coupled with these memories is a powerful self motivator to me. The shit feeling I gets when I waste my time is another reference. One of the potent lessons was also that craft can be improved only by dedicating time ( which is pleasurable); and by disassociating the end result and fears. The toughest part is to replay this logic while I find myself slipping into vortex of non productivity, but that is something I can work on and probably in my control.

  2394. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 19:08:31 vidarh
    > Unproductive pleasures pall eventually. After a while you get tired of lying on the beach. If you want to stay happy, you have to do something."

    Nonsense. This in itself is a result of falling prey to what Leo Baubata (the author of the linked article) writes about: Inability to "let go".

    There may certainly be things you'd find more fulfilling. But if you need to do stuff to be happy, you are letting yourself suffer from attachments to things that more the most part are relatively inconsequential.

    PG's essay suffers from this assumption that happiness is tied to achievements.

    I used to think that too. The problem with that line of thinking is that it often leads to putting the shutters on and focusing on getting stuff done to get your happiness from it eventually, while ignoring all the sources of happiness around you. Further, that makes procrastination worse, in my experience: It creates guilt that you're picking the short term pleasures instead of doing the stuff you're sure will make you fabulously happy later, once you've just achieved something.

    These days, I still get stuff done - more than ever, in fact -, but I might suddenly stop during my commute and look up at the clouds and enjoy the sight, or just close my eyes for 10 seconds and enjoy the calm, and I'm happy whether or not I'm doing anything. The two are not related. If you can't be happy even while doing the dishes, or fighting your way onto a commuter train, or carrying out some mind-numbingly boring menial work, you're missing out.

  2395. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 19:53:42 apunic
    There's no relation between 'procrastination' and 'letting go'. Procrastination is pretty much normal, everyone procrastinated once entire days on HN/Netflix/...

    There are easy cures and proven techniques against procrastination and not a single one is mentioned in this write-up.

  2396. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 20:00:55 adcoelho
    Procrastination is often caused by the urge to find a small comfort to escape discomfort. Checking your email account in the middle of a difficult task, checking the news, etc. Letting go of this urges helps you stop procrastinating. There are no practical methods explained in this article but the main idea is a solid one that may help people overcome this problem.

  2397. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 20:09:28 Flimm
    I found the Procrastination Equation to be a better read. The Now Habit can be summed up as "don't be a perfectionist", whereas the Procrastination Equation says there are three types of procrastinators, and perfectionism isn't actually what causes most procrastination. The latter book is much better sourced and more thorough: there are loads of footnotes where you can look up the studies and the articles he's citing.

  2398. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 20:23:09 contr-error
    Yes, more precisely, it's the (audio)book's author's webpage ;-) The book presents an attainable ideal to strive towards as a procrastinator, instead of a lofty hyper-productive pipe dream. In any case, it's a fun read and an interesting take on living with akrasia.

  2399. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 20:28:30 hopfog
    For me, the single most efficient anti-procrastination technique has been Don't Break The Chain. I have a few tasks that I need to complete _every day_ and the point is that the longer the streak is the bigger the incentive will be to continue. It also creates a clear routine which helps a lot on the psychological level (anyone who is into physical training of some sort knows how important this is).

    I usually break it up in "do X for Y minutes" and timebox it to 1 hour. Right now it's "read a book for 15 minutes, clean the house for 15 minutes and code on a side-project for 25 minutes". I also have a shorter version for busy days which is basically "read two pages, do one chore and complete a trivial task on the side-project" but as long as I do something it's fine.

  2400. Show HN: Hacker News with categories and popularity 2014-02-06 21:47:33 TeMPOraL
    I've been subscribed to it for some time and while it didn't cure my HN addiction, it lowered it a bit, and it also helps me find interesting articles I missed during "more work, less procrastination" periods. I just want to say, thank you for your work!

  2401. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 22:36:14 mathattack
    The author had me until he talked about giving up beer. :-)

    Seriously, though, I think getting rid of the distractions on the fringe of our lives is important. For me it was getting rid of the TV. That doesn't always link to killing procrastination (I'm on here, aren't I?) but it does create a lot more time for being in the flow.

  2402. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 22:40:01 d23
    I don't know why people feel like it needs to be an all or nothing proposition.

    I realized this applies to me on day to day things that cause me to procrastinate a lot. For instance, today I had a doctor's appointment that I wanted to reschedule because it was snowing and I got in late last night. I realized that I just needed to push through it and get it done, because it would cause me more pain in the long term if I didn't. Plus, it honestly wasn't that big of a deal -- I woke up a bit earlier and took a cab. Now I don't have to think about it anymore.

    It'd be nice if I could do this on a regular basis. I chatted up a good looking girl while I was waiting on the appointment too, rather than sitting there uncomfortable and wishing I had the courage to say something. I just pushed through it, and it was fine.

    Just casual every-day things, that's all. That's what I'm going to aim for.

  2403. How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go 2014-02-06 23:03:48 dgreensp
    PG's essay and this one are complementary. PG adds a valuable piece which is to question the idea that work is generally or largely unpleasant by nature. Both authors agree we must get over our momentary discomforts and press ahead to lead a fulfilling life. PG doesn't really say how, only how to recognize intellectually that it's necessary. Extrapolating what he says into procrastination advice, you might end up with "remember your goals" and "be able to delay gratification."

    "Letting go" is a particular in-the-moment experience that is very valuable to understand. It sort of looks like "sucking it up" but it's a release rather than a bottling up, so it's right at the heart of the issue of managing your energy and willpower well rather than flailing around and beating yourself up in response to the pressures and goals you are laboring under.

  2404. AltSlashdot 2014-02-07 08:44:08 networked
    If you dislike the beta redesign but still want to read Slashdot and don't mind missing all but the top 5 comments on each story (which is probably good against procrastination) I recommend http://slashdot.org/palm. The Palm version has been the least cluttered way to read Slashdot for over a decade. It might even make you RTFA. ;-) Unlike the later, now defunct, http://m.slashdot.org/ it works with every browser I've tried, including Opera Mini.

    Hopefully they won't discontinue it when the classic design is eliminated. I hardly read Slashdot now but I find the continued existence of their Palm version neat.

  2405. Why Programming is Difficult 2014-02-08 02:44:08 matwood
    One thing I'm also guilty of is fixing code that I'm not currently touching. I like consistency and having a project with code from old me (and old others) mixed in with code from new me (and new others) really bothers my OCDness. The problem is that changing working old code in lieu of fixing bugs or adding features is just another form of procrastination.

    There is a time and place for code cleaning. If the code isn't something you are already working in, then leave it. If you are tasked to fix a problem or add something to existing code then cleaning it up is acceptable. Keep mind, I'm assuming there are tests written. Nothing pisses off your co-workers more than cleaning up working code and breaking inadvertently breaking something.

  2406. Show HN: Speedsums 2014-02-09 00:15:57 poopicus
    This is incredibly user hostile with lines like "you should probably practice a little before embarrassing yourself again" and "It should not take 4.18s to solve that next time."

    Is that part of discouraging procrastination or what? As it stands, I couldn't show my sisters this without them getting upset with me.

  2407. Poll: What is your main focus? 2014-02-09 06:58:42 mightypirate
    Procrastination

  2408. A game to learn a new language 2014-02-10 07:25:40 geoka9
    Thank you for the duolingo link! I found my ultimate procrastination tool :)

  2409. Girls and Software 2014-02-11 00:10:52 facepalm
    Ok I grudgingly started to read some of your links to procrastinate.

    The first one is rather useless.

    The second again shows the bias I am talking about. It starts with the example of more men than women being given teaching assignments. It turns out less women asked for them - the dean tries to give one to everyone who asks.

    Then the bias: they conclude that "women don't ask for the things they want". But that is a bias - it is also possible they simply didn't want those things, and therefore didn't ask.

    Likewise with higher salary, perhaps women simply care less.

    Note I have nothing against them asking for higher salary.

  2410. Why don’t software development methodologies work? 2014-02-11 00:24:28 segmondy
    Because it tries to fix human problems logically. Humans are not very logically creatures. We love to think we are, but most of us are very emotionally driven. Our emotion comes into play when it comes to drive, motivation, hard work, creativity, and organization. Creating software requires motivation, creativity, organization, etc. Our emotion is behind software and we simply try to manage it with software development methodologies, but that's not enough.

    How many people are over weight, who know that all you have to do is eat less, work out and then you will get in shape? It's that simple. Yet because of emotions, eating due to emotion, happy eating, sad eating, or poor self image many people don't get in shape. Likewise many students understand that all you have to do to get great grades is to avoid procrastinating, just start studying on time, study hard, study more, do most of the exercises in your text book, use multiple books and you are most likely to pass with high grades, yet lots of students put it off, poor will power, delayed gratification, it's more fun to goof off.

    Same things apply to software, a lot of us know exactly what it takes to make good software, to spec it out, to plan a good architecture, to write good test units, to comment and document the code, to organize the process, to avoid over optimization, to avoid changing and adding lots of new features in the middle.

    Yet, a lot of us don't do that, we start writing code before we even code before we spec out, because its exciting! Our emotions in play, we don't practice that delayed gratification of holding off and writing specs. We plan to throw away this prototype, but then somehow, it ends up being what everything is built on. We plan to refactor one day, but feature creep never allows for that. We know we ought to comment, but we understand the code now and don't, then 6 months later we are cussing and kicking the wall. Test units are boring, so we write as little of it as possible.

    Until we take into account that programmers are humans, with emotions and different level of discipline, motivations and abilities our software development methodologies will keep to fail us for most projects.

    Just my opinion.

  2411. Show HN: Abacus – Killing The Expense Report 2014-02-12 03:36:06 gwintrob
    Brilliant, Omar. I usually end up putting together a massive expense report after procrastinating for months. This makes way more sense.

  2412. How to Burn Out Programming 2014-02-12 14:20:02 kayoone
    Well its a form of depression. If you'r feeling unmotivated for longer periods time, frustrated at all the stuff you still need to do but still can't start, often procrastinating for days/weeks before you can make small progress.. Then you are probably burnt out. A project with big ambitions, tight deadlines and a small team and budget will get you there some time.

  2413. Stack Overflow is down 2014-02-17 03:59:09 qubyte
    I tend to procrastinate and troll stackoverflow for questions to answer. I'd be more productive, but now I'm trolling Hacker News instead.

  2414. Why Procrastinators Procrastinate 2014-02-17 16:10:13 ivan_ah
    This article, and the followup Part 2 are AWESOME. The author clearly thought about the problem a lot (good insight) and comes up with a good description of the mechanics of what is going on.

    related: \n[ a hypothesis that procrastination is caused by creative performance anxiety ]\nhttp://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/02/why-writ...

  2415. Why Procrastinators Procrastinate 2014-02-17 16:57:25 gregholmberg
    "The Dark Playground is a place every procrastinator knows well. It’s a place where leisure activities happen at times when leisure activities are not supposed to be happening. The fun you have in the Dark Playground isn’t actually fun because it’s completely unearned and the air is filled with guilt, anxiety, self-hatred, and dread."

    A truly delightful name for such a dreadful place.

  2416. Developer depression: Isolation is the biggest problem (2012) 2014-02-22 01:41:41 im3w1l
    >It amazes me how often ‘how to be happy’ pieces do well on Hacker News. I think delving into the notion that the more time we spend behind our computers, the less fulfilled we might feel in life overall [is a question worth asking].”

    I think unhappy people procrastinate more, vote more. The average vote is not given by the average reader, but one more depressed than average.

  2417. Developer depression: Isolation is the biggest problem (2012) 2014-02-22 03:36:41 benched
    Programming is one of the most exciting, flow-inducing, mentally stimulating, mathematically and logically enlightening, rewarding activities I do. Programming is one of the most mind-numbing, soul-sucking, procrastination-inducing, lonely, repetitive, mentally exhausting activities I do.

  2418. I'm completely demotivated to work; what can I do? 2014-02-23 02:48:16 usablebytes
    First thing - don't search for motivation or don't try to get yourself motivated. You'll end up looking for things that will make you feel good which will in-turn promote procrastination and thereby take you away from actions. The truth is motivation doesn't last. It's a push mechanism. You'll have to focus on things that pull you towards it.

    If you keep going like the way you are currently, how would your life be? Definitely you understand the problem with it and this post is the proof. But ask yourself - "why do you want to get A-levels at school?". If programming and researching keeps you going, by all means, you should focus on it. Make sure you put the best possible efforts in it; the rest will follow automatically.

  2419. I'm completely demotivated to work; what can I do? 2014-02-23 03:55:29 g0v
    I'm relatively young and often fighting myself to get things done as well. I've taken steps to force myself away from distracting things and focus on stuff that needs to get done. For example, I've installed a website blocking extension on Firefox and blocked sites I'm drawn towards from 8am to 5pm, also uninstalled all other browsers (I have broken and installed chrome just to procrastinate, since uninstalled).

    Right now I have a 1500 word paper to start but am stalling and finding a slow cooker recipe for dinner.

    Nearly every day I am fighting myself to be productive, it can be pretty painful in its own way. I figure if I'm ultimately winning(being productive) then I am making some sort of progress in my personal growth.

    What you said there is the main reason I know I have to push myself. I know if I don't then I'll just end up being disappointed in myself.

    So, essentially, fear is what drives me.

  2420. I'm completely demotivated to work; what can I do? 2014-02-23 05:19:50 msutherl
    I just want to emphasize the trick you outlined because it is the most effective for me. Have something to do? Just get started on it and do a little bit. I don't mean get started on it with the intention to finish it. This is what stops you – fear of actually doing it. So, really, start with the intention to just do a little bit. Tell yourself you're just taking some notes, you'll stop after 10 minutes. Then, do one of two things: (1) stop and do something else or (2) if you find yourself wrapped up in the work, consider allowing yourself to continue. But you must not think of option (2) when you begin. It's not an option.

    Zizek once said that in order to get himself to write, he needs to to tell himself that he's just going to take some notes. One of the most productive critical theorists in the world has procrastination problems too, and he gets over them with self-deception. He also schedules every moment of his life though, so don't think one trick is all that's required to be at the top of your field.

    Ultimately, I think finding a way to dodge your anxiety entirely is very important. I don't believe in "muscling through".

  2421. I'm completely demotivated to work; what can I do? 2014-02-23 07:39:04 RivieraKid
    I tried couple of anti-procrastination techniques and the only one I had moderate success with is the "no internet mode". When I have some project to finish, I make a decision that until it's finished, I won't use the internet at all from the morning to 8pm (except for work-related things and email). What's really important here is that you have to decide firmly. This usually lasts couple of days but I'm thinking about doing this every day.

  2422. How to Make Yourself Work When You Just Don’t Want To 2014-02-23 18:57:52 chegra
    I said this in another comment, but what works for me is publicly pledging to work for x number of hours on y project or else I give z dollars to some charity.

    Where x is normally between 2-10

    y is anything

    z is normally 10

    If you are procrastinating right now, give it a go. Go on twitter or facebook and say if I don't work for 2 hours on Akasha(a project), I will donate $10 to watsi(the charity).

    I think when setting goals we hope for some reward in the future, but the brain doesn't value rewards as much as it hate losses(loss aversion). YMMV

  2423. How to Make Yourself Work When You Just Don’t Want To 2014-02-23 19:15:00 sheff
    Another very simple thing I use when procrastination strikes is Seth Roberts Magic Dots technique. ( http://blog.sethroberts.net/category/procrastination/magic-d... )

    He came up with it based on reinforcement studies in pigeons. There are more details on the linked page, but basically whilst working you just put a dot on a piece of paper every 6 minutes in the shape of a square, then join all the dots with a line. Something about doing this essentially meaningless thing improves motivation and throughput for me.

  2424. How to Make Yourself Work When You Just Don’t Want To 2014-02-23 19:47:26 enscr
    All these sound interesting to read but none are really practical when it comes to implementing. To a large part, when things have to happen, somehow circumstances contrive you to accomplish it. These 'techniques' are rarely ground breaking for the true-to-the-spirit procrastinator.

    What works without fail is peer pressure or a stinging comment.

    Disclaimer : Personal experience, may not be generalizable.

  2425. How to Make Yourself Work When You Just Don’t Want To 2014-02-23 19:58:27 visakanv
    I was watching Trainspotting with my wife the other day and it both amused and troubled at how the drug addicts' behavior reminded me of how I typically procrastinate. People vastly underestimate how elaborate, nuanced and complex the procrastinator mind can be.

  2426. How to Make Yourself Work When You Just Don’t Want To 2014-02-23 20:45:04 nisa
    > I read articles ... and then proceed to ... ignore it.

    > ...unable to motivate myself to actually go

    > don't even feel in control of your own thoughts

    > I always fall back into the same patterns.

    I'm not a doctor or professional, so take this with a huge grain of salt and get help outside of HN:

    Did you consider having adult ADHD? - maybe the inattentive type? Do you have some disciplines where you still able to excel besides having problems with motivation and procrastination everywhere else?

    I've lately read an adult ADHD CBT therapy book¹ and I was really surprised how it explained a lot of things in my life.

    Depression is a common co-morbidity and while I'm more on the anxiety side your description sounds pretty familiar.

    Knowing about these things accepting that I have to attack certain things from a different angle helps me a lot recently, I also don't feel like a stranger in the world anymore - I'm almost 30 years old and I have not much academically to show for in my life.

    Maybe it's bullshit and you are better off ignoring it, but from your description I'd considering checking that angle too.

    1: http://libgen.org/book/index.php?md5=b8e7b20b602fee2b1bdb1b1...

  2427. How to Make Yourself Work When You Just Don’t Want To 2014-02-23 23:10:58 super-serial
    That's the reason I've started 10 projects and finished 0 in the last year. I did awesome for the first few weeks starting a project, but then I don't "feel like" finishing.

    Since I'm releasing nothing... I decided to take on smaller and smaller projects. Instead of making a mobile app, I'm now making a small plugin to release on CodeCanyon.net. I put all the CSS for the demo and the actual plugin in the same file to begin with, and now I don't "feel like" separating the demo's CSS in a separate file because it's frustrating and boring. I'd rather code new things than mess with this stupid CSS on a project that probably won't sell, that took way longer than it should have.

    But this time I said I'm not doing any other project until I've finished this one. And now I've done absolutely nothing for 2 weeks(except my part-time job), and procrastinated by watching TV shows and studying Japanese.

    As someone who always changes their opinion on "what should I really be working on" - I think I need something more than "asking the right questions." I'm still not sure what that is, but I'm hoping that one day I will find it.

  2428. From idea to core prototype in hours, not weeks 2014-02-24 10:56:57 trekky1700
    Indeed, the "just start" approach is awesome. It cuts the excuses people find to continue to "prepare" or procrastinate.

  2429. I was partially deaf for the last couple of years 2014-02-24 22:17:20 thelogos
    Procrastination plays a part too. \nIt's a big effort to,\n1.Find a good doctor (not all of them are equal)\n2.Call to make an appointment\n3.Take time off work/classes\n4.Get there and wait, wait, wait

    Really, all this could be solved if more medical school were allowed to be opened and get rid of the arbitrary ceiling on the number of students med school are allowed to accept .

    This is only the easy part. If you don't have insurance, it's a nightmare.

    In the case of my father, he went to a general doctor. Got referred to another specialist. Who then referred him to another specialist. $600 later (a huge amount of money to most normal people) and no diagnosis, he decided to just "deal with it".

  2430. If you aren’t getting rejected, your goals aren’t ambitious enough (2010) 2014-02-26 18:16:27 omegant
    This is in my experience the hardest part of being a founder. Is where I procastinate the most.

  2431. My mom is dying, and my bank account is dry. I need help 2014-02-27 06:24:22 staunch
    It's a fucking embarrassment that there isn't an obvious person to call for help here.

    I wish there was an organization that would help people navigate their healthcare. Like a medical concierge/social worker. Someone is an expert on The System and acts entirely on your behalf.

    The would oversee your entire healthcare. They book your appointments, remind you to go, handle most billing issues, make sure you're up to date on prescriptions, and even provide emotional support. They involve themselves deeply with your medical care the way an old loyal family doctor might. All you do is be the patient.

    You would have to hire and train amazingly great people, but I think there's enough good people in the world that would find the work so fulfilling you could make it work.

    Medical problems can be incredibly sad, lonely, scary and it's the one place where procrastination literally kills. Regardless of how crazily you could spend a project like this it would still probably pay for itself based on early detection, better outcomes, etc.

  2432. We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It 2014-02-27 23:31:14 sspiff
    I have the option to work from home, but I dislike doing so, specifically because it makes it easy for me to slack and procrastinate, and because I dislike bringing my work into my home environment.

    I can use the prying eyes of my peers to guilt me into getting work done, sometimes. I also much prefer to be able to stand up, walk over to someones desk, and discuss a problem (or some newly discovered exoplanet, or the price of bitcoins, ...). Picking up a phone, sending an instant message or email just isn't the same thing.

    However, I'm very much aware about what a luxurious situation I'm in. I live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, get to do a job I love (most of the time), and get paid plenty. Compared to most places in the world, this place 50 years ago or even to other professions in the same country, I'm a lucky bastard.

    Doesn't mean I sometimes have a hard time concentrating, or would like to be doing something other than the work assigned to me though, but I think that's normal and would happen to anyone in any situation. First world problems, eh?

  2433. We Have Luxurious Jobs but We Are Not Aware of It 2014-03-01 00:32:59 nzp
    I absolutely get what you're trying to say, but---so what? How is programmers being aware of their luxurious jobs going to help people with less luxurious jobs? Will the situation for other people improve if people here merely stop complaining about recruiters and procrastination? If they merely do a mental version of catholic style self flagellation? Is this another variant of "eat your dinner, there are children in Africa starving" routine? What good does me eating my dinner do to a starving kid in Africa? Etc.

    There's nothing wrong about complaining about relevant problems in one's profession, even if those problems seem nice to have to other people, and not complaining won't magically make other people's lives more comfortable. And having a "luxurious" job that pays well is nothing to be compulsively ashamed of if it's an honest job not involving exploitation of others (which programming in almost all (?) cases is).

  2434. No-bullshit guide to linear algebra 2014-03-04 05:31:54 jjoonathan
    Not just you. I'm procrastinating on one of those too-damn-hard math problems right now!

  2435. Confessions of an Intermediate Programmer 2014-03-04 11:47:22 einhverfr
    I hate to sound like an old fogie here (I am almost 40) but one thing that occurs to me is that as we age our thinking changes and all the things you mention often develop over time.

    When you are 20 you are pretty much at the height of your mathematical abilities. This is fine for certain kinds of programming, but it is not really ideal for others. It ensures that algorithms primary and the domains in a real sense become secondary. As you get older, these tend to flip. You understand the domains better and may not be quite as good at generating optimal algorithms, but the tradeoff is generally positive.

    Additionally I think there is a tradeoff that happens between dreaming of building great things and developing a craftsmenship approach to the small things. Engineer the small pieces well, and the big pieces will take care of themselves.

    In most areas, I think one is better with a very mixed-age and mixed-experience team. Older, more experienced programmers bring something very special to the table, but the same is true for younger programmers as well.

    This being said, I have a few very minor disagreements with you ;-). These may be split hairs though.

    First, while I rewrite more in some ways, I actually find on the whole I rewrite less because I am not afraid to procrastinate while trying to understand the domain. People wonder why my code seems to come out fully formed and it is because I am not afraid to spend my time thinking about the problem instead of writing a rough draft.

    What has changed is the sort of rewrites I do. I will typically re-engineer a small piece to remove cruft based on lessons learned from the last two years, rather than rewriting a big piece to meet a new requirement (because things tend to be designed more extensably now). So I am less afraid to rewrite and more willing to do so, but at the same time, I tend to rewrite less.

    Finally there is the question of optimal way to program. I am of the opinion (probably in part because of how much work I do with Perl) that there is no singular optimal way. Optimal has to be globally defined and one of the jobs of the engineer is to ensure that the framework is optimal so that the team can program optimally. If the team is not part of the definition of what is optimal, then I do agree it is a mess.

    But I don't think we are dealing with a single dimension here. Understanding the problems the team is struggling with is a good way to ensure that framework can be built in a way that drives that average capability up.

  2436. Ask HN: What is the fastest way to learn C++? I have a exam in 10 days. 2014-03-05 02:28:52 Rantenki
    1. Stop reading hacker news. Procrastinating is (probably) what got you into this mess

    2. If you are in twelfth grade, you aren't expected to be a good C++ engineer/dev, you are expected to know some curriculum they gave you already.

    3. If you have the curriculum, you should start grinding through the lessons you have already been given. It's what you are going to get tested on.

    Sorry, this may not seem helpful, but getting as far as you can through the courseware you should already have, is going to be the best thing to do. Unplug the internet if you can, and just grind through it. If you pass, it will have built character.

    Edit; ColinWright has some good comments too. Seriously look at what you already know, and try to use any questions/tests built into your curriculum (if there are any) to test yourself.

  2437. Exist 2014-03-06 12:17:32 throwawaymsft
    To each their own, but I think it's a fancy way of procrastination/avoidance/navel-gazing.

    The examples on the site include how many tweets you wrote (ok), tracks you listened to (erm... ok), checkins you had, and the max degrees Celsius for your location that day (what?).

    In general, you optimize what you measure, but eventually it becomes a parody of itself.

  2438. You Should Start a Blog 2014-03-06 17:18:51 dagw
    Focus on writing, not on platform. Sign up for a blogger (or whatever) account and just start writing. Once you've published a dozen posts or so and gotten into the habit or writing, then you can go back and consider what you want/need in a blogging platform going forwards. Focusing on setting up the perfect blogging platform before you've written anything is just procrastination.

  2439. College Grads Taking Low-Wage Jobs Displace Less Educated 2014-03-07 23:19:12 IndieDevClub
    Yeah I think I double-posted while in anti-procrastination mode.

    I don't want to spam, but I want some people to join my club.

  2440. Smart Guy Productivity Pitfalls 2014-03-09 08:01:08 thinkersilver
    Being productive is pure execution of an implementation or an idea. Anything else like planning, thinking through your problem is not deliverable or visible in the final output. Yet these things are necessary. Deciding when and how much to plan and think about your problem becomes a strategic decision. You want to spend the minimum effort required for the most effective solution within your time frame.

    I'm almost certain that I have an undiagnosed ADHD, but living in London it is something that is not recognized. Whether this condition exists or not, my attention span is well below that of my peers at work. This lead me to actually find out what the optimal period of time I can concentrate doing something without my mind wandering. I took a timer and over a period of a week I experimented with blocks of time, starting from 25 minutes , I gradually reduced the block by 5 minutes until I found that sweet spot. I expected it'd be about 15 minutes, but to my dismay it was only 5. WTH!

    I accepted the results and started each task with the expectation that any task I complete should finish in less than 5 minutes. If it doesn't then I'm either being inefficient because I'm

    1) disorganised - spending time looking for artefacts required to do the piece of work\n2) unskilled - spending most of that 5 minutes not executing but thinking about how to do it.

    At the end of the box of time. I'd document what category my inability to complete the task fell into and then I'd note it somewhere so that at the end of the day I could either spend time getting that area more organized, looking for opportunity for automation or learning so that I become a bit more skilled. Dealing with my disarray and unskilledness at the end of the day helped me work smarter. Intraday, I'd not have the time to do this, this is where the grind comes in, where you plough through a piece of work knowing that it might not be the best way of doing it but you need get it out the door. The time management system is unnaturally granular. You can quickly put a stop to an unproductive avenues. This has gradually made me a more organized and skilled programmer over the last 3 months. More importantly more productive. It's also given me detailed metrics on my productivity. I can measure my level of distraction, unpreparedness and so on. The odd effect of all of this is that I can work much longer hours without moving from my seat ( I do force myself to get up for breaks)

    All this is possible because of where technology is now, without it the process is far too granular and unwieldly to be practical.

    From my experience I agree with what the author said in points 7,8. This is vital.

    * Haven't an objective productivity metric - how do you measure your productivity. \n* Accept that the grind part of the job

    I think everything else can either fall into the categorys of managing procrastination, motivation and being a bit more organized which can vary widely depending on individual.

  2441. Smart Guy Productivity Pitfalls 2014-03-09 09:51:55 sizzle
    There was a HBR article recently on HN regarding procrastination that touched upon this aspect.

    If I recall correctly, it was saying that we don't need to feel any certain way about doing a task at hand because our emotions should not dictate our (in)action. Recognizing that your emotional self is blocking you from starting an activity just because it isn't pleasurable (ie: don't feel like it), is crucial for those who suffer from this cognitive dissonance, myself included.

    Hell, it got me on the treadmill and now running every morning is more habit/routine than anything. I don't even question exercising the way I did before, now it's only asking myself if I either exercised today or not. Starting up running again was only hard because I was stuck in some sort of negative feedback loop of imagining the physical pain of running and justifying the "time lost" in terms of work productivity.

    I wish I internalized this process sooner, it's life changing if you let it be.

  2442. The Futility of Productivity Posts 2014-03-09 23:58:15 colinshark
    The post is negative because the productivity posts are bad and make HN worse.

    The alternative is to post ANYTHING other than "These 5 weird things are making you procrastinate" and similar.

  2443. 2048 2014-03-11 17:35:56 ddanielou
    Won with 21056, after about one billion failed games. Man, that game is the ultimate procrastination machine: rids you of absolutely all of your time and gives you the feeling that you actually accomplished something.

  2444. Ask HN: should I live my corporate job? 2014-03-13 01:53:54 MyNameIsMK
    Do it NOW. Stop procrastinating. Unless you're not sure, then you probably have no business taking any risks. You WILL get butt hurt. Freelancing and remote work is that roller coaster ride that will make you want to barf.

    Either way, good luck to you. Hurricane strength winds ahead!

  2445. Ask HN: Which CRM for a solo-freelancer in 2014? 2014-03-14 20:45:34 marvin
    Perfect observation of real, honest-to-God procrastination. You are usually better served taking the time researching the CRM and slacking off. Or at the very least admitting that the CRM research is part of your time off, not your job.

  2446. Ask HN: Which CRM for a solo-freelancer in 2014? 2014-03-14 21:28:29 alphydan
    As explained by some posters above we did the procrastination thing and spent time researching CRMs :). Our situation however was 3 people selling lots of leads, managing mentors and investors and keeping track of a few hundred customers. I wrote a review of our findings, http://renooble.tumblr.com/post/79551891411/crms-for-small-s...

  2447. Ask HN: Which CRM for a solo-freelancer in 2014? 2014-03-14 22:39:44 joshdance
    Honestly it is easy to say researching CRMs is procrastination, but if you really need a CRM, you need one and it is going to take time to find the one you like.

  2448. Show HN: Solvers.io – use your skills to improve our world 2014-03-15 03:52:57 thaumaturgy
    > In fact, the first 'problem' posted was also the first thing to be solved: a charity's website was running really slow and they needed help fixing it. That got fixed in 24 hours.

    That was also the first item I looked at and thought, "Oh, I could do that, it should only take a couple hours tops." Everything else requires significantly more time investment -- which narrows your field of helpers down to, "smart and helpful people who have lots of free time".

    Those people exist, but they're a much smaller population than, "smart and helpful people who can come up with a couple of hours for an interesting project while procrastinating on something else."

    I think your website copy is very strongly commitment-oriented.

    From https://www.solvers.io/:

    -> "Get involved in a project below"; what about, "Solve a problem for a project" instead?

    -> "Got an idea? Post it and recruit solvers"; I dunno what to suggest here, but "idea" is really broad and "recruit" is a loaded term.

    From https://www.solvers.io/projects/new:

    -> "Project name" and "Role": I think these are definitely sending the wrong message. "Role" might by itself by the source for a lot of the confusion. You're not looking for a role to be filled -- a position -- you're looking for a specific thing to get done. (It can also cause people to ask for the wrong thing, e.g. a website developer when they need a graphic artist or something.)

    -> "Describe the project, including its expected duration and required skillset." I think "duration" sends the wrong message, i.e., "if you're looking for help for the next six months, that's OK, just say so". If that's what you intend, cool, otherwise, that spot might be a great time to tell project managers to keep it short for best results: "Describe your project and what kind of help it needs. Try to ask for specific tasks instead of ongoing commitments."

    HTH. It's a really cool site, I hope I can do a thing or two there in the future.

  2449. The Gray Zone 2014-03-17 02:29:18 gfodor
    Two potential explanations: the tech industry can't stop talking about itself on twitter and blogs. How many mechanical engineers do you know that spend a large % of their day procrastinating by surfing the web and participating in meta-talk about the industry. Our day-to-day tool for doing our jobs also just so happens to be a worldwide communication device. Just like the media loves to report on themselves, the tech industry loves to post on the internet about the tech industry, so the effect of a single asshole's comment is magnified by a social network powered shitstorm, further entrenching the meme that tech is full of bigots and causing a flood of discussion and hyper-analysis of it.

    The second explanation is that the tech industry is actually less mysogenistic than others, as you have noticed, but ironically due to the lack of widespread mysogeny like you see in areas like finance, when an "incident" occurs, a lively discussion happens because there is a critical mass of non-sexist males, not due to a lack of them. Off course, this feeds into the meme which cements it more as accepted truth, despite any real data or study showing that tech has a above average rate of male mysogeny.

  2450. Doing: command line tool for keeping track of what you’re doing and have done 2014-03-17 04:17:19 616c
    Did they ever finish the Android client? I looked into them very briefly 2+ years ago, and I wanted something to finally get me to use a smart phone for something other than procrastination.

    I found Mirakel[0] but I do not think that was the app promised by the original dev. Still googling after I hit submit out of curiosity.

    [0] http://mirakel.azapps.de/taskwarrior.html

  2451. Before you Dual Boot – MS, OEMs and Linux 2014-03-17 05:25:30 mindslight
    With the locked down antics that manufacturers are pulling these days, the only way to protect yourself is to root your device and install your preferred environment on it immediately after you obtain the device. Don't delay or procrastinate with excuses like wanting to try out the manufacturer's experience, waiting until you need the functionality, or wanting to prepare more. Every day you put it off, the more likely you will end up stuck with and dependent on a user-hostile device that you were tricked into.

    You need to run into every possible incompatibility or bricking while you're still well within the return and credit card dispute periods. And if you're actually unsure of how to proceed in making sure that shiny new device actually works for you, please please ask a technical friend for help. The future of society very much depends on it.

  2452. Doctor: ADHD, as currently defined, does not exist 2014-03-18 02:09:21 JohnBooty
    This article is so potentially harmful, even if it's more nuanced than the hyperbolic "ADHD Doesn't Exist" title would suggest.

    The reality is that -- whatever the underlying cause -- a lot of people struggle with attention span issues, and that these issues cause a lot of pain and unfulfilled potential.

    Even if ADHD medications are overprescribed Band-Aids, people benefit from them. We should try and find better diagnoses and treatments, but it makes no sense to blast people by telling them their condition "doesn't exist."

    If I have one complaint about the way we treat ADHD it's a lack of education for patients. The medication is only one part of the solution and in my personal experience it's nowhere near the biggest piece. Diet, environment, sleep, and exercise are just as crucial... but these are things I figured out on my own, not anything my doctors mentioned.

      Firstly, addiction to stimulant medication is not \n  rare; it is common. The drugs’ addictive qualities \n  are obvious. We only need to observe the many patients\n  who are forced to periodically increase their dosage if   \n  they want to concentrate. \n
    \nThis true but disingenuous at best because it omits perspective in a way that borders on maliciousness. Adderall causes only a very mild dependence according to all studies I've ever read. The FDA and my personal experiences agree. I've discontinued my Adderall on a number of occasions (by responsibly tapering it down to 0mg over several days) and it was no problem.

    To compare it to something most of us are familiar with: I found Adderall much easier to discontinue than caffeine, a thing I've never been able to quit. (I've never smoked, so I can't compare with nicotine)

    And to all those who say ADHD is a matter of "willpower..."

    Maybe. For some.

    I always told myself that too. I was born in 1976 so I went through school here in the USA right before they started diagnosing ADHD left and right and I was labeled a procrastinator instead. I never even really heard of ADHD until I was out of school.

    After four years in college, which were a mix of promise and opportunities torpedoed by procrastination, I worked 10, 12, 14-hour days to finish work that I was more than talented enough to finish in 5 or 6 hours. My happiness suffered, health suffered, and relationships died.

    Then I finally admitted that maybe it was a little more than a willpower issue. If it a matter of lacking willpower, why was I at the damn office trying to work long after everybody else had left? Whatever the hell my problem was, it wasn't work ethic.

    So I sought treatment... at the age of 32. And while medication was only an imperfect yet valuable part of the solution, my life has been on track again for a number of years.

  2453. Doctor: ADHD, as currently defined, does not exist 2014-03-18 02:39:58 chimeracoder
    > After four years in college, which were a mix of promise and opportunities torpedoed by procrastination, I worked 10, 12, 14-hour days to finish work that I was more than talented enough to finish in 5 or 6 hours. My happiness suffered, health suffered, and relationships died.

    > Then I finally admitted that maybe it was a little more than a willpower issue. If it a matter of lacking willpower, why was I at the damn office trying to work long after everybody else had left? Whatever the hell my problem was, it wasn't work ethic.

    Thank you. These two paragraphs are a perfect counterpoint to the uninformed claims I hear about ADHD all the time, so I'll probably mention them the next time I hear people claim that ADHD 'doesn't exist'.

    I think the only real problem is that ADHD has always been improperly named[0]. The actual condition itself has very little to do with attention. The condition is named not after the cause, but after a symptom - and worse, after a symptom that is not even characteristic of the condition. Not all people with ADHD actually exhibit attention issues as their primary symptom, or even at all.

    It's like referring to depression as "Excessive sleep disorder". Well, sure, excessive sleep is oftentimes a symptom of depression. But taking stimulants won't (necessarily) help, and trying to force people to "just wake up" (or, more commonly, "just be happy!") isn't a solution.

    It's no longer socially acceptable to tell dyslexic people that their condition doesn't exist and that they are "dumb". So why is it socially acceptable to tell people with ADHD that their condition doesn't exist and that they're "just lazy"?

    [0] Previously it was called ADD, and before that it was oftentimes classified as auditory processing disorders, etc.

  2454. Doctor: ADHD, as currently defined, does not exist 2014-03-18 03:23:51 siphor
    To play devils advocate, I think its possible that ADHD as a title is more harmful. Letting people fall into a self-fulfilling prophecy that may or may not have occurred otherwise.

    You say you were more than talented enough to finish said work in 5-6 hours but couldn't. To me that sounds like you thoroughly did not enjoy it and thus got distracted and 'procrastinated'. Why did you choose to work in an office if it was making you so unhappy?

    It sounds like the drugs helped you live your life in an office setting, and is helping you get your life on that specific track.

    I personally think there are a lot of societal pressures that makes one feel forced into a situation where they do not thrive.

    But everyone around says that `you` have a specific problem. Why can't it be the other way around, everyone else doesn't fit to you?

    These drugs seem to work great to make you live like everyone else. But why is that good? More boldly, why are the ADHD symptoms bad? Some of the most successful people probably exhibit these symptoms.

  2455. Doctor: ADHD, as currently defined, does not exist 2014-03-18 04:46:39 JohnBooty
    I don't feel that Adderall even remotely makes me "like everybody else" - I feel it has some benefits toward reducing a specific difficulty I have and that those benefits outweigh the minor downsides.

      To me that sounds like you thoroughly did not enjoy it and thus \n  got distracted and 'procrastinated'. Why did you choose to work \n  in an office if it was making you so unhappy?\n
    \nI certainly don't blame you for making this assumption, since I didn't flesh out my (not terribly interesting) story. And I also agree that there are a lot of upsides that come with ADHD, though of course it's hard to tell which positive personality traits are /due/ to ADHD and which are coincidental.

    However, the truth is that I actually tried starting my own business I was passionate about /before/ even considering an ADHD diagnosis!

    Just like you said, I decided my inability to focus in an office environment was due to a lack of motivation. (And that was partially true, it turned out, but wasn't the whole story)

    So I started my own business. Now, at the time, I didn't think about ADHD very much at all but my opinion of it was that it was a thing they over-diagnosed in kids so they could sell a bunch of pills and basically make excuses for boring teachers and ineffective parenting.

    After a couple of years creating the business it was pretty clear I was hitting the limits of my ability to focus even when doing "the fun stuff" like writing code for a thing I was passionate about. And don't forget that running a business also requires a lot of deadly boring stuff too - taxes, regulations, paperwork, etc.

    It was at that point I started looking at a lot of things and decided maybe exploring the ADHD thing made sense after all.

  2456. Doctor: ADHD, as currently defined, does not exist 2014-03-18 05:01:16 zeidrich
    Disorder is maybe a harsh word, but my issue is that it runs counter to how I want to act.

    I want to do x, but I don't do it. It's really hard to explain to someone who doesn't feel the same way. It's not just a procrastination, it's a complete inability to adhere to a rational set of priorities.

    For most people task avoidance is due to stress or fear. For me it was simply that it disappeared from my head while I did something else less important. Then later I realized that I didn't do what I wanted to, and tried to understand why.

    Parts of the day would disappear into nothing. I wasn't avoiding work, or even procrastinating as many people would view it, I was just unable to see that mental priority list for a time.

    Then there's the periods of seeing that mental priority list, but being unable to commit to any single task to the extent that nothing gets done. If there's giant pressure or stress behind something, it could force me to act, but otherwise nothing.

    "Hyperfocus" is kind of true in that when you unhinge from that mental priority list you stop feeling the distractions, but the problem is you don't exactly get to choose what you want to focus on. The other problem is, that condition only lasts for a while and then you're left listless and useless. So sure, you can spend a few hours writing responses up on HN instead of working, process all that dopamine superfast, and then sit around trying to remember what you were trying to do when you sat down at your computer in the first place, until some crisis pushes you to action.

    You talk about it like it's great, but I think you're misrepresenting it. It doesn't make you an incredibly quick thinker, you don't necessarily "think through every consequence of what you just said before you finish your sentence" what is more realistic is we think through some things unrelated to what was just said, sometimes this might lead to an alternate line of reasoning, a "thinking outside the box". Sometimes it just means you have no idea of what was actually just said because you were thinking about whether when they said they had been working all last night that they maybe got Pizza when they were working last night, and whether they liked anchovies on their pizza because your Dad used to put anchovies on his pizza and you never really liked them. You know, they were so salty, and the little bones got stuck in your teeth. But it's kind of cool that you can eat those little fish almost whole, unlike Tuna, which while it comes in tiny little cans is actually a pretty big fish.

  2457. Doctor: ADHD, as currently defined, does not exist 2014-03-18 05:15:23 300bps
    So I sought treatment... at the age of 32.

    Hi John, I'm curious if you tried any of the following before trying medication:

    1. No TV

    2. No Video Games

    3. No Internet aggregators (slashdot / digg / reddit/ hn / etc)

    4. Meditation

    I am a colossal procrastinator and frequently unfocused person that had a much less successful academic career than you due to that. So far I've been going through periods of trying the above, thinking that medication is an absolute last resort. So far I haven't had to go there but I'm curious as to what things you may have tried before going to medicine?

  2458. Doctor: ADHD, as currently defined, does not exist 2014-03-18 05:18:49 JohnBooty

      But I have to ask an honest question: do you have a deficiency for which\n  you need treatment? Or do you have a personality type which might make \n  you unsuited for certain types of work? Or -- more likely -- do you have \n  a tendency for a type of personality attribute expression which varies \n  depending on various external stimuli?\n\n  I think it's perfectly fine that something like ADHD is a naturally-\n  occurring personality trait and/or state of mind for which we might need \n  medication to overcome. At the same time, I'm not too happy with \n  characterizing it as a disease or dysfunction. I think we are taking \n  people who are acting in a completely normal fashion and telling them \n  something is broken about them. That ain't right.\n
    \nI love the way you put this, and I agree with a lot of what you said. BUT I also don't think what you say is incompatible with treating focus issues as a problem that can be helped by medication.

    For me, learning about ADHD was very liberating!

    It wasn't a diagnosis that told me I was fundamentally broken as a person; it was exactly the opposite.

    I had a lot of love and support growing up in the 80s and early 90s, don't get me wrong. But I also got a lot of negative reinforcement and had come to think of myself (as a certain book title suggests) as "lazy, stupid, or crazy" (ok - maybe just lazy or crazy) when it came to focus and procrastination issues. I never even considered ADD/ADHD because as far as I knew, it was a label for hyperactive kids and I was never hyperactive.

    Those are very broad terms, you know? I really felt like there was fundamental shit wrong with me. I grew up believing in hard work but had the hardest time doing homework and taxes and things I didn't want to do.

    So learning about and eventually being diagnosed with ADHD really helped the way I feel about myself. Instead of feeling broken on some fundamental level, I came to feel like I had a pretty specific thing to deal with; one that could be helped by medication and proper sleep/diet/environment/exercise.

    Edit: I also want to address this one specific thing you said:

      Or do you have a personality type which might make you unsuited \n  for certain types of work?\n
    \nI can't think of a single line of work that doesn't benefit from an increased ability to focus.

    Even entrepreneurs, who are often famously ADHD (or ADHD-like, anyway) in their restlessness and curiosity, need to focus on the mundane stuff sometimes.

    And it's not like medication erases those positive ADHD traits either. The fact is that stimulants leave your body pretty quickly, and with something like your Adderall dosage from day to day. If you're responsible and take a little bit less on the days you don't need it, you can take a little more on the days when you need it more. You can tailor the effects a bit depending on your needs on a particular day.

    (Note: The medication is far from perfect; it's not for everybody and is not a cure-all. Biologically, stimulants are a very crude way to address one's focus. In my experience, proper sleep/diet/exercise/environment are more important than any medication I've tried.)

  2459. Doctor: ADHD, as currently defined, does not exist 2014-03-18 05:24:18 exelius
    Well, trying to diagnose ADHD in a 5 year old is witchcraft at best -- kids at that age just naturally have no attention span. It's not ADHD when you're 5, it's being a kid. I was diagnosed young, and let me tell you: the meds are no fun for the kid. You're amped up on pills all day then when you come home you're a zombie. It likely results in a lot of depression issues for kids who don't really understand what's going on.

    When unmedicated, an adult with ADHD literally cannot focus on a subject that is uninteresting. You try, then OOH SHINY. You can try cutting out distractions, great! You get 5 minutes of work done then you have to pee. Then you notice a magazine on the table. Then 3 hours of this later, you remember that you originally had a task you were trying to complete.

    It goes beyond simple procrastination: short term memory is a real issue in general, especially about doing things. It doesn't matter how hard you need to focus, you'll constantly be distracted, and when you get distracted, you forget what you were originally supposed to be doing. Likewise, you may then hyperfocus on something that is interesting to you and end up playing around with an Arduino for 4 hours without realizing it. You know how you have a nagging feeling you were supposed to do something? That's pretty much life for an adult with ADHD. A constant feeling that you're forgetting to do something. But you can't remember what it is.

    It's hard to explain the difference between ADHD "hyperfocus" and just being "in the zone"; but I'd have to say it's the in-the-moment perception of how time passes. Most people when they're "in the zone" make a conscious decision to stay there: with ADHD it's almost an accidental thing where you enter a trance and only leave it when your task is done or when someone smacks you across the face.

  2460. Doctor: ADHD, as currently defined, does not exist 2014-03-18 20:05:49 Houshalter
    Well my anecdote: Before technology, I procrastinated just as much, by spending many hours walking outside. I can't say technology improved things, but it's certainly not the root cause. Can't say I tried meditation, it seems like pseudoscience. I haven't tried medication yet either, but I'd really like to.

  2461. What if you didn't need money or attention? 2014-03-20 03:03:47 edw519
    when you're ready to be useful to others again.

    Again?

    You just nailed the problem.

    If everything you did was for others, then this discussion (and many like it) wouldn't even make sense.

    You wouldn't "get burned out", "lose purpose", "get stressed out", "worry about competition", "procrastinate", or "lack motivation".

    If your work, your art, or just your day-to-day activities were focused on delivering value to others, you'd be too busy having a ball and rejoicing in outcomes to worry about all this other stuff. And anyone who tells you otherwise (but we gotta eat first!), still doesn't get it.

    Thanks, OP, for reminding us that as soon as we're not so full of ourselves, and understand our role as conduits of energy, the sooner everything else flows so nicely.

  2462. What if you didn't need money or attention? 2014-03-20 09:15:17 JetSpiegel
    That's just procrastination. Where do we draw the line?

  2463. HN plays 2048 in Democracy mode 2014-03-20 16:55:14 Jugurtha
    Nice ! We should combat procrastination by recording IP addresses of players, and banning them from HN for a day.

  2464. I am burned out while still in learning phase 2014-03-20 22:57:27 moron4hire
    Some loved ones guilt-tripped me into taking sessions with a career coach about 2 years ago. They bought the sessions as my "Christmas present", despite them knowing I wasn't going to appreciate being told I was broken and needed someone to fix me.

    I resolved I was going to be "the best damned career coach's student ever". I wanted to give them no possibility of blaming me for not working hard enough. I was going to "prove this shit doesn't work".

    I was wrong. I was wrong about a lot of things. It literally turned my life around.

    It was all self directed, with the coach being a sounding board and a target. It was easier to do things when it felt like coach was telling me to do it, even though they were all things I had determined and assigned to myself.

    That was one of my problems. I would prioritize other people's issues before my own. "Go to the doctor for a wicked cough in the middle of a work day? Hell no! That's a personal problem! You do that on your own time!" If it were just me, I would have sloughed it off, creatively procrastinated it away, like I did all of my other life chores. I ultimately knew everything that was wrong with me, but I wouldn't do it because I had this one problem.

    "One weird trick to fixing your life". I should write for BuzzFeed.

    Burnout is a symptom of not taking care of yourself. It's not a symptom of overworking. If you're happy and working on something you love, you'll do it 120 hours a week, it'll always feel like play. But you'll still get burnt out because you're not nourishing yourself, sleeping enough, exercising, etc.

    Message me if you want a recommendation for a great one. Email address in my profile description.

  2465. I am burned out while still in learning phase 2014-03-20 22:59:43 blauwbilgorgel
    You need a healthy schedule. Sleep deprivation is NOT a badge of honor: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1006-sleep-deprivation-is-not...

    Stop reading entreporn (blogs and forums celebrating the entrepreneurial lifestyle). It's an echo chamber. It gives you a warped view of success and what it takes to get there. Actionable content is remarkably thin. You are not learning from reading Techcrunch articles, you are procrastinating with the delusion of learning about business. It's entertainment.

    Start meditating or exercising. You need something to take your mind of things or regain balance. Try 20 minute exercises.

    And for the medical symptoms. Talk to a medical professional and listen. When they say: Sleep more and keep a healthy schedule, then do so.

    Good luck and feel better soon!

  2466. Ask HN: Will soon have lots of time and little money – how to spend it? 2014-03-22 23:03:34 analog31
    Speaking as a musician, it will cost you a bit of money up front, but finding a top notch teacher and taking a few lessons might be a great way to kick off the new phase of your life. Of course I'm saying this while having procrastinated on doing the same for myself. Find a teacher who could provide you with a frank assessment of your technique, and identify gaps in your abilities that might hold you back from fully engaging in your local music scene at a desirable level.

    Also, a check-up on your technique might be a good idea in order to avoid injuring yourself once you do start in with those 5 hours a day. Naturally some instruments are more physically demanding than others, but any instrument can hurt you if you don't consider ergonomic technique.

  2467. Using GameStop as a bank 2014-03-23 10:01:43 gesman
    Games are like porn - is the best way for people to procrastinate and delay facing the real life issues.

    This industry will die the last.

  2468. ATM operators eye Linux as alternative to Windows XP 2014-03-23 21:10:10 brokenparser
    Procrastination?

  2469. Ask HN: How do you earn your money? 2014-03-24 03:51:50 zackmorris
    I apologize in advance for how long this got :-/

    At first I was signed up on freelancer.com as well and did several ~$150 contracts where I could bid/get picked/do the work/get paid practically the same day, which helped my psyche. I also did a relatively large project on elance.com but unfortunately didn't get paid for it due to disputes over milestones (the customer kept adding to the to do list), which is what led me to the escrow on odesk.com. I did a few fixed rate contracts but found my time management skills were not exactly stellar so switched to hourly for a while and found some peace knowing I was getting paid for my time like a regular job. Once I got back in the swing of things, I tended to prefer fixed rate again for the freedom it provides.

    For odesk.com, I put a couple of pics in my portfolio, got a decent score on a skills test, and had some credentials in my education and employment history. But ya, at first I was not getting any invites and was bidding on several contracts at once without any bites. On the surface, a lot of the bidders look very experienced and I just couldn’t see how to compete with them. I guess what changed is that I stumbled onto some contracts where the client was frustrated with the quality of previous work, and I took the plunge and cleaned up their apps for them. It was an eye opener because I saw the kinds of tradeoffs that are made under low budgets. It wasn’t that any individual aspect of the code was bad, but more that it was a hodgepodge of different approaches all mashed together, that broke the don’t repeat yourself (DRY) principal, had no separation of logic and interface, was full of memory leaks, just on and on. The code had been written overseas for a really low rate and so several people had been banging away on it just trying to get it done. It was kind of remarkable, in a way, but not the kind of code that could be easily reused. So it hit me that the reason a high hourly rate is worth it is that a client can either choose to pay a team to follow good coding practices (which costs time = money) or pay an experienced developer to do it and avoid the broken telephone game. There really is no free lunch, and I think that clients understand that before developers do. So eventually I threw up my hands, realized I couldn’t fight the laws of economics, and “reluctantly” raised my hourly rate. I tried $30/hr for quite a while because that’s the overtime rate for a typical $20/hr programming job in Idaho and I don’t think a contractor should bid below 1.5 times the salary they desire (due to down time etc). So your contracting rate will be some multiple of the going hourly rate in your location. I also stopped being anxious about it, because I knew what the work entailed, so I wrote my bids in a conversational tone, just saying roughly what would be involved and not making any huge promises, and even saying where complications might come up, allowing for contingiences. That worked pretty well and I started getting more hours in and receiving invites from clients that weren’t looking for bargain basement code. It was kind of weird though to be charging more but not seeing it in my bank account, and I was having a lot of lean months. I hadn’t really factored in the hours I spent mulling over the code in my subconscious. So I came to terms with the fact that I was having trouble getting in more than about 4-6 billable hours per day, even though I felt like I was working all of the time. So I went ahead and just accepted that I’d average 25 hours per week and raised my rate again to ~$50/hr to account for the research I inevitably did but wasn’t charging for directly. I found that it alleviated a lot of the dread I was feeling when I thought about getting started working each day. For me, it was never about the work, but battling my own tendency towards distraction and procrastination. That was the point where I started getting more interesting contracts that were actually a pleasure to work on. I had been in fight or flight mode for so long that when the survival instinct died down, coding seemed to feel like a natural thing to do again and it was much easier to get in the zone. It was like picking up a good book after not reading for a few years. It had never occurred to me that clients had been going through this exact scenario in reverse thousands of times around the world, had felt frustrated and arrived in a similar place.

    I really wish someone could have told me all of this, but I probably wouldn’t have heard it anyway. And in fairness, I made a lot of mistakes, for example after my six month contract last year at a higher rate, I went back down to $30/hr thinking that I had to do that to get seen. It wasn’t the case at all though, and trying to beat the laws of physics just set me back again. So I went back to my current rate and things have been good. At some point I will probably raise my rate again because I’m noticing that the gun.io contracts are priced higher than I’ve been charging (probably due to location) and I need to plan for the future, having a family etc. Also writing this out now, it sounds a little out there, so I want to emphasize that it’s just the same programming any of us have been doing. I spend 80% of my time scouring the web for the answers, mostly on stack overflow, and 20% of my time actually typing. I normally accomplish one item on my todo list per day, maybe two or three if they are small. And I’ve come to terms with the fact that any estimate I make must be tripled, so that what I think will take two weeks will actually take six. That’s been a bit of a blessing in disguise though, because I know that to actually finish something in two weeks, it means I can’t write much code. It puts the emphasis on finding open source projects that do what’s needed, or wiring up the logic in Interface Builder (finding whatever run of the mill solution works with Apple’s human interface guidelines, instead of trying to code around the issue). Also I keep a large notes file, for example tips like “~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles” contains Xcode’s provisioning profiles, so when I’m using a client’s developer credentials I can trash mine and not spending hours trying to get things working that should already work. If you can get to a good setup and know that you can deliver, it makes it a lot easier to bid. So go ahead and try for some smaller/easier contracts at first and if you find you are finishing ahead of schedule, spend the extra time making it top notch for the client. Someone might hear about it through the grapevine and look you up. It helped me a lot to stop thinking about competing with other contractors, or even just satisfying the client, but instead imagine the end user and what they will get out of the work. I think that’s about it, but I wouldn’t want to leave out the fact that having a cool game in my profile and a few lets just say “interesting” blog posts probably helped as much as anything. Those are somewhat based on luck though and wouldn’t be much to talk about without the fundamentals. Also follow your nose a bit if you know someone in the business. I’m a bit isolated out here and I could have saved a lot of time if I lived in more of a tech city. If you do your homework and also put yourself out there, things will work out.

  2470. Some young adults disconnecting with 'dumbphones' 2014-03-25 18:33:36 netcan
    It feels a bit off chopping and quoting a PG essay on his site but this bit stayed with me. I may have been thinking along those lines when I read it:

    "the world will get more addictive in the next 40 years than it did in the last 40… …as the world becomes more addictive, the two senses in which one can live a normal life will be driven ever further apart. One sense of "normal" is statistically normal…

    …someone trying to live well would seem eccentrically abstemious in most of the US. That phenomenon is only going to become more pronounced. You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly..."

    …People commonly use the word "procrastination" to describe what they do on the Internet. It seems to me too mild to describe what's happening as merely not-doing-work. We don't call it procrastination when someone gets drunk instead of working.

    … Sounds pretty eccentric, doesn't it? It always will when you're trying to solve problems where there are no customs yet to guide you.

    - http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html

    This topic is very fertile for insight, personal or general. Most people would probably figure something out if they started writing about it. I think the crux is that surprisingly little of what we do is deliberate, and underexamined. Your choice of university or job might have been a grand crossroads choice that you made deliberately but many more choices are not. Impactfulness isn't really the trigger for deliberation in most cases, immediate commitment is. Choosing one book over another only impacts a few hours and a few dollars. A decade of book choices affects your personality, the things you think about and the way you talk.

    Many of our major maladies and deficiencies are related these undeliberate choices. I agree with PG on his insights about technology and "accelerating addictiveness" and the distillation of less addictive predecessors." Even more insightful is the idea that we can't rely on society and culture to guide us in the right direction concerning new things.

    That's probably where these dumbphone people are coming from. Sensing that there are cumulative bad choices related to carrying around a smartphone and making a deliberate choice to avoid them.

  2471. I am a successful software dev but I have a serious drinking problem 2014-03-28 19:09:01 skore
    > [...] I don't think my post adds anything useful to this discussion [...]

    After talking to a friend of mine about his issue and how it reminded me of my own struggles, I tweeted the following:

    > "I get stuck browsing reddit and I hate myself for it". Consider that the problem may not be reddit. The problem may be you hating yourself. [0]

    Procrastination is often a lightning rod. Try working on the lightning part of it instead of blaming the rod that may actually be saving your life from spiralling further into darkness.

    [0] https://twitter.com/skore_de/status/425743423211962368

  2472. I am a successful software dev but I have a serious drinking problem 2014-03-28 19:25:33 Jetrel
    Nah, even blind drunk, I've been able to write bulletproof, complicated code. Stuff that checks out the next day as perfectly fine - furthermore, stuff that I can remember the entire thought process behind. It differs from person to person; some people simply can't think or remember clearly at all when drunk, some other people have a "Ballmer Peak" https://xkcd.com/323/ - I'm not sure why, but I think it might have to do with mild amounts of alcohol relaxing their mental processes and helping them get over certain mental hangups that trip them up, normally. Other people have a Ballmer Plateau, where the alcohol allows them to enter a meditative state of complete and utter mental focus, allowing them to be fully lost in their work, and to work at 100% capacity as long as the buzz lasts. Sort of a working "trance", if you will, freeing them from all procrastination.

    I suspect this is a large part of the allure for many ADHD-types; the freedom from procrastination is something they're afraid they can't otherwise achieve.

    I know this sort of thing is the case in a lot of fields which require similar "non-procrastinative focus for hours on end". Writers, artists, animators, musicians - all of these have tons of people who struggle to knuckle down and put in long hours without a buzz going. Stephen King talked about this a lot in his autobiography - I could quote a lot of other anecdotes from other people, but his really had a personal effect on me.

    -

    I struggled with this myself (I drank for maybe 6 years in/after college, and I drank pretty hard for a few of them). It sucks because I can't recommend anything to help anyone; what worked for me was not "actionable".

    What cracked it for me was when the enjoyment lost its edge; over time it just got harder and harder to hit that 'sweet spot' of the perfect alcohol buzz, and the hangovers got crummier and crummier. Finally just ... deep down, subconsciously, I was gut-reacting to the prospect of a drink with more anxiety than anticipation. That was the end; I just lost the will to try, from too much associative-emotions of pain and fatigue investing themselves in the idea of drinking. Just like that. I didn't even have to go cold-turkey; I have a drink every few months, and even just a couple drinks leaves me feeling just "crummy" enough the next day that this emotional association won't go away, and it seems to have quieted (almost) all the urges to drink I used to have. I have no fear, whatsoever, of falling off the wagon because when I do drink, I no longer feel that unstoppable compulsion to take my buzz even higher - that alone was the element that made me an alcoholic, and it's gone.

    I'm happy to say I'm cured forever ... but goddamn I wish I could give that to other people.

  2473. I am a successful software dev but I have a serious drinking problem 2014-03-28 22:43:46 twobits
    "As another poster mentioned, addiction is about getting away from some kind of unbearable inner pain"

    Could you please give ideas how to id that pain?

    To be personally specific, my mother never told me positive things, always comparing me to some perfect ideal, and I also was beaten up for not good grades. These seem a "perfect" explanation from what I've read, but still I don't really see them as the cause of my procrastination, addictions, and feeling tired, sometimes down, and with no energy. ..So, any ideas how to id my pain, if I have one? Thanks.

  2474. Show HN: HackerNews as default tab (chrome extension) 2014-03-29 01:06:35 andreasklinger
    hey guys

    "It's like Hackernews but for tabs"

    As a friday afternoon hack i build a little extension that shows the latest of HN in your default tab of chrome.\nHope you like it - it's a genius way to start procrastinating ;)

    Let me know what you think!

    Also if you are applying to the SummerBatch - all the best :)

  2475. Show HN: HackerNews as default tab (chrome extension) 2014-03-29 01:35:06 jkbr
    Nice hack, I really see the pro-procrastination potential ;)

    I find even the default tab too distracting and so one of my favourite extensions is Empty New Tab Page:

    https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/empty-new-tab-page...

  2476. Screw stigma. I’m coming out. 2014-03-29 02:52:51 Jtsummers
    It depends on the why. Using michaelochurch's classifications.

    Psycopathic: I break the agreement because I want to do what I want to do.

    Anti-psycopathic (particularly for the manic/hypomanic phase): I break the agreement because my brain is creating thousands of ideas a minute, I'm churning out code, I've solved 20 problems that we'd been having just this morning, but none of them are my assigned task(s). It's almost a compulsion, and not one driven from personal want. I don't want to delay the actual work, or procrastinate, but my brain keeps focusing on all the wrong (for work) things.

    EDIT: Another fun bit is the after effect. After that spirited creative period, you realize what you've neglected and it feeds the part of the mind pushing you into depression as guilt.

  2477. I am a successful software dev but I have a serious drinking problem 2014-03-29 09:14:09 skore
    Say you are working on a project, but you can't seem to make progress. At some point, you tab over and read HN or reddit for a while.

    Now you have two choices: A) Hate yourself for it. B) Not hate yourself for it.

    Lightning struck - you were unable to continue working. There are a number of ways to deal with that, a number of lighting rods to take away the pain from the impact. Some work better than others. Some might even make more sense than others. Procrastinating may not make the most sense.

    But the problem is not that you were procrastinating, the problem is that you couldn't continue to work. In procrastinating, you were coping. Your brain told you in rather strong terms: "This is currently not working out and there is no way this is going to get better if we continue staring at it. So let's do something else for a little while."

    What you should not do is hate yourself for setting up a lightning rod. Because hating yourself does not increase your chances of being productive. Most of the time what it does is the exact opposite - you're simply increasing the pressure for the next time you get stuck on something. The higher the pressure, the higher the chance that you will grab a coping mechanism from the lower shelves of your arsenal.

    It's a cycle of self loathing that only has one out: Stop punishing yourself for not succeeding and instead figure out ways to make it more likely to succeed. Hating yourself is easy, hating yourself for browsing reddit is particularly easy. What's hard is helping yourself to enjoy yourself.

  2478. Ask HN: What is the difference between a junior and senior developer? 2014-03-30 05:29:40 iSnow
    >Caring about the 'boring stuff': release management. configuration management. proper continuous integration. simplifying your build steps. cleaning up hairy code or removing redundant files and gunk from older projects.

    Sigh careful there. I just got the evil eye from my boss for doing just that.

    Only care about this kind of maintenance and future-proofing if you work in a tech-savvy company. In other environments where the suits have no understanding of things like technical debt and the value of maintaining a high quality, they will see this as procrastination.

  2479. Challenge HN: Keep lame April Fools' gags off the front page 2014-04-01 17:22:08 lifthrasiir
    I was also keeping an eye on HN (mostly because, well, my country has seen the April Fools' Day hours before US and I was procrastinating sigh) and the trend so far was out of my expectation. I first thought that the moderators are working very hard to keep jokes out of the front page, but after some hours I started to think that the community keeps posting lots of signals in order to combat higher-than-normal noises.

    Given my observation and the circumstance that you have posted the original post in the middle of April Fools' Day over the globe, I thought your post was quite inappropriate and it would challenge trolls instead, hence the flagging (as a substitute for downvote). I appreciate your concern and thank you for your service, but please keep it mind that not only moderators are concerning.

  2480. Working From Home? Here's an Extra Shot of Focus 2014-04-02 23:43:01 muriithi
    Is procrastination as common in other fields like engineering, accounting, marketing etc when compared to programming?

  2481. Working From Home? Here's an Extra Shot of Focus 2014-04-02 23:49:31 pdevr
    What I have learnt is that as long as the work involves non-deterministic processes, it will cause mental drain. So, there is more chance of procrastination.

    Along with this, if the task is large, there is a higher risk of procrastination.

  2482. Working From Home? Here's an Extra Shot of Focus 2014-04-03 00:48:06 rjfarley
    As someone who worked in business strategy / analytics, I can say that procrastination does occur, but it's probably a bit harder to get away with.

    You generally have to give frequent updates, with a predefined deliverable. It's often a series of sprints, vs deliver this in 2 weeks. If you don't deliver something - which happens all the time for unforseen reasons - you generally make everyone aware of the delay and what caused it. So, you can only procrastinate so much before you run out of excuses.

  2483. A nation of slaves 2014-04-04 00:21:15 Dewie
    Isn't a lot of that productivity exactly because of all those technologies (and more)? Then how does it make sense to stop using all of those things in order to work less? The Internet helps a knowledge worker to be productive (also enables some procrastination, but oh well). Is canceling your Internet subscription and consulting your 20 volume, 10 year old encyclopedia a benefit? Same goes for cell phones and cars.

    And when you have all those things, also using them at home makes sense.

  2484. A nation of slaves 2014-04-04 00:30:28 habosa
    The discussion here (http://libcom.org/library/phenomenon-bullshit-jobs-david-gra...) which is linked from the original post is, imo, more interesting and thought provoking.

    I think most people can immediately identify with the idea of "working" 40 hours while really only doing 15 hours of hard work and 25 hours of paper pushing and procrastinating. Maybe not in your current job but almost certainly in some job you once held.

    I think this is a product of work culture. There are, at almost every halfway useful company, a number of truly busy people. These people have 40 hours of things to do every week, or at least need 40 hours to properly instruct their subordinates. However it is often the case that they only really need 15h of hard work from each subordinate. The issue is that it's not culturally acceptable to say to your boss "I just did all you need from me this week in a few hours, I'm going to the beach now". So such a worker faces the choice of either speaking up and asking for more work, or dragging out the minimal work they have to do until it takes an "acceptable" amount of time. Since time is our most valuable asset the culture of a company is considered fair when people are giving relatively equal time sacrifices to the task at hand.

    I know I have been lucky enough to have a manager that was not offended if I finished all of my work early and left, but 99% of people never have that luxury. It's psychological, most people don't want others to get off easy.

  2485. My low-paying, early-morning, exertion-requiring job 2014-04-05 00:32:50 yawgmoth
    I don't think this is surprising at all. You're brought up through primary/secondary education where there is a very definite requirement of when and where to be. College hits and that requirement is softened, and procrastination works out a-okay for all sorts of people. Finally, you land a tech job with flex hours and where remote is okay - suddenly you have to exercise self control in a manner that hasn't ever mattered before.

    While it seems to me that the 'ideal' (hugely qualified and highly subjective, that word) answer is to practice that self-control (and with that, go through the ups and downs of succeeding and failing at exercising it), the solution that Jesse has found is effective and doesn't have too much overhead. I like it.

  2486. Ask HN: Depressed Engineer again needs help 2014-04-05 10:31:40 shubhamjain
    You can read all self-help advice in the world regarding procrastination. You can create lists, mark "X"s on calendars, prioritize, promodo or whatever but in the end, the motivation has to come from within. To draw a perfect analogy, I read a post about how one guy suffering from heroin abuse, one day just decided to quit seeing the company he was in. You can join the best de-addiction center but still the motivation to quit has to come from within.

    See the problem is just in getting started, once you start and get excited with small success you can beat the "instant gratification monkey". There is no magic solution to procrastination I am afraid. Believe me, I have learned it the hard way. You have to learn to prioritize things in life. Do you want to be one of those middle-aged fatso who regret everyday of their life?

  2487. Ask HN: I am a good developer but have a serious gaming addiction 2014-04-05 15:51:18 mundanevoice
    Try working with someone who motivates you. Do some pair programming. You might want to go out, work from coffee shops and probably get a gym/swimming subscription too.

    The key of beating procrastination is keep your day eventful and focussed on tasks you have to do.

  2488. Ask HN: I am a good developer but have a serious gaming addiction 2014-04-05 15:55:03 samwilliams
    The following is just my opinion:

    This really is an issue of self control. Just commit yourself to doing the work, then do it! If you really cannot do that then it might be helpful to see a counsellor, although I am certainly no expert in that.

    I think it is common for people to have difficulty getting in to a long sitting of programming, but after a couple of hours things seem to get much easier and the next 8 go by without a blink. I sometimes find that having a coffee can help get me in the zone for a long programming session.

    A few random thoughts;

    - Try deliberately putting obstacles in the way of your game playing. Uninstall the games, delete your accounts. If you think you have a serious problem with playing video games, then you are unlikely to be able to maintain your play in moderation.

    - Try setting up multiple environments (dual boot, or 2 physical environments). One for work, one for play. That way you it is harder to get distracted by the games and there is a larger mental distinction between play time and work time.

    - You are not alone! The vast majority of people that will read your post here today will be procrastinating (myself included). It happens to (almost) all of us.

    Best of luck with your ventures!\nSam

  2489. Ask HN: I am a good developer but have a serious gaming addiction 2014-04-05 16:14:16 atmosx
    Hello,

    I'd stop playing 100% if I were in you until I have delivered the project. I would try to drop every bridge that tied me to any game that could distract me (uninstall/delete everything/throw away my subscriptions/accesses/etc). Then make sure I get a good rest. To get a good rest, you need to do some physical exercise, go out move get physically tired. Going for a slow-paced run or a walk helps me think, become mentally more focused on my goals, understand that really matters in my life and what doesn't. The time I wouldn't spend working, I would spend outside even alone wandering, taking long walks. I'll try to keep a very strict schedule, work the same amount of hours every day, eat at the same time, take a walk and get tired at the same time to adjust body, to an optimal circadian cycle (but mind you, I work/assimilate way better in morning hours, might be different for others).

    Think of it like going to the marine corps for a couple of weeks until you finish what you're suppose to be doing. THEN and only THEN try to fight this issue using more rational scheme: e.g. play games 3 hours per day. Not more, except for weekends, etc. There's no magic bullet you need to find your own.

    I was a huge procrastinator too. I'm not anymore, not in things that matter, but I'm not as strict as I would want to with my schedule either yet. What I see from myself is that failing to prepare is preparing to fail (Benjamin Franklin said the quote IIRC). That's my biggest advice, prepare your environment your body your mind for a fight. Also I like motivational speeches, maybe you should try yourself. I find this one to be extremely good[1], hits the nails on many issues I'd like to overcome, give it a go, might help you too.

    Good luck with everything, be strong!

    [1] http://www.briantracy.com/catalog/the-miracle-of-selfdiscipl...

  2490. Ask HN: I am a good developer but have a serious gaming addiction 2014-04-05 16:24:19 andersthue
    When I was most stressed out I could only work for 30 minutes a day the rest of the time I would procastinate.

    For me it was my brain's way of telling me that what I were doing to myself was bad.

    I ended up running from the bad business relationship I was in and then I used two years to find my way in life.

    Whenever i procastinate I belive it is my brain trying to tell me that what I am doing is not something that is "me". Sometimes I have to do it anyway (paying the bills, going to the dentist) but often it is something where I actually need to do things a little different to find hapiness in what I am doing.

    Do I make sense?

  2491. Ask HN: I am a good developer but have a serious gaming addiction 2014-04-05 16:31:38 chacham15
    Something that works well for me is having an inspirational source. I purposely didnt say "a motivational source" because that tends to lead to productivity type solutions which never work for me. Inspirational works a lot better for me because I get really motivated to work when I see what amazing things others have done because I want to do amazing things as well. What is my number one source for inspirational material? YCombinator Startup School: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcefcZRL2oaA_uBNeo5UOWg . Whenever I recognize that I'm procrastinating, I watch a video (plus there are always new things to learn from rewatching old videos).

  2492. Ask HN: I am a good developer but have a serious gaming addiction 2014-04-05 16:57:03 chipsy
    Consider your whole life at a distance. It probably isn't "gaming is making me procrastinate" so much as "something about my existence is still unbalanced, and gaming lets me get away from it." It is a quiet, long-term struggle to figure this out, and nobody can tell you at this point what exactly is wrong.

    Start off by recalling that your expectations have to be tuned around what actually happens when you work at home vs. what happens when you have butt-in-chair office hours. You're only going to have a very few "productive" hours each day, where you write code and tests and make visible changes, and they come in unpredictable lumps. Coming into this realization can make you feel extremely guilty at first and make the problem worse if you don't accept it and give yourself realistic schedules to compensate.

    You'll get pulled along a lot more with people relationships - clients, teammates, etc. can all motivate you through the boring bottlenecks. And having friends, of course; if you aren't socializing, you can fall apart pretty fast. Let your client know that you underestimated your productivity; you can probably fix things up if you make a schedule that is implicitly planned around what you want out of your life.

  2493. Ask HN: I am a good developer but have a serious gaming addiction 2014-04-05 17:04:03 captain_mars
    Wow. I was thinking of writing a similar post just two days ago. I am almost the same as you; I have been struggling with procrastination for almost 20 years now, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.

    Some quick notes about what I have understood:

    * I am depressed. I have EVERY symptom of chronic depression listed here: http://www.webmd.com/depression/guide/chronic-depression-dys...

    However, I don't know whether I procrastinate because I am depressed, or whether I am depressed because I procrastinate.

    * Procrastination is a way of avoiding pain - the effort required in "work".

    * Procrastination itself is addictive: it gives instant pleasure instead of the pain of "honest work". And the person procrastinating intellectually knows that it is bad for them, but once they are truly addicted to it, they are unable to stop.

    * Procrastination is a habit, and habits can be changed.

    * Habits are just patterns of behavior that we have memorized in our sub-conscious minds, so that we don't have to think about performing a certain action, or taking a particular decision, over and over again. It is a labor-saving device for the mind. If we had to think anew about every action we do / every decision we take, we would quickly get tired. But once an action or decision become a habit, we don't have to think about it; it just happens automatically. That's a great energy saver, if the actions / decisions are "good" for us, but can be life-destroying if the actions / decisions are "bad" for us.

    * Habits can be changed. First, mentally review what you will do the next time you are in a "moment of choice" - such as sitting in front of your computer. Resolve to do your client work instead of playing a game. Actually visualize doing that: ignoring the urge to play a game, calming yourself until the urge subsides, and then calmly doing the "right thing (TM)" - opening up your IDE and coding.

    Next, when you really are in the moment of choice, really do the above. To elaborate: You will feel the urge to fire up a game. At that moment, tell yourself that you have been down that road before, and you know where it leads. Tell yourself that it is ruining your life, and you won't accept it any more. That you will do the "right thing" (TM) no matter what. At this moment, you may have to stop everything and just breathe slowly and deeply until the "urge" to play the game subsides and you are calm again. Once you are calm, it is easy to take the right decision.

    The first few times you do this, you may find it difficult, or almost impossible. But trust me, it can be done. And the more often you do thins (calm yourself until you can do the Right Thing), the easier it will become. You see, this will slowly become your new habit, and the old habit will fade away because you will no longer be reinforcing it.

    All the best! Write to me: tech.rohit@gmail.com

  2494. Ask HN: I am a good developer but have a serious gaming addiction 2014-04-05 17:44:07 ifben
    A friend alerted me to this post because he thought it was me. I too have (or had, just left) a well paid contracting gig at bigco and have struggled with computer game addiction since I was 13 (now in my early 20's). My addictions are Dota 2 and online poker. I've long since lost count of the number of times I've stayed up all night or until 7 or 8 am.

    The procrastination, feeling like I've gotten nothing done over a long period of time, and switching to a computer game when bored or hitting a sticking point are all things I can relate to. It becomes a life of mediocrity, which I can't stand.

    Unfortunately there is no easy solution. Addiction is a strong force, and it takes an equally strong force to overcome it. Things I do that help:

    - Uninstall all games and get rid of any mouses or other hardware that are used for games.

    - Tell close friends and family about what you're doing. Have social accountability.

    - Find other activities that pull you away from your addictions. I push myself to regularly work out and get a good night's sleep.

    Ultimately I know that every time I feed my addiction, it grows stronger. It's either being fed or slowly dying.

  2495. Ask HN: I am a good developer but have a serious gaming addiction 2014-04-05 18:56:18 298219640
    I almost dropped out of university as I couldn't stay focused on my studies, instead I was compulsively playing Starcraft and Age of Empires. Fast forward a few years an I was struggling to keep my contracting business and the compulsive distraction is the internet. Things are getting better now, slowly.

    The biggest thing that has helped me is a book - "The Now Habit" by Neil Fiore. Get it, read it, apply it. Seriously.

    I've found my procrastination tends to come form putting work ahead of myself (my time with friends/family, my health, my hobbies, etc). The more time I schedule for myself, the less I procrastinate. And yes, you need to schedule your "mine time" as much as you schedule your "sold time".

    Also, be wary that the procrastination can be a symptom of depression. If so, that's what you need to focus on first.

  2496. Brain Freeze: The Science of Procrastination (And How to Fight Back) 2014-04-06 03:11:00 ccallebs
    This is one of the better articles I've read regarding procrastination. It echoes a point that really hit home for me when reading recently[1] -- you don't have to FEEL like doing something to actually do it. This is something I was guilty of.

    I would wait until I was in the "zone" before starting work on a personal project or tackling a big task at work. Now, I can recognize when I'm doing that and subsequently avoid it.

    [1] The Antidote - Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking (I recommend this book heartily)

  2497. Ask HN: I am a good developer but have a serious gaming addiction 2014-04-06 06:20:50 dahdum
    Cancel your apartment internet.

    It will suck. You'll be reading your emails on your phone, you can't Netflix, you can't torrent, you can't play LoL/Diablo, you can't do much of anything anymore. You'll get home and be immediately bored.

    This won't treat the problem, but the symptom, and will get you going to the co-working space or just Starbucks. It's like 5x harder to procrastinate at a co-working space than at home, at least for me. Bonus is feeling better having showered and dressed, and gotten out of the house to a semi-social environment.

  2498. Ask HN: Got hired to build a site/ what should I do now besides give a proposal? 2014-04-06 09:41:26 philiphodgen
    I am a lawyer.

    I have hired freelancers to build websites.

    The first rule of deals like this is to not over-engineer stuff.

    If this contract is for under $1,000, create some arbitrary project milestones. Get some money up front whether you quote a fixed price or hourly. (Hint. Don't quote hourly.). Get another payment midway through. Leave about 20% at the back end when you deliver.

    You get cash up front because it is a psychological test of your customer. The way your customer responds when you say "Give me $100x now" is the way you will be treated forever. If there is negotiation, delay, etc. that is what you will experience forever. You have been warned. You will ignore the warnings. You will experience pain. You will learn. :-)

    Make the milestones things that you control. Do not tie it to customer approval or decision. Sometimes people procrastinate. That delays your payment.

    The contract can be simple. Bullet points. Signed by both sides because you're not going to sue if they stop paying you. And if they stop paying you then you are going to stop work.

    The value of WIP should be something you can walk away from in order to fire a bad customer. This is your psychological threshold. Start playing with the idea that you only put forward enough work so they owe you $1,500. It will hurt to walk away but you won't die. And if you walk away from someone in this circumstance you are avoiding far worse results. The best decisions are sometimes the jobs you didn't take on. But we make mistakes so the second-best decisions are the assholes we fired quickly.

    Welcome to owning your own life. :-)

    EDIT: I guess I should mention that I follow this philosophy in my business with six-figure jobs. It isn't for small jobs only.

  2499. Ask HN: Depressed Engineer again needs help 2014-04-08 07:06:26 canatan01
    What do you mean, when you say "I am depressed"? You mean the clinical/medical term described on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_(mood) ? If so, go to a psychiatrist immediately!

    But if you just mean you are unhappy with your current situation, I would say (like the advice you already got) talk to your boss. Did you do that?\nIf you are a procrastinator, why not start a side project you feel passionate about. Apparently you can work fast, so I would suggest doing more (like side projects or learn new programming stuff). Seems silly advice maybe, but I think it might help you.\nBut, if you really don't like your job, don't stay just because you like the company or the colleagues. You can see the colleagues after work and in weekends.

  2500. Write Code Every Day 2014-04-11 03:22:18 iSnow
    In the long run, this is unhealthy.

    Yes, it makes you more productive, but what if you fall in love, get sick, have a child...? Then you feel guilty about not catering to your side projects and guilt breeds procrastination.

    I learned how to break down work into small pieces and rather finish one small piece and then call it a day instead of leaving something half-working for the next day. Because of this, I left projects dormant for 3 months and then picked them up again.

    Granted, my side-projects are for-fun and not for-money, that makes it easier...

  2501. Write Code Every Day 2014-04-11 03:42:15 jeresig
    Yeah, that's always the hardest part. Messing around on HN/Reddit/Twitter/etc. and/or watching TV - it's so easy to not even realize that you're procrastinating. I find that when I realize what I'm doing I can usually extract myself and get to work - the hard part is just getting to that point!

  2502. Write Code Every Day 2014-04-11 04:41:25 jmnicolas
    Yup as silly as it looks like, HabitRPG is helping me a lot to fight procrastination.

  2503. Write Code Every Day 2014-04-11 07:20:54 tieTYT
    This is a good article. I believe this idea comes from Jerry Seinfeld^1.

    Here's an article that really complements the submission: http://start.jcolemorrison.com/how-i-fight-procrastination/ It's titled "How I fight Procrastination" and gives advice on how to break up tasks into day-sized activities.

    Finally, I want to say I personally disagree with the OP's 2nd point:

        2. It must be useful code. No tweaking indentation, no code \n    re-formatting, and if at all possible no refactoring. \n    (All these things are permitted, but not as the exclusive work of the day.)\n
    \nI've noticed that when I'm really tired or "not feelin' it" sometimes I just want to do something that takes 10 minutes so I can keep the chain going. When I spend a day (ie: 10 minutes) refactoring some code, I don't lose my motivation to work on my project tomorrow. It's breaking the chain makes me lose motivation and if I forced myself to write something "useful" on a day I don't feel like it, I may just end up breaking the chain instead. It's of the utmost priority to lower the bar to work on your project and rule 2 is an obstacle to that. Plus, I take mild offense to the idea that refactoring is not considered useful :)

    And, if I had this rule I think I'd avoid refactoring a lot of code that needs it. I'd spend more effort squeezing that square feature into that round hole if refactoring "didn't count".

        ^1: http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret

  2504. Ask HN: How to fix procrastination? 2014-04-11 07:31:50 ekimlol
    I think there is a healthy amount of procrastination we need as individuals - it's our brain taking a break. Also there is a lot of stuff happening in our subconscious mind that we aren't aware of, and these "breaks" enable us to solve problems without really knowing it. How often have you had that "I get it now!" moment? Or when something finally clicked without you really having to do much?

    There are people out there who don't procrastinate as much as others, but I think you'll find that you procrastinate as much as you need it.

    Sure this is one type of procrastination, however there are other types which include not doing things because you're being lazy (this is hard to define if you need a break), or your attention span or concentration levels are just not there.

    I used to procrastinate and I still do. If I wanted something so bad, I'd get it however it hasn't affected me to the point where I can't accomplish anything - I am just lazy.

    EDIT: Also you have to think about your productivity levels for the hours you worked? Were you extremely productive?Perhaps you hit your limit? I guess overall, the important thing here is that you've recognised something you want to change and perhaps the actions you take will enable you to work more efficiently in the future.

  2505. Ask HN: How to fix procrastination? 2014-04-11 07:37:27 conkrete
    I've never seen a one off fix for something as complex as procrastination. Usually the "treatment" is taylored to the individual.

    Is it possible this is a physiological health issue (like ADHD)? I don't really condone medicine unless absolutely necessary. Doing exercise right before work can sometimes help relax and keep you focused.

    Most studies tend to point to the prefrontal cortex as the culprit for procastincation. It seems the more you stay on task, the easier it is over time. Like exercising a muscle.

    But certainly all animals, once fed, become lazy. It's not just humans. All I can say is good luck and don't stop the good fight against scumbag brain.

  2506. Write Code Every Day 2014-04-11 13:19:08 firebones
    There's a time and a place for both.

    If you are a constant procrastinator, forming good habits, even on trivial stuff, reconnects you with why you need to do the work, and prepares you for getting started.

    But after awhile, you find that you're just working, and need to produce. So it switches to deliverables.

    My only life hack addition: instead of calling it a day, pick what you are going to set for your next completion goal before you quit. This was a Hemingway hack to make sure he could get up the next morning and start writing immediately. I've found that even the most informal mental commitment the day before solves the starting problem and ends up producing more positive streaks. It is great at overcoming (and preventing) any kind of "block".

  2507. Write Code Every Day 2014-04-11 21:58:25 Karunamon
    Mhh, read the article a bit more carefully. Specifically:

    Minimum viable code. I was forced to write code for no less than 30 minutes a day.

    30 minutes a day? That's not exactly a huge quality of life problem or a work addiction. That's keeping a useful skill up to par, the same way I'd expect a good musician to practice every day.

    Besides, when you're a serial procrastinator, tactics like these can help you break out of that rut.

  2508. Ask HN: Idea Sunday 2014-04-14 08:18:38 neil_s
    I keep each project in a different desktop (using Dexpot on Windows or Spaces on Mac). Rather than opening and closing applications, I simply switch desktops. The context switch cost decreases significantly.

    An added advantage is a clear separation between work and play, its harder to sneak open a procrastination tab when you have to explicitly switch to the procrastination desktop to do it.

  2509. Ask HN: How do you get and stay in the "zone"? 2014-04-15 22:42:12 phillmv
    Routines.

    Flaubert once said, "Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work."

    Go to bed at roughly the same time. Get up at roughly the same time. Eat breakfast (prevents sugar crashes later in the day). Do some light exercise when you get out of bed (7 min workout, holla) and then meditate. Do actually intense exercise once or twice a week. Snack a few hours after your lunch.

    Take care of your body and keep it prepared for the work you have ahead of you.

    When you get to work, plan out the rest of your day. Write down what you intend to do (you get a lot better with being realistic with this list) and split it out. Don't open HN while you wait for your tests to run. Timebox everything else.

    Also, take regular breaks. Get up, stretch, go for a walk, read for a bit.

    Procrastination I find is closely linked to mood, so make sure you've taken care of that as well.

    I do 80% of the above and I still have procrastination spirals but it's gotten a lot better.

  2510. Ask HN: How do you get and stay in the "zone"? 2014-04-16 00:52:37 orky56
    You're definitely not alone. It goes by different names, energy, motivation, attention but in the end it's something we need more of to get everything done. Here's an ordered checklist of how to improve your situation (https://www.quora.com/Life-Advice/What-are-some-effective-wa...)

    One way to beat this system is through pacing. This is by working towards short breaks (https://medium.com/the-productive-self/7bdf1f026431) or towards time limits to prevent procrastination (https://medium.com/p/ee13c1600b6b). I wrote these posts after hearing about these situations again and again. I am currently working on Catalist, a tool that effectively deals with these situations of task and flow management (http://signup.catalist.me/).

  2511. Raising a moral child 2014-04-16 01:15:55 vanderZwan
    I'm sorry, but what you are saying just does not match my personal experience, nor what the empirical studies suggest, which is the exact opposite:

    > When a child is praised more substantially for trying hard, you get things like staying up all night studying for a test. When you emphasize being smart and not needing to study, the child is more likely to push themselves such that they can land good grades without needing to study.

    The way I've heard and personally experienced it, kids who get praised for being smart are more likely to procrastinate ("eh, I already get that anyway"), then try to cram everything in in the last minute.

    > And the same thing applies to sports. If you emphasize effort, you might get a child practicing repeatedly something that they are already good at.

    Similarly, studies suggest that by praising talent, you teach kids to stick to what they are good at immediately ("that's what I'm talented at"), instead of putting in the effort to learn stuff that they don't get immediately.

    EDIT: Perhaps it depends on whether you praise below-average, average and smarter-than-average kids?

  2512. Raising a moral child 2014-04-16 02:12:00 Taek
    I don't mean to de-emphasize effort, it's still important to try hard, but I've seen a lot of cases where effort was focused on as the only thing that counts. For the smartest kids, that's not usually where the parental emphasis lies.

    It depends on how you emphasize being smart. If you emphasize overall smartness, the kid will be more self-conscious about their weak points, which is what I wanted to convey. If you emphasize particular moments where they are good, they will be encouraged to repeat that specifically. It's a difference between emphasizing being good at [subset like shooting hoops] vs being good at [basketball as a whole]. Academically, the emphasis should be on the grades instead of on being good at taking tests. Or if you're more high-level, the emphasis should be on learning what's going to be most useful to you later in life as opposed to specifically effort or grades.

    As for procrastination, in my experience the smarter kids procrastinate substantially more. But for the most part this doesn't come back and bite them. They leave exactly as much time as they need to pull off the good grade and most of the time it works out.

  2513. Ask HN: How do you get and stay in the "zone"? 2014-04-16 04:28:44 jcampbell
    I've struggled with procrastination for years, and a few months ago started using Jerry Seinfeld's "Don't Break the Chain" method[1]. This works for me:

    - Prep: Define my chain goals in a spreadsheet (like "work on project A at least one hour per day") with a row for each day to track the chain.

    - Execution: As soon as I sit down at the computer, start up a timer to track my work that is visible running right there below my screen, put on my headphones, and listen to Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain" on continuous loop.

    - Wrapup: Whenever I'm done working, log the time in my spreadsheet and mark the X to keep the chain going.

    Something about the timer running and the song playing just kicks me into gear. Usually after the first ten minutes or so, I'm in the zone pretty solidly and can even switch playlists if I'm so inclined (don't usually bother though because I'm usually just focused on the task at that point).

    The key is just starting and then the positive inertia takes over. So even if I only need to do 30 minutes to satisfy the chain, it usually lasts at least a couple hours once I'm on a roll.

    [1]http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-se...

  2514. HabitRpg: A habit building app that treats your life like a game 2014-04-20 02:29:20 heavenlescar
    This is a really great web app and it helped me a lot on dealing with coping daily tasks and procrastination. Sadly, their android version was broken and unusuable, so I uninstalled it and just kept using the web version.

  2515. Raindrop.io – Smart Bookmarks 2014-04-20 02:44:25 mosselman
    "I did make the time to read some of these things, they were disappointingly insignificant."

    That is what I get with using Pocket. I put stuff in there that when I get around to reading I think "was THIS what I was keeping that browser tab open for all this time?"

    I think that we want to read those things because we are procrastinating doing something else. Like what I am doing with writing this comment :).

  2516. Go Fucking Do It 2014-04-21 02:19:30 ZenPro
    I have seen this a number of times but the money goes to a charitable cause instead.

    Oprah Winfrey also pioneered it via television.

    Not totally sure why a random stranger would forward you money for procrastinating but that does not mean they won't.

    In Europe anyone accepting transactions online is bound by Distance Selling Regulations which means they can demand their money back within 7 days, no questions.

    I would factor that little admin nightmare into your business/legal plan.

  2517. Go Fucking Do It 2014-04-21 03:25:41 riggins
    I can think of 2 options.

    1. Benevolent option: the money goes to the website but it goes back to the user after a year, less a fee (the website will also earn interest for that year so you'd get fee + interest income). Not only do you help people stop procrastinating but you also help them with a saving program.

    2. Devious option (and probably more commercially viable). the website takes the money but the website also runs a weekly lottery that pays out some fraction of the revenue collected.

  2518. Do Startups require less Capital to succeed than 10 years ago? 2014-04-22 17:04:45 QuadDamaged
    The costs tied to bootstraping / prototyping definitely went down in ten years, just by virtue of the technology evolving.

    There were no cheap github/docker/aws/RoR ten years ago. These tools are catalysts for developer productivity, although it can be argued that we now have even more tools that act as catalysts for developer procrastination.

  2519. Do You Procrastinate Because You’re Lazy? Or Because It’s in Your Genes? 2014-04-22 22:36:03 a3voices
    I procrastinate because why not? There's nothing I see as super important to achieve.

  2520. Ask HN:When will html 5 become the standard for mobile apps? 2014-04-23 00:07:09 moron4hire
    Thanks, that means a lot to me.

    I've toyed with the idea of using Markdown. As long as the formatting doesn't get in the way of the writing is the key. People have a real problem with focusing on the work that matters. It's really easy to procrastinate by doing busy-work like making sure you're using the right type of bullets for your lists.

    My original idea was to have formatting be a completely separate mode. But the more I think about the problem in general, I realize that at some point, it's impossible to 100% disassociate content from presentation. Markdown is probably the best compromise. Some other people have had success with writing full, going-to-print books through Markdown. It's certainly a better choice than a full WYSIWYG or GUI editor.

    Formatting is also one of those features that people think they need when they don't. Currently, you write into individual chapters, and the chapters get concatenated correctly to have page breaks and headers. There are many different types of books that need no more formatting than that, novels in particular. I'd rather spend time working on getting full ePub docs implemented (I can write HTML files to ZIP files right now, but haven't done much beyond that, more just need to read the spec and get it done at this point), or getting some of the flow-encouraging mini-games made. Or finally building a real server (this is all 100% client-side right now) so I can let people publish their writing directly to their own blog.

    I also need to spend some time in the marketing department. There is a lot to do. It's been just under a month since I threw away the work I was doing in Java (from a year and a half ago) and restarted in HTML5.

    I could certainly use some help ;)

  2521. My Quest to Build the Ultimate Music Player 2014-04-23 03:47:39 existencebox
    Hi darnimator,

    Your statement rings VERY TRUE to me as much as the original article, and there may be an opportunity here. I've spent some time (I'm sure not nearly as much as you have) hacking on this problem, but primarily from the library management aspect, and I lean on VLC plugins for play/streaming. This seems to mesh quite nicely with the sides of this that you touch; tagging and such are exactly the sort of problems I'd find most compelling, whereas I'm quite out of my league in the media aspects of it. (my biggest "pain points" were good integration of torrenting/a programmable pipeline for dealing with torrents, library organization, and various distributed features... less pain points I guess, and more things I found compelling enough to not procrastinate on hacking on.)

    I also have a job that eats my time, but if you would like to trade contact info, I'd be more than happy for a chance to pick the brain of someone who's been attacking this longer than I have, as well as potentially see what could come of it.

  2522. Project Naptha: a browser extension that enables text selection on any image 2014-04-23 04:59:08 atourgates
    Wow - this is amazing.

    Right this very moment (well, a few moments ago when I wasn't procrastinating on HN) I was in the midst of extracting data from a client's old website in preparation of creating a new website.

    A lot of that data is contained within images.

    From a few preliminary tests, I'm hugely impressed. This seems on-par with any other OCR software I've used, and the fact that it happens in realtime in the browser is amazing.

    I tried it on a piece of content I'd just had to type out, that was originally in an image. Typing out the content took about 10 minutes. Copying and pasting with Naptha, and then making some minor edits/corrections, did the same thing in about 2 minutes.

  2523. Why I threw away three Jawbone UPs, sold my Fitbit Flex and deinstalled Human 2014-04-24 08:11:34 dreeves
    I too am frustrated by the current selection of Quantified Self gadgets. My wishlist of features for a step counter:

    1. Self-charging. The Misfit Shine gets close by using a watch battery that lasts months.

    2. Self-syncing.

    3. API, of course, so it's easy to automatically do things with the data (like send it to http://beeminder.com !).

    4. Waterproof, so I don't have to remember to take it off in the shower.

    Basically I want something I can wear and never have to think about at all.

    More generally, I think what's missing (extreme bias warning) with Quantified Self is that it needs to evolve toward Programmable Self: http://strata.oreilly.com/2012/01/programmable-self-motivati...

    In other words, the point of collecting data about yourself should be to optimize yourself, especially fixing procrastination and other forms of akrasia like eating too much and moving too little. Sometimes just seeing your data is a nudge in that direction but in my opinion (did I mention my extreme bias as a cofounder of Beeminder) it mostly isn't.

  2524. Burnout Comes in Three Varieties 2014-04-24 08:33:39 TeMPOraL
    I feel like being stuck between the second and the third type of burnout. Honestly, even though coding was my passion since being 13 years old, I had serious troubles at every single programming job I took. My productivity always seems to be at 10% of what I expect from myself; every time I have to think about something I start feeling sleepy (and I need to sleep 8h/day just to be able to get anytthing done), and I procrastinate like you wouldn't believe.

    For the last two years I thought that maybe, just maybe, it was because I suck at coding and my work troubles are a symptom of me not being really into programming. And then, few months ago, I stared a completely pointless side project. Back came to me the passion and productivity. I can get more done in 1h for my side project that in 8h at my job. Through the last few months I gradually regained the faith in my own programming skills. I realized that I do indeed know how to code; it's that I just can't force myself to work on stuff I don't give a fuck about.

    I'd love to know what to do about this. I understand that it's easier to work on your own idea than on someone else's. But having like order of magnitude differences in productivity between my job and hobby project... this just feels wrong.

    </mind-dump>\n</drunk-posting>

  2525. Burnout Comes in Three Varieties 2014-04-24 09:51:01 andreyvit
    Sounds very much like myself (except that I'm a freelancer, so can procrastinate much easier). I'm still trying to solve it, but I found that some things help:

    1. A cardio workout. (Came highly recommended by a dear client of mine, and indeed significantly increases the amount of energy I feel during the day. Does not solve procrastination by itself, but helps with that sleepiness.)

    2. Pair programming. (This is a true deal breaker. Maybe we're just not created for solo work, and that's it?)

    3. Eating less, and less carbs in particular. (I've been diagnosed with insulin insensibility, and it really shows; I usually get very sleepy after eating.)

    4. Doing work you can be proud of, way before the deadline. Not always possible, but when it is, it can keep me going for a bit. Relax, take those extra few hours to make the code clean, polished and well-documented.

    In my case (and perhaps in yours as well), it's not really about work being boring or not. I had a very exciting side-project of mine, which is now selling on the Mac App Store for great profit, but I started to procrastinate on it after a few months as well.

    Feel free to email me to talk some more.

  2526. Irony is ruining our culture 2014-04-26 12:38:28 dfc
    During my 1L year while procrastinating for my Property final I came across an article Purdy wrote about Johnson v. M’Intosh.[1] It reminded me of that neat white book from long ago and I took the time to reread it. If you enjoyed the book when it came out I encourage you to reread it.

    [1]: Property and Empire: The Law of Imperialism in Johnson v. M’Intosh -- http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...

  2527. A Gossip App Brought My High School to a Halt 2014-04-29 05:33:53 pkfrank
    > So, I guess I'm most curious as to your motivations and expectations for CollegeACB when compared with the actual outcomes.

    I'll address CocaKoala's (similar) question here as well. First a little backstory: I "inherited" CollegeACB from the original creators who had grown weary from the moral quandaries of running the service and lacked the time/effort to expand the business. I was a very ambitious 18 year old college Freshman (now 24, a '12 grad) and contacted the owners asking to take over the site (they kept an equity stake and I did all the work + invested my own cash). I had seen how it was used at my alma mater-- mostly for "legitimate" secrets (IE: "I have an eating disorder and just regressed. Someone who's been through this-- help!") or community-type postings (IE: "What does one wear to Psi U's 'sex party'"). For the most part, it was fairly productive and mean-spirited comments were few and far-between and were generally removed through our auto-moderation features (something like 5+ "reports" would delete it automatically). It was also wildly popular; everyone on campus knew about "The ACB" and it was seen as lighthearted procrastination tool that everyone knew not too take seriously. Vile threads were dismissed as "trolls" and people looked at the platform somewhat fondly.

    I was happy to improve the technological experience, and had ideas about growing this slowly to other schools. I'll jump now to JuicyCampus below...

    > You mention usurping JuicyCampus, which had its fair share of negative criticism. Was your goal to replace/compete with JuicyCampus or was this an unfortunate side effect?

    JuiyCampus was always our biggest competitor. We were the upstart to their incumbent. In January 2009, a month after I took over CollegeACB, I learned that JuicyCampus was closing. Despite popular reports, it had nothing to do with the various threats of lawsuits (though there was some merit behind the anti consumer fraud suit, as they weren't deleting posts like they claimed to do in their TOS). I was able to put together a $10,000 deal within about 10 minutes of talking with Matt Ivester (JC CEO) for 2 months of their traffic. They actually gave me a 501 redirect.

    It was my intention to bring the "CollegeACB model" of legitimate secrets and productive use to the "raw masses" that would use JuicyCampus merely to slander and insult their peers. Clearly, I underestimated the difficulty in changing a mindset when hundreds-of-thousands of users already have a set agenda in their minds.

    We built in a robust moderation queue and I would spend several hours a day removing posts and manually replying to every removal request. Looking back, it was terribly inefficient, but still leaps better than JC (they never removed a post, to my knowledge).

    So my goal was to CHANGE the behavior of JC users. I was never successful.

    > What drove you to sell the site? Was your intent to turn a buck or did the content and the way the site was/is used eventually turn you off on being associated with it?

    Closely connected to the above answer. I had intended to change the spirit of the site, and convert libelous gossip into productive, anonymous-facilitated honest discussion. When I deemed that to be impossible, I began contemplating selling the site.

    It's worth noting that the site was very hard to monetize. Even at considerable scale from a great audience, we never made all that much money. The recent "side project" thread reveals that many people's "side projects" were earning much more than this seemingly-wildly-popular site.

    Anyway, I was approached by a buyer who indicated that it was his sole intention to "clean up" the site through productive discussion encouragement. In short, he was also wildly unsuccessful, and ended up re-branding the site and then closing it completely within a matter of months.

    > Hindsight is 20/20, and you mention not being proud of owning CollegeACB. How did you feel about it at the time, when the site was enormously popular?

    I was initially excited by the thrill of running a popular site; being a known personality around campus; doing media appearances and generally feeling like a tech badass. But that feeling faded when I began to recognize the corrosive nature of the site. The feelings that were terribly hurt. College experiences ruined. I was legitimately shaken by the fact that numerous people pulled out of college and/or were put into dangerous psychological situations because of the things written.

    I had contemplated closing the site completely and replacing it with a message to "respect your peers," but found a buyer before it came to that. It's now evidence of an "exit," and has been helpful in establishing my track record, but it's not something I usually bring up or tout unprompted.

    I'm now seeking retribution, and run a "student first" service in Texts.com, a free textbook exchange and price-comparison engine.

  2528. Ask HN: What's your writing process? 2014-04-29 08:47:21 akkartik
    My comfort zone when writing is short posts on no real schedule. As a result I have a couple of hundred outlines and fragments of posts that might well never get published, mostly because they require writing at greater length than I'm used to. But recently I've been pushing my own envelope by writing a series of longer (1500-2500 word) guest posts to an externally imposed deadline. My 'process' has been to:

    a) Agonize and procrastinate all day for several weekends,\nb) Somehow miraculously come up with an idea and write a lot,\nc) Circulate a first draft to a couple of friends that nobody understands,\nd) Use their comments to publish a much improved post that's still of questionable intelligibility.

    It's been a great experience even if just to help me clarify what's in my own head: http://www.ribbonfarm.com/blogging-residencies/#consensualhe...

  2529. Golygons and golyhedra 2014-05-01 21:03:43 mrcactu5

        A most delightful way to procrastinate is to \n    attempt the unsolved problems on MathOverflow.\n
    \nagreed

  2530. Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (May 2014) 2014-05-02 15:12:14 reneherse
    SEEKING WORK – Nashville, TN or Remote

    We’re a design and development team (two brothers) currently based out of Nashville, TN. We each have a broad range of skills, are effective communicators, skilled at collaborating remotely. We're available as a team or individually.

    DEVELOPMENT: Brian handles the development side of things. He works the full stack, including: JS, Node, ROR, PHP, MySQL, NoSQL, Mongo, SASS. He's pretty design savvy too.

    DESIGN: I'm Scott, a UX, UI, & product guy. I do most of my designing in the browser using SASS and HAML, with Fireworks, Sketch, Photoshop or Illustrator for graphic assets. I can hold my own with visual design and excel at product conception and engineering the user experience. My work includes a lot of softer skills as well: branding & logos, copy writing, sketching, wire framing, user stories, etc. I'm also open to full time employment, and relocating for the right opportunity.

    Our best portfolio pieces right now are probably our own side projects. While not finished yet, we'd be happy to demo them to interested parties. For now, we have a couple of snazzy prelaunch pages:

    http://mixstud.io A nascent startup: Audio production services for independent recording artists.

    http://fleur.io A To-Do list web app that helps you avoid procrastination and increase mindfulness.

    We're interested in working with folks to help create MVPs, web apps, or to just contribute where an extra hand is needed in design or development. We're both entrepreneurial at heart, and approach things with a founder's mindset.

    CONTACT:\ninfo [at] arenzdesign.com

  2531. The Fight (2012) 2014-05-04 15:15:08 xvedejas
    I think he means the tendencies which overtake us if we don't think deliberately about them, like procrastination. Procrastination is my worst instinct, and at times the biggest obstacle between myself and my goals.

  2532. Working from home 2014-05-07 02:49:20 Htsthbjig
    More than 10 years working from home.

    I really enjoy it. My advice is: find someone-partner with someone else that loves to do and is good at what you hate, and vive versa.

    If you find yourself procrastinating in some area of your work, you need to do this. Is usually means finding the opposite personality of you.

    E.g I love creative work but hate so much constant work doing the same thing over and over. Solution: There is people out there that loves to do the same thing over and over but hates getting out of their comfort zone.

    So this way I explore a new problem, I digest it, plan it with detail, then I give this to the other person to complete the job. She loves it, because something impossible becomes very easy to do once I told her all the steps.

    You can't do anything alone, you need a team. Study personality types, then go hunting for help.

  2533. Ask HN: HN addiction anyone? 2014-05-08 18:13:35 johnchristopher
    Dopamine bursts induced by information overload.

    Google for those keywords. Here's a broad overview of the topic from a pop-psy site:

    http://www.blog.theteamw.com/2009/11/07/100-things-you-shoul...

    http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-wise/201209/why-we...

    Might be worth googling for `procrastination` as well.

  2534. How to do the tasks you simply resent doing 2014-05-09 13:43:15 a3voices
    Just procrastinate them indefinitely until you feel they are necessary, and you will naturally do them.

  2535. Quora in the next YC batch 2014-05-10 16:31:14 rythie
    stack exchange = solve my problem

    quora = help me procrastinate

  2536. Ask HN: As an experienced dev, how do you learn a language/framework quickly? 2014-05-13 01:45:58 overgard
    Make something! Internal tool, something to scratch an itch, doesn't matter. Try to make something you'd know how to make in another language, but that will be challenging in your new one.

    Too often "studying" can be procrastination. Find a kernel of the language that's "just enough" and run with it.

    I used to try to read books, but I find for me it's much easier to use books as reference than as introduction. You find the corner cases in a language very quickly if you just move fast and break things.

  2537. How to get stuff done, automatically 2014-05-13 23:05:24 startupclarity
    I'm sure the irony of reading these sorts of blog posts isn't lost on you all. However, I do believe that some of these strategies and techniques can actually work. I even wrote about it on the post 'how to make time for your side-project'.

    The key is not just to break things down and to create tiny, regular actions. It's also to start. Most of us like to talk and talk and not actually do anything at all.

    This procrastination and hyperbolic discounting means that we often go for the quick fix rather than the ongoing journey to success. Starting and overcoming our own psychology is often the hardest part.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbolic_discounting

    http://www.startupclarity.com/blog/make-time-side-project/

  2538. I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee 2014-05-16 21:20:40 bestest
    I simply can't resist it, but alas, see what will happen to you if you code in emacs!

    On the serious note though, he did admit he enjoys procrastinating. Why would I help someone who never had and still does not have any motivation?

  2539. I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee 2014-05-16 21:22:16 KJasper
    The problem lies here: "well, i can only say i procrastinate"

  2540. I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee 2014-05-16 21:23:04 driverdan
    > why i didn't seek job all these years? well, i can only say i procrastinate and is ok living on a dime.

    Why would anyone give this guy money? It sounds like his money woes are all his fault. He's just begging online rather than begging in the street.

  2541. I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee 2014-05-16 21:26:11 seren
    If you are procrastinating that much, to the point you are on the verge of literally dying or starving, there is probably an underlying issue like social anxiety, depression, etc that is triggering the procrastination reaction as an avoidance mechanism. I am not sure he is really "enjoying" it, despite what he said. (I am not a psychologist but I play one on Internet.)

  2542. I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee 2014-05-16 21:38:00 quotha
    Procrastination is the soul rebelling against entrapment.\n-- N N Taleb

  2543. I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee 2014-05-16 21:40:33 spudlyo
    I simply can't resist downvoting you, but alas, see what will happen to you if you joke about others misery?

    On the serious note though, there is this thing called "empathy" where a person has the capacity to recognize emotions that are being experienced by another person. Have you ever been paralyzed by procrastination even when you knew that your continued inaction would be very bad for you? I have, so it's easy for me to understand what he's going through.

  2544. I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee 2014-05-16 22:15:38 bestest
    Down-vote me all you can, but OP's situation is most definitely self inflicted.

    It's the same with drug addicts. They can't help it. You can be compassionate with them, but it won't help them. What they need is a kick in their arse to fling them out of their comfort zone and embrace the big changes.

    Hopefully, OP's new job shall open his eyes and guide him in the right direction.

    He does not seem to be handicapped neither mentally nor physically -- and there are millions of people in much more need than such a victim of procrastination.

    Don't fret, OP'll be fine.

  2545. I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee 2014-05-16 22:19:57 kapitalx
    According to his blog, the age wasn't a factor:

    "why i didn't seek job all these years? well, i can only say i procrastinate and is ok living on a dime."

  2546. I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee 2014-05-16 22:49:15 justinpaulson
    Yeah, I lost all sympathy when I read this:

    'why i didn't seek job all these years? well, i can only say i procrastinate and is ok living on a dime.'

    Maybe it's not that he doesn't interview well, its that he would be horrible employee.

  2547. I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee 2014-05-16 23:00:38 pawelkomarnicki
    WTF? "why i didn't seek job all these years? well, i can only say i procrastinate and is ok living on a dime."

  2548. I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee 2014-05-16 23:04:05 chaostheory
    my question is, if he's "procrastinating" why didn't he just rent a room instead of a whole apartment? Better yet why not move back to his parent's place? When I was single, I never rented an apartment on my own. I always had a roomate(s).

  2549. I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee 2014-05-17 01:29:49 stefap2
    "well, i can only say i procrastinate"

    No there is my motivation to end the lunch break earlier.

  2550. How to become a Good Theoretical Physicist 2014-05-19 02:25:40 omnibrain
    This depresses me a lot. It depresses me because it is something I may (the may is the first problem here) want, but I feel I can never achieve it.

    When I was a child I wanted to become an astronaut. But from the age of 8 or 9 onwards I was always a fat kid, and fat kids can't become astronauts, so I quickly buried this dream and stayed the fat kid, instead of becoming lean and pursuing it. Don't get me wrong: I never had much problem with being the fat kid besides that. There was almost no bullying, I had friends, got a girlfriend (later) and everything. The point is, I buried the specific dream of becoming an astronaut but I was still fascinated by technology, computers and science. And dinosaurs, like every proper kid in the 90ies.\nI was always a lazy kid. Lazy, but with good to very good grades. (That's the other part of the problem.) I may have suffered early from the challanges of being gifted; though it is possible that I only was ahead of my classmates because I was 1 year older, because of my day of birth - I doubt myself a lot nowadays. So after primary school I got only sent to the "Realschule", it's the middle layer in the german school system, not the Gymnasium where you are on track for the abitur (the diploma to enter universities). Everything was pretty easy there, I never had to practice, never did my homework and had always good to very good grades. Except in French. For French I would have had to practice, memorize words and do the homework but i could not bring myself to do it.

    During my time at the realschule I was interested in almost everything. Being it physics, history, politics, computers, etc. I wanted to understand every aspect of the world. I read books by Gell-Mann, Feynman, Hawking an others in the physics field, same for history, politics, computers and aspects of math, but already at this time, I never went too deep (this may be the third part of the problem). But I intended to go to a gymnasium (with a technical profile) after the Realschule and study physics after that. In 9th and 10th grade I developed an additional interest in economics.

    I went to a gymnasium with an economic profile, instead of the technological one; for various reasons, my interest in economy played a role, but also that the girl I had a crush on went there and all in all it was the most convenient choice. There I did well in every subject except spanish. I almost never learned, I almost never did homework. I was still one of the best and considered very smart by everyone. So probably not the age.

    During this time I got engaged in politics (a local chapter of a party), more involved with the voluntary firefighters of my home village. This is about to become important. I also noticed that I struggle with the more complex math (integral calculus), not so much because of the concepts, but because I didn't train it enough. So I figured physics may not be the right thing for me and neither computer science. I was pretty arrogant at that time and also decided for myself that I only want to attend a "real" university, and not a university of applied science (Fachhochschule). The other factor was that I did not want to leave my home town because of the firefighters and the party and because I did not want to ask my parents for the money to pay rent in another city when I can study in the next city and live at home.

    So I decided to go for Economics at the university. I figured the math can't be that bad. After the first year it became apparent that I'm going to fail, I also had never made a lot of contacts with other students (I had a 1+ hour public transport commute each way every day) to learn together and motivate me, and later I was ashamed to talk with anybody about it.In the end I switched subjects to law (I lied to myself that I'm interested in it). This way I could stay at the same university, I did not even tell my parents at first, though everybody else knew. All the time I was still interested in everything (even economics), and quickly felt that I may get problems diving deeper into law topics. I began to become a bit depressed and anxious to even enter the university. One day the new semester started and I could not bring myself to enter the lecture hall. I phoned my girlfriend and said to her: "I can't enter the lecture hall. This has to end." Finally I felt free and she felt free too, because she had felt that something wasn't right with me, but was afraid to ask, because my reactions can be horrible.

    I started to look for alternatives. I figured that it's time to leave the university, I did not want to try anything else at the university (it would have been computer science) for fear of failing again. So I decided to apply for vocational training as a programmer (this is a thing in germany.) I had luck, it was early in 2008 before the economy crashed and burned, so I quickly found a spot. I got the job, did the training and work now as a business software developer, doing ABAP developement in some of our companies SAP systems for several years now. Sometimes it's fun and it enables my lifestyle of buying fancy stuff and clothes and huge steaks. Sometimes I'm bored to hell and want to do "real programming", though. I procrastinate a lot during my job, but I usually finish in time, because when I need to I can be very fast, and occassionally deadlines get pushed back, so I am lucky and am not late. I learned the valuable skill of "asking for help". At least sometimes I am able to. I still have the fear that other may notice that I'm not so smart and don't know stuff I'm supposed to know.

    I have Ideas but I don't pursue them. Because I don't know everything. I can't think them through and suddenly there is the next idea or interest.\nI noticed a few things in the last years. I can only learn (or bring myself to learn) if i have a real task. Abstract learning is very difficult for me, I search for distractions and excuses. Those tasks need to be given to me from someone else, because I can't give myself tasks, because if I give myself I task I can cancel it by myself.\nWhen I begin to dive into a topic, being it maths, or economics, or puzzles, I tend to stop at the first obstacle, if it is not the most exciting thing in the world.

    I think I am stuck with programming software, and I think that's fine. But even in this field I have troubles rooting in everything described above.

    And there is still the love for physics somewhere deep in me. But I simply can't pursue it. For all those reasons.

    So my problems are:\n1. I still don't know what I really want. \n1.1. I want everything \n1.2. I want it now. \n2. I need to know everything before I continue, decide, \n2. I don't want to give up, what I already achieved \n3. Good enough is often good enough for me, I can't force myself to go on and further \n4. I never learned to ask for help. \n5. I avoid conflicts \n6. I never learned to cooperate in education \n7. I have been lucky too often. \n8. I can't stay focused except under high external pressure \n9. My mind may not be best suited for the symbolic language of math. (that's what I think) \n10. Nowadays I doubt if I am really smart \n11. ?

    I could continue for another hour, but this text alreadyis an incoherent mess.

    Edit: And I turn 30 next months. I increasingly get the feel that I'm too old for anything now.

  2551. How to become a Good Theoretical Physicist 2014-05-19 05:09:48 atmosx
    I enjoyed reading your comment more than the article.

    I don't have any real advice though, be strong and try to fight procrastination, it's more of a mental status than anything else :-)

    ps. You're not the only one who has fear of failure. I do too, I guess it's a natural state for most people ;-)

  2552. Show HN: Cold Call Manager 2014-05-20 03:10:41 drewcrawford
    I'm in your market

    Name - it's ok. But most of my calls are "warm calls"--following up on inbound. This product appears to solve my problems, which is interesting, given that is named for something different.

    Run, don't walk, and implement email import. All my lead generation systems speak email, and if I could pipe them to you I would become a customer in about 10 seconds. Plus you have a strong lock-in effect with that, who is going to mess with 5 lead systems' configuration to move away from you?

    Your marketing targets people who procrastinate at sales calls, but just making the calls easier fundamentally misunderstands why that procrastination occurs. You need options to nag me to make calls via email, timed to when people get back from lunch in their timezone. Probably integrate with heavier-duty procrastination services like Beeminder or Rescuetime, which may end up being a reliable sales channel for you.

  2553. Show HN: Cold Call Manager 2014-05-20 03:16:47 soneca
    Thank you for every insight. About the last one, actually I was thinking about people who do not have the discipline to properly register all the relevant info after every single call they made. But your view is pertinent. I could help both types, the lazy and the procrastinator.

    I will give some thoughts to your features suggestions.

  2554. Show HN: Cold Call Manager 2014-05-20 04:52:27 drewcrawford
    > actually I was thinking about people who do not have the discipline to properly register all the relevant info after every single call

    For me at least, I take notes during calls in a notebook. So recording the info isn't hard. It's actually an important part of my procrastination workflow, because if I don't have my notebook handy I "can't" make calls, ha ha. The hard part is more about planning followup calls and actually making them.

    I've tried using issue tracking systems with due dates for this, but those are both at once overkill and underkill. Overkill because they have way too many features and inevitably get infected with things that issue tracking systems are actually built to track. And underkill because they don't have things that sales calls need like "snooze this alert until the next overlap of my office hours and the contact's business hours".

  2555. Show HN: Cold Call Manager 2014-05-20 05:06:24 billmalarky
    With cold calls, especially for non professional salesmen (one man startups etc) procrastination can be anxiety related. I wonder if there is anyway software can help with that.

  2556. What are common mistakes that new or inexperienced managers make? 2014-05-20 06:05:50 incision
    I surely agree with most of what's posted there - a majority of it is straightforward common sense that's barely even specific to management.

    "Don't procrastinate, communicate clearly" are to management what "eat less, exercise" is to losing weight or "only buy things you need, spend less than you earn" is to saving money.

    The problem isn't managers that they haven't read this compilation of checklists or its equivalent in any of the thousands of management books out there.

    The problem is the brokenness of management as a role in general.

    Too many organizations are stuck in an broken structure which makes management the most direct if not only way to advance in terms of status, pay, autonomy or all three.

    The end result are incompetent managers who need to be taught common sense or unhappy ones who are far better suited to other roles, but recognize them as dead-ends.

    If becoming a manager stops being desirable for all the wrong reasons you won't have to remind your new, inexperienced managers not to be lazy or not to manage by intimidation.

  2557. Using the wrong dictionary 2014-05-20 22:50:48 leephillips
    This article is superb and beautiful. Just go read it. I love it when procrastination is repaid.

  2558. How we nearly lost our domain, and how to prevent this 2014-05-23 20:43:38 ilamparithi
    Another experience with NameCheap. It was April 2014. I got a domain expiry notification mail from them. I just saw that subject. The date mentioned was 4/6/2014. I am lazy and procrastinate a lot. So I saw the subject and decided that I'll renew later as I have two more months. On 6th April I got the message that my domain expired. Then I realized it was not Jun 4th as I originally thought. Not only the domain was expired, all the config details were lost. Luckily it was only entries pointing to Linode. So I quickly renewed the domain and added the entries. Still there was a considerable downtime and panic. I think companies which operate internationally should use unambiguous date formats. (Even if I had opened the email, I wouldn't have interpreted the date in any other way. It was the same format everywhere. I did give a feedback to them. Not sure whether they changed it or not).

  2559. Choosing a Web Framework/Language Combo for the Next Decade 2014-05-23 21:03:33 johncip
    I can't follow Jacques' reasoning when it comes to any of this. His first choice would have been a PHP framework (in 2014!), yet he goes on to criticize a bunch of languages which have sane == operators seemingly on the basis of his gut reaction to their very existence, while asserting things like "Python is like driving on the autobahn without guard rails" and "Lua is the sweet spot between Ruby and Python." That might be true if Python had shipped with exactly two data structures, and Ruby with zero, and neither of them had integers.

    This is all before the frameworks are even discussed, which are included and dismissed for reasons just as arbitrary. Smaller frameworks like Sinatra are discarded because they can't handle the complex logic that flash cards demand, Django's out because of the whole auto safety thing, and we all know that ExpressJS didn't show up at Jaques' birthday party that one time. Play's out because Scala is unfamiliar, despite that not being a specific quality of Scala and just something that's true in general of programming languages one hasn't bothered to learn.

    So the final list contains some more PHP horror shows and a few Java and Go frameworks to make things look democratic. Thankfully, Rails makes an appearance, but it feels like this is just because it was lucky enough not to get hit by a dart.

    Let it be a lesson -- we all procrastinate, but when you get to the point where you're writing blog posts about dozens of languages and tools, none of which you have direct experience with, the best thing is just to pick something, do what you'd meant to do in the first place (although you will note that writing the flash card app was itself a way to procrastinate on learning Romainian), and discuss the pros and cons of the tools you chose once you actually know what they are.

  2560. Ask HN: What do you do when your entire being opposes the task at hand? 2014-05-23 21:11:25 jhh
    I don't think that's specific to programming. It's what we all experience when we procrastinate.

    Set yourself small very clear goals which you write down and where you commit yourself to finishing them in a given amount of time.

    However, what your mind is telling you with the feelings you experience in my opinion is something along the lines of "Don't do this, it's not great".

    So when you experience this very often, you need to change something in your life, or else you'll fall into depression because you have overcome your inner hesistation one time too often.

    Don't take this as a scientifically accurate account, just my personal experience.

  2561. Ask HN: What do you do when your entire being opposes the task at hand? 2014-05-23 21:19:53 martin-adams
    I can identify a few times I've experienced having something vague and complex thing to work on. If I were in your situation I'd look at the following...

    1. If I'm working on something vague, try to extract more information about it. It's very hard dealing with frequent changes on a complex code base. I'd try to find out who the stakeholders are, customer is, and most importantly, what they are trying to achieve that this serves.

    2. Break it down into smaller tasks and measure myself against these. I want to leave work having completed something and not return to work knowing I didn't complete something.

    3. Try bringing a colleague in to help you, such as talking through the existing code and bouncing ideas off them. The energy a colleague puts in can help with motivation.

    4. Make sure there is an end to it and that it's not an open scope. You'll never finish something if the stakeholder doesn't know what they actually want.

    5. If this looks like it's the norm and you're not happy, while you say you can't change jobs now, put the plan in motion for when you can. Think about your CV, learning new things, etc that help. When the time is right you want to be ready to jump.

    6. Get enough sleep. I find I procrastinate more when I'm tired. Of course, eat healthily and exercise.

    7. Try to remove other distractions, such as any other commitments at work as a 10 minute interruption can cost you an hour if you're not in the flow of the work.

  2562. Ask HN: Horror co-founder stories. 2014-05-25 03:40:49 EamonLeonard
    What do they say?\nWhat do they do?\nWhat do other people say about them?

    That will usually weed out most of the procrastinators, wannabes, "difficult" people etc...

    A bit of interpersonal chemistry going, some complimentary skills (you're looking for compatibility, after all), and some level of emotional investment on the problem being solved, wouldn't hurt either.

  2563. Python 3 can revive Python 2014-05-28 07:50:35 sitkack
    Procrastinating writing a JIT? http://dynamorio.org/

  2564. The worst response to a great idea 2014-05-28 22:09:30 moron4hire
    My mother was [1] a serial entrepreneur. She is also a serial hobbyist, which is to say that she procrastinates unknown work (like finishing projects) with known work (like starting projects). Unfortunately, a trait she passed on to me, but I seem to be getting out of it. It's a lot of hard work. And career coaching.

    It caused/causes some stress between my parents, but they are still constantly brainstorming on business ideas. It was a pretty common refrain in our household, "awww, look at that, they put a Steak-and-Shake exactly where we were thinking of one." Whatever my mother lacked in execution and my father in will, there was still a healthy appreciation for the entrepreneurial spirit.

    So these days, they are both extremely supportive of my endeavors. And I've found myself a group of friends who are the same. Having a supportive social circle is incredibly important.

    If you have folks in your life that you know are scared, little rodents, content to show up to a J.O.B. every day and do what they are told, unable to imagine how anyone else could ever want anything differently, then just don't talk to them. By this point, people are used to the "boring job" story [2], so if they ask what you do for a living (which itself is kind of a bullshit question) just tell them "I'm in computers" or "I'm in sales". If they press, "oh, you wouldn't find it interesting". Because even though it is interesting, they won't find it so.

    And then go home and work your ass off.

    [1] "was" in the sense that she mostly seems to have finally found success in consulting for non-profit fundraising, not in the sense that she is no more.

    [2] http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

  2565. reddit is down 2014-05-29 07:17:23 3rd3
    This interrupts my procrastination.

  2566. Ask HN: What did you do (or wish you did) when you got out of highschool? 2014-05-30 14:39:47 dav-
    Three months after my high school graduation, I moved to Silicon Valley. It was one of the best choices I could have made.

    I grew up in a small desert town with not much room to grow. The opportunities there were limited for what I wanted to do, and I knew that if I was still living in that town when I was 40, or even 30, I wouldn't be happy.

    Being the procrastinator that I am, I knew that I had to take action immediately, or I would inevitably fall into a lull of complacence: a mediocre job, a girlfriend, a dog? And then I would be stuck; eternally glued to this town that I hated by second-rate obligations. (Not entirely true, people make drastic changes even with other obligations all the time, but it's not common.)

    I was (and still am) young, and I believe that you should take as many calculated risks as possible when you're young. Do it before you have a mortgage, a spouse, a kid. It's so much easier then, because failing doesn't mean letting your child go hungry, or losing your home and living on the streets. Worst case, you have to move back in with your parents (assuming they're supportive).

    When I'm laying on my deathbed and analyzing my life, I would rather regret trying and failing to achieve my dreams than regret not trying at all. When it gets right down to it, I don't think I would regret failing one bit. Failure is part of life, and since I've moved here I've failed plenty of times. Probably more times than I've succeeded. But the value of my few successes outweighs my many failures, and that's the key.

    I've gotten a good job, learned and grown more than I would have imagined possible, met dozens of amazing people, made lifelong friends, co-founded an organization, and I'm happier than I've ever been. Not only that, but I'm excited for the future.

    I've still got a long way to go, but I'm so glad that I had the courage and drive to go out of my comfort zone, into a completely foreign situation, all alone, and just do it. Granted, I was extremely lucky to have the full support of my parents and family, but even if I hadn't I think I still would have gone out and done it.

    Of course, this is not advice for everyone. It's not really advice at all, just my own experience. Yours may vary. Best of luck.

  2567. Poll: Do you have your own company? 2014-05-30 23:22:25 tbrownaw
    No. I work at a 10k+ person non-tech company, doing one-off data migrations when we get new clients and writing tools to help with same.

    I have a couple thoughts for paying side projects, but they're stuck (and have been for a long time) behind personal issues that really should be more important but I never seem to find time to fix. Yay procrastination!

  2568. Ask HN: What do you do when your entire being opposes the task at hand? 2014-06-01 03:26:43 cel1ne
    I'm not going to tell you about your job or surrounding, but a little about how your brain, or rather everbody's brain works.

    The problem at hand is a relatively unknown psychological issue.

    There are many theories about motivation. Most of them don't account for a specific type or situation, where someone is just not able to do a certain piece of work, without having a reason like lacking the time, health, skills or energy. These types are often just dismissed and dubbed underachievers, because, for some reason, they fail to acomplish tasks which they should be perfectly able to do. They procrastinate and do a million other things first or just give it up completely.

    It doesn't matter whether this task is about work, university grades, doing lab-experiments, the laundry or else.

    == The theory ==

    There is a austrian psychologist, Brigitta Rollett, who coined a term called "Anstrengungsvermeidungsmotivation" which translates to "effort avoidance motivation" or "stress avoidance motivation".

    The first essential postulate of the theory is, that having the "motivation" to avoid stress, or efforts that cause stress, isn't an illness or failure, but rather an evolutionary advantage to prevent burnout and similar issues. All people tend to avoid activities, which cause them stress or more specifically the very basic emotion of disgust. People have different pattern and triggers which lead to the feeling of disgust. This is heavily primed by upbringing, schooling, bad experiences etc.\nYou seem to be disgusted by "useless features". (I am too. :))

    The second essential postulate of the theory is, that this disgust is more or less "invisible". Most of the time it goes unnoticed.\nIt is such a strong emotion that people never even want to "go near it", because it would cause them IMMENSE emotional pain. This pain can even translate to physical symptoms like head-aches etc.

    This is how the afore-mentioned "underachievers" are explained. They don't have a problem per se. As long as nobody forces them to do the specific tasks they don't like to do, they live happily ever after.\nPeople with a high IQ tend to learn a lot of these "disgust" pattern, because on the one hand they are often confronted with teachers, who don't understand them or meet them with antipathy and on the other hand they never needed to learn to deal with "repulsive efforts". Contrary to most people they get by, without ever having really stressed themselves. Should they come into a situation, however, where they HAVE or WANT to deal with a task, which for them is linked to disgust, they fall into complete despair.\nThey do everything to get away from the triggered emotion.\nIt's literally TERRIBLE for them to do some kinds of work, which aren't a problem for most others.

    There have been many scientific studies, tests and validations of this (in german).

    == Your situation ==

    First you have to acknowledge and understand that what you are experiencing is an irrational and immensely intense emotion.

    Emotions don't think. When you encounter one, you have to decide how to act on it. If your job sucks it's probably a good idea to just work somewhere else.

    But you like your job. In your case, the emotion just tells you that you HATE this type of work-situation.\nAnd for whatever reason you are not able to just acknowledge that, bite the bullet and move on. (Which is how people are able deal with most bad emotions.) In this particular case your brain throws one hell of a fit. Neurologically speaking and simplified, your rational forebrain looses control over your amygdala and the "more emotional" parts of your brain.

    == What you can do ==

    You can always make sure the situation never happens again, and avoid the dreaded tasks, but this probably won't work without giving up programming.

    What you have to apply are the same strategies which are needed to conquer other emotions-gone-wild like irrational fears.

    ~ You NEED to work on it SLOWLY but STEADY. ~

    * The bad news: I hate to tell you this, but if you want to change your behaviour, you NEED to sit down and start doing the exact work which triggers this cascade.

    * The good news: Each day, or session, you only need to conquer it ONCE.

    Sit down for the task and start with the tiniest bit. Just open the first file. When you FIRST feel the terror overwhelming you, you HAVE to force yourself to keep at it and wrestle it down. When you feel the terror approaching a SECOND time, you can stop.\nIf you have the energy to continue, do it, but I doubt you will. Don't stress yourself too much, or it will backfire. (You won't)

    This might sound incredibly stupid, but be proud of yourself at this point, because you have just delivered an immense piece of emotional work and it's ok to be tired now.\nEven if you just typed three words.

    Keep repeating this practise each day, twice a day or how you see fit, and slowly but steady the terror will fade. It will come slower, lighter, less often. If you keep doing this, i will GUARANTEE you that these shenanigans will stop. You will slowly replace the old neurological patterns which trigger your pain. (And pain is exactly what it is.)

    Unfortunately there is no faster way for this. You can look into hypnotherapy, which can accelerate matters a bit, but working on emotions always takes it's time. I have applied these techniques myself for a couple of situations. It was immensely exhausting, but it's worth it and it works.

    Good luck.

  2569. Ask HN: How did you find the courage to try again? 2014-06-02 10:45:30 notduncansmith
    It sounds like you're going through something that I have some experience with.

    I'm a young guy (21). I've been frustrated time and time again by feelings of "why hasn't it happened yet?" and "why do I keep throwing myself at this shit?". I'm a pathological starter (not finisher) of projects. I fall victim to the 70% rule constantly.

    There a few things that help me deal with it:

    1. Realizing how much left I have to learn. I regularly consult for $XXX/hr on a wide array of topics within the software business: however, while I have a lot of knowledge, all it takes is for a true "expert" who's been doing ______ for the last 30 years to make me realize that I don't know even close to everything, or even everything about X, and that it's entirely acceptable for me to not be at that level yet.

    2. Shipping something. I've been where you're at, where you have your finger on the trigger, and then you throw the safety back on and give up. It's a reaction due to natural human fear, and the only antidote to the poison that is fear is to ship stuff. Do something simple, low-risk at first, like a redesign of your website (done this a few times). Then ship a product, something tiny, nothing "world-changing", just something that's shippable (did this a few weeks ago). That will build up your confidence, and from there you're unstoppable. Don't be afraid to ship because someone's already done something: if we all did that, there'd be no Pepsi (debatably a good thing).

    3. Do normal things. I wanted to hack on something today, while my son took a nap. Guess what I did instead? Watched a movie, then did the dishes. Yep. One way to look at it is procrastinating (why are you watching a movie instead of changing the world?) but I've been banging out code for the past 6 days and I wanted a damn break, so I took one. It's okay to take the pressure off every now and again.

    4. Stop comparing yourself to "all the great founders". They're outliers. Plenty of people start very successful companies at 24, 34, hell 54. Ray Kroc started McDonald's at 52.

    It sounds like you could use a break. Take one, you'll be much better for it. A few days, a few weeks, a few years, whatever it takes. Spend some time in the real world, and when you come back into the fold you'll have plenty of real-world problems to solve :)

  2570. Universities can’t fulfil the myth, but can’t become vocational schools either 2014-06-02 19:25:05 visakanv
    I never went to University- I got invited to do marketing for a startup right after I was done with my mandatory military service- and it's been great for me.

    I have pretty bad ADHD and I'm certain that I would've repeated my patterns of poor performance, procrastination, etc. if I had gone to University.

    I much prefer working in an environment where I get immediate and direct feedback, and I work directly on things that make sense (in terms of relating how what I do puts food on the table, a roof over my head, and makes a difference to others).

    If I could've skipped junior college and started work earlier, I'd have done that instead.

  2571. The Open-office Trap 2014-06-02 23:40:18 enraged_camel
    What they call "multi-tasking" is actually an inability to stay focused on one task due to a combination of procrastination and sheer boredom. So if you keep switching between writing a sales report, reading incoming email and conversing with your neighbor, congratulations, you may not be getting anything done, but you are multi-tasking!

  2572. Letting go 2014-06-03 21:14:53 anathebealio
    I love reading articles about procrastination techniques to procrastinate from work I need to do!

  2573. (Why) I quit Hacker News (2010) 2014-06-03 21:17:50 mkesper
    Make the site faster, it's really slow.

    That doesn't avoid procrastinating.\nBesides, HN is fast, many linked sites are slow and bloated...

  2574. Letting go 2014-06-03 21:22:43 mtkd
    Procrastination will always find an outlet.

    You've turned all that off then focused on writing a piece about turning things off - so another outlet appeared almost instantly.

    Embrace it - there is probably a reason you are not ready to do the thing you are running away from - you've probably not finished figuring it all out.

    The time spent writing that would have likely been better deployed meditating or walking.

  2575. Letting go 2014-06-04 05:22:18 Smudge
    I'm a fan of John Cleese's theory of "open" and "closed" modes of thought:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijtQP9nwrQA

    While his idea of being "creative" (as a writer & performer) is perhaps different than mine (as a programmer), I still find his advice helpful in giving myself space for creativity. Sure, some days it's best for me to just buckle down on serious work and crank things out (the "closed" mode, as it were). But my best work comes from the days when I don't feel the need to punish myself for making mistakes or for letting my mind wander.

    Being in the "open" mode does require freedom from distraction, but it also requires breaks and must be very clearly time-boxed in order to succeed. I'd be afraid that, in attempting to "let go" of distraction and procrastination permanently, I'd be fating myself to a life in the "closed" mode, where nothing is more important than my productivity and everything (even boredom) has the potential to get in its way.

  2576. Why Procrastinators Procrastinate 2014-06-05 03:58:19 valarauca1
    I love how this article's advice is basically, "Don't listen to the voice in your head that tells you to procrastinate."

    Which is just a slightly headier rewording of the original advice which it mocks ala, "Don't procrastinate."

  2577. Can I drop a pacemaker 0day? 2014-06-05 11:05:39 _mgr
    It's a tale of a misspent youth, wasted 20's, and a procrastinating disaffected attempt to reclaim my life as I now begin my 30's.

  2578. Good and Bad Procrastination (2005) 2014-06-08 21:28:37 simonebrunozzi
    Nice essay.\nThe "small stuff" that you mention has a function - to enable a society. If you don't shave and shower, you will look terrible, and for biological reasons people will think that you're nuts, that's you're an outliar, and expect strange things from you. It is not necessarily too bad, per se.

    However, I argue that balance (some small stuff, but not too much, so you have time for important stuff) is better than being a great, smelly procrastinator.

  2579. Good and Bad Procrastination (2005) 2014-06-08 21:31:57 dm2
    I am constantly struggling with procrastination even though I love my job and what I do. It seems like sometimes I'd rather do anything other than what I'm actually suppose to do and what pays the bills, almost like a mental disorder.

    I've tried setting goals, blocking websites, uninstalling games, creating logs and even creating rewards for doing X amount of work, none of those seem to really help so far.

    The procrastination article is from 9 years ago and has been posted numerous times before on HN, yet it's at the top of HN. I suspect that procrastination is a horrible problem for programmers due to the vast amount of distraction available via the internet.

    Also, http://paulgraham.com/distraction.html

    I'm installing Watch Dogs for the 4th time right now rather than doing my real work (which is very fun, time critical, and offers REAL rewards), wtf is wrong with me.

  2580. Good and Bad Procrastination (2005) 2014-06-08 22:06:00 artellectual
    I think sometimes the mind just needs to think about other things. I mean, I love what I am doing now too, and I have moments where I'll want to just spend all day and night on it, but there are also times where I would rather do something else like watch funny videos on youtube or enjoy a karaoke session with my 2 year old daughter. It just makes me a happier person to be doing other things as well. I think diversity is important for the mind, that's why we procrastinate.

  2581. Good and Bad Procrastination (2005) 2014-06-08 22:26:24 hrvbr
    From the comments of self-confessed procrastinators, it seems that they're all working more or less alone. We're a social species, our brain is shaped by a million years of tribal lifestyle. Inability to do the work may be a symptom of the loneliness in our modern society.

  2582. Good and Bad Procrastination (2005) 2014-06-08 22:31:10 alexdowad
    So could reading this article qualify as a form of "type B" procrastination?

  2583. Good and Bad Procrastination (2005) 2014-06-08 22:47:30 gbog
    Hi. Can I be frank? I find it a bit hard to believe that your "real work" is "fun, time critical, and offers REAL rewards". Are you maybe trying to convince yourself here?

    It happened to me to believe wrongly that I had fun and rewarding tasks at hand. But when I really have such tasks, procrastination is completely out of the way, and I am certainly not on HN to discuss about it.

    When I have a task that is really interesting to me, I think about it when I shower, before falling asleep, while riding my bike, and when I quickly parse HN (because I have this habit), one of the first five titles will be remotely related and pull some strings, and I'll quickly go back to my code.

    However, most of the time, I still say (and believe) that my work is "very interesting", "very rewarding", but I procrastinate on HN like everyone else (and right now).

  2584. Good and Bad Procrastination (2005) 2014-06-08 23:01:38 wiradikusuma
    Very unrelated but biting me hard due to procrastination: Does anyone know any tax preparer in the US with reasonable rate?

    I'm a non-US citizen/resident. I incorporated a C-corp in Delaware exactly last year through an agent (remotely). The company has been dormant since its inception.

    Its fiscal year is March 31, which means the deadline should be June 15 this year. I need someone who can do e-filing for me. One guy I found online quoted me $500 which I think ridiculously expensive :(

  2585. Good and Bad Procrastination (2005) 2014-06-08 23:02:22 the_af
    I agree with the article's opinion about errands, and believe it's true these small boring tasks end up killing inspiration for the more interesting stuff we'd rather be working on.

    HOWEVER, am I the only one who thinks Paul's redefinition of procrastination is nonstandard? When people advise you not to procrastinate, they are usually telling you to do your damn job (or to study for an exam, you get the idea) instead of doing something else that could clearly wait. Most people understand that procrastination means doing anything -- no matter what -- instead of a mandatory task that is boring or too hard. Nobody will ever tell you to do your taxes instead of working on that rocket science project, which is what Paul seems to be implying...

  2586. Good and Bad Procrastination (2005) 2014-06-08 23:07:33 read
    You are indeed bitten due to procrastination, but it might not be for the reason you think you are. If the company has been dormant since its inception, why are you worried about paying taxes? The IRS doesn't come after dormant companies that don't have revenue. There's nothing to come after.

    Are you using paying taxes as a way of procrastinating from real work? A much harder problem is making something people want. Worry more about that.

  2587. Good and Bad Procrastination (2005) 2014-06-08 23:20:38 s_dev
    Graham hits the nail on the head again. I don't beat myself up about procrastinating too much -- as long as the procrastinating includes reading Hacker News, iOS Dev News, Good Stack Overflow comments and conversations, basically anything that will make me broadly a better and happier programmer.

  2588. Good and Bad Procrastination (2005) 2014-06-08 23:29:13 lubos
    For long time I was trying to beat procrastination. Guess what, I'm still procrastinating more than 50% of time and for last 2-3 years it's no longer a problem.

    The breaking point for me was another essay by PG called "The Top Idea in Your Mind" (http://www.paulgraham.com/top.html)

    The concept is that if you get stuck on some problem, even if you procrastinate, you are still unconsciously thinking about the problem and will come up with solutions while doing something completely unrelated (paying games, watching videos etc.) - so this would be another example of good procrastination that you don't have to feel guilty about. For me, procrastination is now part of the process.

  2589. Good and Bad Procrastination (2005) 2014-06-08 23:46:17 graeme
    I lived this for a few years starting my business actually. I put off basically other priority to get things off the ground.

    It worked! I accomplished more in two years than I ever thought possible. I now have a large measure of freedom in my work and life.

    But, now I do more errands. I found a lot of non-work priorities really fell by the wayside when I took the monomaniacal approach.

    I'm still not sure which is better. I have more of a social life now. I'm in better shape. I have a few hobbies. I'm reading more. I feel like I'm enjoying life.

    Yet I also feel I'm at an inflection point workwise, where if I just returned to the old levels of productivity for six months, I'd pass into a level where I'm suddenly earning far more than I need, and can pull back even more than I have.

    I'm 28 now. Turning 29 in a few months. I've come to terms with the finite amount of time available to me, and that certain activities are easier and harder at given ages.

    It feels like I can trade off six months of the last year of my 20s to gain much freedom in the first years of my 30s. I don't think I'm going to do it, because I'm making pretty good progress as is, and I think there's still room to do more work by cutting out distractions (like HN) while continuing to focus on leisure I truly enjoy.

    The short version is that I was a type C procrastinator for a bit. I think it was worth it, but I'm not sure if it's worth continuing at the same level.

  2590. Good and Bad Procrastination (2005) 2014-06-08 23:46:31 charlieirish
    I was talking to my father about this topic last week. We talked about the best strategies for combating procrastination. He used to be in the British Army and suggested that a militaristic approach has always worked for him. He talked about the button polishing, the bed sheet folding and the shirt starching. These were tasks that were set by the commanding officers and needed to be performed flawlessly. They weren't pleasurable, they were boring and often felt unnecessary. Failing these tasks meant severe punishment and potentially being kicked out of the army.

    This gave him a framework for success. The knowledge that however boring something is, it needs to be done. A combination of a carrot and a stick can help this process.

    Another approach, from a member of a mastermind group that I attend, has a 'dull day'. On Monday of every week he does all the administrative work that he hates. This includes dealing with expenses, filing, bug fixing, documenting etc. He has been doing it for months and loves the fact that he can start the day on Tuesday with a clear head and clear conscience.

    So, breaking this down (from my admittedly small sample set):

    - Be Strict -

    Be strict with yourself and use incentives or disincentives. There are plenty of ways to provide a disincentive for failure. This startup has just launched and asks you to pay if you fail to hit your goals: https://gofuckingdoit.com/ [0]

    - Have a Routine -

    Habits are formed using triggers, routines and rewards. Try to set a good habit by working on your project using a trigger, a routine and a reward. You could try the Tiny Habits Method: http://tinyhabits.com/ [1]

    - Make Time -

    Make time for your project (rather than finding the time)Be honest with yourself and know that procrastination will happen. But, you can make time to get stuff done: http://www.startupclarity.com/blog/make-time-side-project/ [2]

    [0] https://gofuckingdoit.com/

    [1] http://tinyhabits.com/

    [2] http://www.startupclarity.com/blog/make-time-side-project/

  2591. Good and Bad Procrastination (2005) 2014-06-08 23:57:41 freshhawk
    "But when I really have such tasks, procrastination is completely out of the way"

    I know for me it doesn't work that way. I assume "REAL rewards" means long lasting meaningful rewards rather than a quick dopamine hit. But hyperbolic discounting [1] is a bitch, so even if I know that once I start some real work it will be engaging and interesting, and tomorrow or next week my happiness will be partly determined by how much of it I got done ... maybe I'll do just one more HN story / Watch Dogs online hacking mission / etc.

    It's a pattern I recognize and no longer really adversely affects my life like it did when I was younger but I definitely still feel that pull that makes starting things more difficult than it would otherwise be.

    [1] http://www.damninteresting.com/hyperbolic-discounting/

  2592. Good and Bad Procrastination (2005) 2014-06-09 00:15:07 higherpurpose
    I was reading before about a solution to procrastination that said you should have 2-3 different tasks. And when you aren't in the mood to do one, do the other. Could work for some, but maybe not everyone. Procrastination is usually not "not doing anything", but doing something else instead of what you should be doing. So try to make that "something else" a task that you need finished anyway.

  2593. Good and Bad Procrastination (2005) 2014-06-09 00:56:38 emerongi
    I have always found self-diagnosing as idiotic, but honestly, this is 100% me. Can't concentrate on anything, hesitate and procrastinate a lot, also am forgetful. Never had major problems though, always have had good grades for whatever reason. Should I seek help or try to keep it under control myself? I am almost out of school and I feel relieved; so much pressure when you try to concentrate on the topic, but just physically can't. I feel much more comfortable learning the topics I personally like.

  2594. Good and Bad Procrastination (2005) 2014-06-09 01:07:49 beambot
    No conversation about procrastination is complete without mentioning John Perry's (Stanford Prof) essay on "structured procrastination": http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

    Basically... "the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important." Like John, I've accomplished a quite a bit by procrastinating like crazy.

  2595. Good and Bad Procrastination (2005) 2014-06-09 01:42:05 swah
    A professional procrastinator like myself knows that button polishing can become a very interesting task if it means you can postpone what you really should be doing. See http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

  2596. Good and Bad Procrastination (2005) 2014-06-09 02:22:51 pmoriarty
    "The starting point for understanding why you procrastinate is to treat yourself with enough respect to assume that behind your inactivity lies an excellent, if not immediately apparent reason. And this reason is to be found in an altogether different attitude or trait inside yourself that precipitated your procrastinating reaction...

    What is [it] a reaction to? What is the unknown factor that provokes such a highly visible and aggravating response? The nature of the invisible stimulus can be partly deduced from the extremely emotional and hostile nature of the reaction. For however much you may want to see it as a kind of passive paralysis, procrastination ... is a very aggressive act: it is a pushing away, a rejection.

    Tragically, this stubborn rebellion by the unconscious usually triggers even more severe and desperate measures from you, its hapless guardian, to impose a strict regimen of work: total isolation, twelve-hour days, endless changes of locale and paraphanelia. But it is all for nothing. Attempts to be ruthless with yourself in order to 'overcome procrastination' must always lead directly back to the hated condition itself, thereby engendering stalemate. Under these highly sensitized conditions even a reasonable order, as long as it is an order, will be rejected. The sense of failure and frustration increases exponentially as the vicious circle clicks back into gear.

    People who accuse themselves of procrastination are not procrastinators. They are accusers. Far from being lazy, they are driven by such extremes of self-distrust and compulsive overcontrol that they throttle the spontaneous contact with self that all creative activity requires." -- Victoria Nelson, "Writer's Block"

  2597. Good and Bad Procrastination (2005) 2014-06-09 17:34:14 Htsthbjig
    I recommend you learn from the masters, hear "The Now habit" audiobook, very good for geeks because it teaches you how and why of procastination, not only what to do.

    blocking websites or installing games do not work if you don't know what procrastination is. In an empty room with nothing to do you could spend time looking at the wall.

    I will also recommend "the power of full engagement", and also a basic understanding of habits:\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYFooE6J1iU

    Over time(years) you will master this.

  2598. Ask HN: Downtime. What was changed? 2014-06-10 20:58:20 robbiep
    Global hacker productivity rose by 25% as a significant outlet of procrastination was temporarily placed out of reach

  2599. Utau – a Japanese singing synthesizer application 2014-06-11 15:01:26 btown
    Lots of work, especially for English (as opposed to Japanese which has many fewer possible morae/sounds [1]). I've made a number of (as yet unreleased [2]) song covers with the Kumi Hitsuboku English voice bank [3], which boasts the most expressive English reclist ("recording list" of individual recorded syllable fragments) I've seen. To get believable pronunciation, you can't just one-to-one map between a note and a pitch-shifted sound. Many syllables need to be broken into one note containing the starting consonant and the held vowel, sometimes another note containing a vowel transition (for example, the long "i" needs to be broken into a short "a" and a long "e"), and another note containing the end of the word (a vowel blended into a consonant). And in English, sometimes you need to work the previous word into the first note: for instance, "come on" becomes "ka," "ma," "a n" in Kumi's aliased reclist.

    UTAU doesn't do anything algorithmic to help with these word-splitting tasks; even if it could, there's a lot of nuance and judgement that depends on everything from the tempo to the specific vocalist's pronunciation. For instance, the word "slam" is actually best rendered as "sle, e m" when working with Kumi because the "a" sound is more hollow, and the point at which you switch from the "sle" to the "e m" depends a lot on context. A 2-minute song with chorus and verses can take hours to get perfect.

    And of course, pronunciation is only the beginning. Mitchie M (one of the most highly regarded vocaloid artists, mentioned elsewhere in this thread) stated in an interview that he can spend up to 2 weeks programming intonations for rap segments in his songs. [4] It's very interesting to think about how spoken word would be coded as pitches, and how we are able to detect deviations from common pitch-patterns as "unnatural" when listening to spoken passages.

    [1] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana

    [2] Why unreleased? Still working on making lyric videos to accompany the recordings; for that, I need to shut down my VMs to launch After Effects, and I can't justify procrastinating that much!

    [3] Links at http://utau.wikia.com/wiki/Kumi_Hitsuboku

    [4] https://www.facebook.com/vocaloidism/posts/568055823290010

  2600. Probably a Good Time to Say That I Don’t Believe Robots Will Eat All the Jobs 2014-06-14 06:45:47 crpatino
    There are many dimensions to it, but it boils down to the fact that for many people worship of Technology has replaced worship of more traditional Gods.

    That being said, there is nothing inherently impossible to prevent robots from being deployed in large quantities. Not the kind of robots you see in SF artwork - capable of displaying human-like levels of agency, creativity, wit, etc - but dumb little machines that can repeat the same dumb little task once, and twice, and a million times without a single error. That has been done many times in the past with varying degrees of success. The problem is that is the increase in speed/accuracy of little task does not produce an economic return large enough to justify the automation, the automation will never get implemented.

    As a matter of fact, if the total economic return of the little task is not large enough, the task will not get done either manually or automatically. Paul Graham has already written about how changes in perceived social value of a given line of work has rendered it obsolete with no need for technological disruption whatsoever.

    So there are several thresholds in the set of all economic activities at any given time. Below the outermost threshold the task will be procrastinated away until the whole environment changes and makes it irrelevant. A little above that there is another threshold that makes a task impossible to make a living out off, but not unimportant enough to be ignored for ever... so you have a lot of unpaid labor done on the sides to take care of that (think domestic chores). Then there is the formal economy with several layers of skilled and unskilled labor.

    At each layer, robots can eat a chunk of that... depending on the technical and economic feasibility. By example, we have Roomba robots to clean the floors because the task is relatively easy and can be solved for a price people is willing to pay. On the other hand, we do not have (yet) robotic spiders that pick up, wipe and put back every random trinket in your living room without breaking anything because the task is too complex (but might turn out to be solvable in the future). And we do not have refrigerator-stove hybrids with robotic arms that pull ingredients out of cold storage and cook homemade meals because even though the problem is relatively well defined the price would be so great that few customers would be able to afford those, and it will probably continue to be so regardless of advances in technology.

  2601. Founder Depression 2014-06-14 14:17:37 gfodor
    Feeling the need to constantly be trying to improve the world and help others is a noble concept but also one that, if focused on too intensely, can unintentionally lead you down a dark path. By setting unrealistic expectations for yourself you can often set yourself up for failure by reaching too far too early. It also puts a heavy burden on your shoulders of being your own worst critic, undermining your motivation and clashing with your basic human desires that fall out of natural selfishness. As PG said in "Good and Bad Procrastination":

    "You can't look a big problem too directly in the eye. You have to approach it somewhat obliquely. But you have to adjust the angle just right: you have to be facing the big problem directly enough that you catch some of the excitement radiating from it, but not so much that it paralyzes you. You can tighten the angle once you get going, just as a sailboat can sail closer to the wind once it gets underway."

    I think the effects of trying to tackle big problems in the name of helping others head on can go beyond paralysis and into poor judgement in both strategy and tactics. The best way to change the world in my view is to first, know thyself, and then point yourself in the general direction you want to go.

    From there, let your passions lead you where they may but be conscious if you are straying too far from the direction you were headed. Also, it seems more important to know if you've certainly begun heading in the wrong direction than knowing what exactly the right direction was from the outset.

  2602. We Need To Talk About Depression 2014-06-15 23:01:50 n72
    Does YC have an in-house shrink? I've always thought that if I ran an incubator, one of the first things I'd do is institute twice-weekly meetings with a shrink. I think such an arrangement would pay off amply in the long run. I know when I was my mid-20s, if I'd had a shrink to help me combat some issues which had the side effect of leading to severe procrastination, I'd have been considerably more productive. To me it just seems like a no-brainer from an investment point-of-view.

  2603. How can an introvert Asian engineer like me make friends? 2014-06-16 18:55:33 leaveyou
    -10000 for online gaming. You don't know it yet but online gaming can ruin your life. It's the most accessible, inoffensive looking, procrastination enhancing, important decision delaying, time wasting, addictive habit/hobby/relaxation.

  2604. How can an introvert Asian engineer like me make friends? 2014-06-16 21:03:29 jonnathanson
    Here is a lesson I've learned the long, hard way after 30 years of being a strong introvert: it's not how or where you meet people that counts. It's how you stay in touch.

    Look around you. Every day, in every situation imaginable, there are hundreds of ways to meet people. There really are. You could strike up a conversation with a stranger on a subway. You could ask for some advice from the girl ahead of you in line at the supermarket. You could ask your coworkers to hang out, or join them for lunch. You could go to meetup groups, or meet people online and transition to real-world encounters. Point is, "How do I meet people?" is the most commonly asked question -- and it's usually the wrong one.

    If you're a true introvert, your biggest enemy is yourself. It's your desire to be alone. It's your preference for living by yourself, for quiet moments away from others, for nights spent at home, watching Netflix or playing games. Making friends means making an effort to hang out with them, even when it doesn't seem like the most immediately pleasurable, comfortable, or convenient thing to do at any given moment.

    I hate making plans. But once I'm in mid-plan with a friend or two, I have a great time. And yet, somehow I never seem to put two and two together. I tend to decline or avoid a lot of social plans. I'm sabotaging my own friendships when I do that. Friendships are like pets; they need to be fed, walked, and watered. Some of your friends will be super outgoing, and they'll do most of the work for you. But some of your friends won't; they'll be the passive party and expect you to make the plans. And either type of friend will occasionally, if not often, expect you to make the plans. That's what happens in a mutual friendship.

    So I'd ask you to ask yourself: is your problem really about meeting people, or is it about staying engaged with people? If it's about meeting people (shyness), there is plenty of good advice on this thread about how to do it. If it's about spending time with people (introversion), that's going to require some regular, concerted effort to battle against your own inclinations. Sort of like battling the urge to procrastinate. You'll have to battle the urge to self-isolate. You'll want to focus less on the initial "ugh" factor in making or anticipating plans, and more on the fun you'll be having when you're hanging out.

    Friendships don't just click into place on the first interaction between two or more people. They depend on proximity and frequency. They take time to develop, and once they've developed, they need to be maintained. They are conditional, and you need to live up to whatever the conditions may be in any given relationship. You're not going to ask a coworker to lunch and become friends at the end of that meal. You're going to ask that same coworker to lunch a second time, and eventually a third. And maybe you'll be friends at the end of the fourth meal.

  2605. Suicidal Software Developer 2014-06-18 22:39:48 moron4hire
    Adrenaline can do that to you. Unfortunately, it passes.

    I try very hard to not make big, life-changing decisions when I'm happy and energetic, because it's usually jumping (if you'll excuse the pun) feet first into commitments that I'm not going to be able to keep when I go back to normal, level attitude--or even worse--my low periods, when failing at my commitments is not only a foregone conclusion, but I know it, and it makes me feel worse.

    I can't tell you how many times I've resolved "this time, I'm going to ride my bike every day" or "this time, I'm going to work a normal schedule and not procrastinate". Yes, it's about willpower, but willpower is a function of energy. No energy, no willpower.

    That's one of the insidious things about depression as a disease: it works to keep itself in place. Depression (saps|is-caused-by-a-sap-of) energy. It's like a lead blanket, holding you down in the chair, keeping you from the exercise and healthful food and water and sunlight you need to get out of it. I know it's not an animate object, but it helps me to think of it as so. I won't let "it" consume me, "it" win.

  2606. Facebook was down 2014-06-19 16:03:58 laumars
    How many submissions do we need on this topic?

    Maybe I'm jaded because I don't really "get" the whole social network phenomena, but honestly, who really cares anyway? Productivity will (briefly) go up; a few people dependant on FB SSO's wont be able to log into some other pointless services and the internet will continue to function.

    I normally down vote people when they say "what does xyz have to do with HN?", but 3 submissions commenting on a procrastination portal being down is really scraping the barrel.

    [edit]

    I see the submissions have now been consolidated. That makes much more sense. Good work HN admins :)

  2607. I quit my job. Today is Day 16 2014-06-20 00:34:10 gedrap
    Good points!

    >>> With the current market for engineers, if you aren't enjoying your work most of the time, you're doing something wrong and should probably find a more interesting project to work on. Fire yourself if you have to.

    Yup, I'm starting a new job in 1.5 week, extremely excited :)

    >>> Even leave things for tomorrow.

    That is also very true, blogged about it too a while ago as well [0]. Trying to get something done for 3hrs can be replaced by 1hr burst next day, as long as 'tomorrow' doesn't become a procrastination. What is important is to make sure that you are actually having a break, your mind is totally away from work.

    And yeah, I agree about the timers. I sometimes use a pomodoro timer app and trying to make it a habit, planning to make a physical arduino one. Some day :)

    [0] "3. Take a break and don’t feel guilty about it" http://blog.gedrap.me/blog/2014/05/19/4-things-i-learned-the...

  2608. Ask HN: What do you listen to while coding (and how)? 2014-06-21 17:01:36 sytelus
    It takes time to "train" Pandora but I've been at it for 3-4 years now seeding with all the tracks that are great for coding and thumbing up when I hear something that promotes going in to zen mode. The results are great and now this is my favorite music source in everything else I've tried out: http://www.pandora.com/station/play/164715539305919382. The status features mostly vocal-free distraction less music with rhythmic beats that puts you in the zone and occasional uplifting tracks that keeps you going.

    I've also found this music station to be very anti-procrastinating. If you feel like procrastating, just press the play button and suddenly you would want to get back to coding :).

  2609. Good and Bad Procrastination 2014-06-22 09:48:39 dang
    https://hn.algolia.com/?q=good+and+bad+procrastination#!/sto...

  2610. Do Rational People Exist? 2014-06-23 06:26:20 tormeh
    A wiser course to unhappiness. I volunteer to give up some rationality to gain some happiness. If I can get less procrastination in the deal as well, then that would be great.

  2611. To Make Yourself More Productive, Simplify 2014-06-23 15:19:23 GarvielLoken
    No, the real lesson was don't procrastinate.\n"She also committed herself to systematically completing, without procrastination, her daily task list and to completely clearing her email inbox and workspace on a regular basis."

  2612. Static checking of units in Servo 2014-06-24 10:03:21 codygman
    To add to this, fear is one of the reasons I've been procrastinating about finishing a type-class related exercise in Beginning Haskell.

    There is something terrifying about feeling like you won't be able to solve a problem. However, from experience I know how much better off I'll be after getting over that and solving the exercise ;)

  2613. Kaplan to Buy Software-Development School Dev Bootcamp 2014-06-25 19:07:14 netcan
    These boot camps are obviously a reaction to the current demand for developers. I'm not sure if that is permeant.

    That aside I like the idea here. I think 1-4 months is a greta period of time. You can maintain a great pace that way. Personally, I do better in sprints. My University years were really 5-6 2 week sprints a year spread out between long periods of procrastination (and fun). The useful work I did outside of sprints doesn't amount to much.

    The idea of paying your tuition (ideally, lower than £12k), working hard for 9 weeks and expecting to meet some legitimately valuable goals at the end of it is appealing to me.

    Obviously I'm getting speculative, but I can imagine something like this being a fixture of 'lifelong education. Something you can do dozens of times in a lifetime.

    Zero-to-junior developer is obviously in the current market, can sustain that high tuition. But, I would like to see tuition go down to levels that can make it available for other markets.

    I can imagine a lot of useful 9-week sprint courses that could be very effective, if the quality was high enough. Writing. Data mining. Accounting.

  2614. Ask HN: Is there anyone who is looking to expand their business to S.Korea? 2014-06-26 11:53:33 groquest
    Thank you for the advice. I have been thinking about setting up a personal website (even registered a domain) but kept procrastinating. I'll start building one today.

  2615. Ask HN: How to invest $1, $10, $100, ...etc.? 2014-06-26 17:09:56 gobengo
    In short: Investing into the same asset in fixed amounts over time. It doesn't inherently improve your returns, but is a good idea to save consistently over time (not in lumps that you can procrastinate on).

    There are also benefits to your psyche. If you invest all at once, the asset value could drop by 50% the next day, and you feel horrible. If you had invested that money over time, your asset would not be 50% of your total investment.

    Again, this doesn't actually mean you get more returns. It just reduces the volatility of your returns at any one point in time.

    If you would like to get a good overview of strategies like this, read this wiki. http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Dollar_cost_averaging

  2616. Ask HN: How do you keep track of billable hours? 2014-06-28 22:49:32 qworty
    I just look at my commit times\nBut my workflow is kinda weird, i change code and I commit which then pushes it to my development server. I do it this way because I always use different computers throughout the day/week. So that way I always have the latest version of my development code.\nThen when I finnish a feature I push it from my dev repository to the test repository where I use git like it should be used. But because I have this development git repository it is easy to see my work times. I still want to automate it though, now i'm just starting up qgit and do the manual lookup for a week and bill that to my clients.\nI do all my projects this way.

    Also recently started using this:\nhttps://github.com/gurgeh/selfspy\nIt gives quite awesome data, and most of my workflow is known, so maybe I could hack something together that logs things it considers work (but since I change pc so often I don't know if that will really work). Should have a procrastination/work/documentation list for your browser though to make it more effective.

  2617. Ask HN: What projects are you working on? 2014-06-29 00:37:27 LVB
    I'm enjoying looking at the git commit history of a weekend project that just reached its one-year-in-development anniversary :). It's still weekend project size/scope, but I've redone it 10 different ways in 3 different languages. That's called procrastination.

  2618. Discover a startup every time you open a new tab 2014-07-02 18:22:11 rjtavares
    Sounds like a procrastinator's wet dream...

    On the opposite end of the spectrum, a minimalist to-do list every time you open a new tab: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dayboard-new-tab-p...

  2619. Employees That Stay In Companies Longer Get Paid Less 2014-07-04 11:00:57 kablamo
    Great response. I'll pile on:

    Many people retire at 50 or 60 and don't die until 80 or 90 these days. Thats 20 - 30 years of living often while dealing with very high medical bills and health problems which can make work impossible. Everyone (not just programmers) should realize that their retirement situation is similar to professional athletes.

    Programming is a hot field now and won't be in 20 years. Everyone in every country in the world is learning to program. Thanks to the internet its going to be a global employment market. Competition is going to go up. Salaries are going to go down.

    Movies and popular culture say you have to enjoy your youth. I can sympathize with that, but as much as it sucks to work hard during your twenties, it would suck a lot more to work hard during your 60s or 70s when you are less healthy. Don't procrastinate.

    If you save 60% of your salary you can retire in 13 years. \nIf you save 80% of your salary you can retire in 6 years.

    I built a tool that does this math for you:\nhttp://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement

  2620. Ask HN: How do you overcome laziness and lethargy? 2014-07-07 02:04:03 axaxs
    Will 2 hours of cardio help? Possibly. \nIf you aren't exercising already, you really should. Nothing helped me overcome lethargy like going to the gym every day. Two hours is good but by no means necessary...30-45 minutes is all I usually do. Not a health not mind you, just getting out there. \nIt really does help almost every aspect of your life, but unfortunately, doesn't seem to help me much with procrastination. For that I just need to figure out why I'm procrastinating. Am I distracted(surfing)? Quit surfing. Am I underprepared? Learn. Am I bored by the project? Add features or move on to something else.

  2621. Ask HN: How do you overcome laziness and lethargy? 2014-07-07 02:17:41 Partyfists
    For me the things I can do to stay motivated are like this:

    1. Work with people you really enjoy being around.\n2. Do something you love doing\n3. Find a type of music which is not distracting. Preferably, no lyrics or loud noises. \n4. Find what is making you procrastinate (video games for me) and moderate it.\n5. Be goal oriented. Be more agile and celebrate the small victories.

    I hope that helps!

  2622. Ask HN: How do you overcome laziness and lethargy? 2014-07-07 02:39:49 thirsday
    Most of Partyfists' recommendations are good, especially 1 and 2. (to clarify, here is his list):

    >>>\n1. Work with people you really enjoy being around. 2. Do something you love doing 3. Find a type of music which is not distracting. Preferably, no lyrics or loud noises. 4. Find what is making you procrastinate (video games for me) and moderate it. 5. Be goal oriented. Be more agile and celebrate the small victories.\n>>>

    For 3. I prefer brown noise, especially if you can find it in mono, not stereo (try simplynoise.com).

    For me 4. is irrelevant, since there's not one single thing that enables procrastination for me except being on the internet itself, and with apologies to those who have made or used apps to regulate their internet usage, I haven't found anything that has made regulating my internet time practical or useful – especially since I need it to do my job (also, regulating usage is merely addressing the symptom, not the cause).

    Advice from others' about exercise is good too – although I haven't been able to implement this yet.

    Finally, yes, talk to a specialist about whether you might have ADD and consider Adderall. It will give you more energy and make you more work harder/longer at things, but it's by no mean a magic bullet.

    Notice I didn't say it will make you more productive, if your productivity is being determined by others' goals/standards, for instance a boss at work.

    You may still find it hard to put your increased efforts towards the things they're supposed to be going towards. You may find yourself organizing a metaphorical sock drawer when you're supposed to be knitting an (again metaphorical) scarf.

    I don't know if perfectionism is often tied to ADD or not, but if you also tend to have perfectionistic tendencies this can be a very tricky combination to overcome to do fast, consistent work that meets expectations. If you figure it out, let me know (and let me know soon).

    If you stop taking Adderall you will have a difficult period for several weeks where you'll be lethargic, eat a lot, etc. due to your brain having reduced its serotonin levels to accommodate the Adderall.

    If you take Adderall during the week and don't take it on the weekends, you may find it hard to have the energy to do much of anything. I'm typing this from my bed right now and it's 10 minutes til noon.

    There are several other options as far as medication now, including some that are non-stimulants, but I can't speak as to their effectiveness.

    2. from Partyfists is what most people would recommend. For me, I've found that even that is not enough. I've had about as close a chance to 'do what I love' as most people have ever had, and I still lacked the daily follow-through to make that a reality rather than waste time on the internet.

    If 2. is unrealistic or impractical for you, I have a feeling that 1. could be the next most important, and perhaps easier to attain. Currently working on fixing that one myself.

  2623. Ask HN: Urgent connection to Twitter support 2014-07-09 08:11:18 elwell
    See, HNers, procrastination habits can be put to good use!

  2624. Show HN: Sysadmin Casts – simple bite-sized sysadmin screencasts 2014-07-10 11:16:35 nstart
    I've had a Trello card system up as well. I kept my ideas dumped into it publicly in hopes that that would raise my accountability and get me off my procrastinating ass to get work done. My procrastinating ass turned out to be much stronger than I expected sadly. Even so, the system is gold and I use it in organizing pretty much everything I need to do.

    (I also pledge, that the day I start earning money from my side projects, if I ever release that is, I'll buy into their paid plan).

  2625. Carter Cleveland Says Art in the Future Will Be for Everyone 2014-07-11 04:11:31 carterac
    Carter, the author, here. Yes I've been on the Internet. In fact, I love and grew up on the Internet, wrote my first lines of code in middle school, and procrastinated my way through high school on sites like Deviant Art. I've been reading Hacker News daily for over 5 years.

    This essay was written with the WSJ audience (average age over 50) in mind. That audience is more familiar with the established art world and its $66B market. For an audience that grew up on the Internet like me, I would have used more nuanced language and talked more about the importance of merging the existing art market and the established art world with the more organic art communities already online.

    But here's the tl;dr version of what I would have written for HN:

    The Internet will grow the art market and broaden it to include artists outside of the existing establishment–the result is that more artists will be able to make a living without having to appeal to the existing system. But achieving this requires working with the established art world, e.g. major galleries and museums, to publish more of their art online for easy and free access–making art and art education accessible to everyone, not just those with the time and money to go visit in person. By moving the existing art world online, you're bringing its market of buyers and sellers with it, and exposing them to a more vibrant, diverse, and organic ecosystem that many readers on Hacker News are already familiar with. In summary, by increasing awareness and education about art history, the Internet will drive greater passion and market demand for art, which ultimately means more artists from all over the world will get discovered organically and be able to pursue their passions more sustainably.

    Likewise, music has been around forever, but the chances of someone like Lorde, a 16 year old from New Zealand, seeing such success was much less likely before the Internet democratized music for listeners and creators alike. Today, it's still very rare for a visual artist to experience that kind of success if they are not part of the existing establishment. But the Internet is going to change that, and this will be a great thing for all of us.

  2626. Tell HN: Magnesium supplementation effective in treating depression and ADHD 2014-07-13 02:33:18 dm2
    Do you think this would be a good choice? \nhttp://www.amazon.com/Natures-Way-Magnesium-Complex-Capsules...

    Thank you for the suggestion. I had never heard of the importance of magnesium and am definitely curious if it could help improve my procrastination and lack of focus.

  2627. Miami is drowning while the powers that be look away 2014-07-13 10:03:03 krakensden
    It's pretty reasonable to bet that when the shit really hits the fan, the billions necessary will arrive. Democracies are procrastinators like that.

  2628. Miami is drowning while the powers that be look away 2014-07-13 10:57:58 xenadu02
    Here in America, we always do the right thing... After exhausting all other options.

    The sea level rise will take decades to play out. We know exactly how it will go: Conservatives will continue to deny climate change is happening, everyone will procrastinate, then worsening flooding will force action.

    When the maps of the US must be redrawn to exclude the submerged land, only then will Conservatives begin to admit climate change is happening (while denying they ever denied it). This is as expected, because the current corporate masters will be dead and not required to pay any taxes to implement mitigation measures (aka the system works as designed)

  2629. Show HN: Dependapal – Use Implicit Peer Pressure to Make Progress on Your Goals 2014-07-13 18:21:30 Houshalter
    Clearly you have never had to deal with procrastination.

  2630. Why Probabilistic Programming Matters 2014-07-16 09:15:12 psb217
    FYI, some folks (see: https://spectrallearning.github.io/icml2014/) are certainly working hard to apply eigenvalue decompositions (well, more like generalized SVDs) to any inference problems they can get their convexity-loving hands on.

    Disclaimer: my lab mate has been organizing these workshops for the past couple of years and I'm currently procrastinating from preparing a presentation on this material for a reading group later this week, so I've presently got mixed feelings towards it.

  2631. Slow and Steady is Bullshit 2014-07-17 18:59:53 duncanawoods
    I see this type of thinking as the road to procrastination.

    If you see each task as a large do or die task that needs sacrifice and extended concentration to complete otherwise there is no point even starting it... you don't start it.

    That said, I do agree with this type of thinking and believe many other people do too which is why procrastination is such a widespread problem! My broader take is that you need gears and know when to change up/down. Sometimes you are going up hill and sometimes downhill. Sometimes you need to brake and sometimes steering is more important than speed. Ahhh car metaphores...

  2632. Slow and Steady is Bullshit 2014-07-17 19:30:24 visakanv
    Sadly for me I think I still approach productivity in a very "barbaric" way- I have long periods of idleness and procrastination, then I rush a fuckton of work all at once. I've seen some success in my personal projects from writing daily, but I haven't yet adapted such practices to my work and other commitments... I'm an unproductive person who shouldn't be talking about this, heh.

  2633. Linus Torvalds gives a tour of his home office 2014-07-19 21:07:56 amarraja
    Aaron Swartz offered an interesting insight into this on The Setup [1]

    I don't have any extra displays. When I was little, I'd read Adam Engst talk about how great a second monitor was and lust after one, but never could bring myself to buy one. When I went to work for Condé Nast they gave us all nice big external Dell monitors and I found that I just couldn't get in the habit of using two screens. Everyone talks about how great it is to have more screen real estate, but apparently for what I do it doesn't really matter. I spend nearly all of my time on the computer staring at a block of text of one sort or another (emails, web pages, code) and no matter how big my screen is, I can't read more than a couple words at a time. Everything else on the screen is mostly a distraction. But maybe I'd feel differently if I wasn't so nearsighted.

    I've found working on just my 15" laptop leads to much less procrastination (sometimes).

    [1] http://aaron.swartz.usesthis.com/

  2634. How to Be Happy 2014-07-21 00:48:16 chippy
    The bit about procrastination was in the first half of the article :)

  2635. How to Be Happy 2014-07-21 02:16:18 jeffreyrogers
    At the time in my life when I stopped reading LessWrong I became remarkably happier within a week. I attribute this to two reasons: 1. LessWrong's focus on optimizing your life is so great that whenever I failed at something or didn't uphold something I said I would do I felt bad about it. 2. One thing that makes me happy (and I think most others would agree they're happiest when this occurs as well) is accomplishment. I like the feeling of working on a goal and having that lead to tangible results, whether that means something I've created or something like lifting more weight in the gym.

    By actually making a change to how I act and seeing the results of that change in the world I developed a lot of confidence (I was formerly very shy and uncomfortable with myself despite having a lot of things going for me).

    I want to come back to the first point briefly as well. At the time I was reading LW it often felt like I was being productive. I'd think to myself "oh I just need to read this article on motivation and acrasia (the LW term for procrastination), and I'll never fail to do what I planned to do again. This caused me to spend my time preparing to do things that I never ended up doing, and it also set me up to feel angry with myself when I inevitably failed.

    One thing that helped me a lot was accepting that on top of everything we humans have going for us we're really just animals, and we get upset, or jealous, or sad, or angry, just like any other animal. So rather than try to eliminate these negative emotions from my life I came to accept them as normal and try to structure my life so that they occur as infrequently as possible. I've found a few ways of doing this that work for me, and I can post some of what's worked if anyone's interested. I still have bad days or bad moments, but when I do I accept it as normal and try to see what I can learn from it to lessen the impact next time, rather than trying to over-optimize the life of an unpredictable, fallible human making most of the important decisions in his life based on emotion (hint: that's all of us).

    The allure of LW is that we're perfectly rational or that we can at least make ourselves that we through sheer force of will. For better or for worse (I think for better) that's not the case.

  2636. Equational reasoning at scale 2014-07-21 04:08:27 platz
    Some good notes on this book http://www.atamo.com/blog/how-to-read-pearls-by-richard-bird...

    it's on my list but have somewhat procrastinated due to the perceived difficulty mentioned above.

  2637. How to Be Happy 2014-07-21 04:23:16 lozf
    I'd procrastinate more if I wasn't so lethargic.

  2638. How to Be Happy 2014-07-21 05:58:57 Double_Cast
    > One thing that makes me happy is accomplishment.

    What you describe sounds suspiciously similar to what Muehlhauser calls creating "success spirals" [1], which is coincidentally in the same sequence "The Science of Winning at Life".

    > The allure of LW is that we're perfectly rational or that we can at least make ourselves that we through sheer force of will.

    And to be fair, LW: does make a distinction between epistemic (ideal) rationality and instrumental (pragmatic) rationality [2]; is aware of its propensity for insight porn [3]; and has made progress towards bringing things in the stratosphere [4] back down to the object level (e.g. [5][6]).

    [1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/3w3/how_to_beat_procrastination/

    [2] http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Rationality

    [3] http://lesswrong.com/lw/9p/extreme_rationality_its_not_that_...

    [4] http://lesswrong.com/lw/58g/levels_of_action/

    [5] http://lesswrong.com/lw/58m/build_small_skills_in_the_right_...

    [6] http://lesswrong.com/lw/k4n/a_brief_summary_of_effective_stu...

  2639. A Formula for Success: The Power of Implementation Intentions 2014-07-22 04:37:15 denniskubes
    In looking for specific strategies to overcome procrastination this one jumped out. A more detailed description of the simple technique can be found in a paper by gollwitzer, http://www.psych.nyu.edu/gollwitzer/99Goll_ImpInt.pdf

  2640. The most overused logos, at the moment 2014-07-23 05:26:04 lifeisstillgood
    A good logo is the least of your problems. A property company? go with a set of roofs over your name, a car company? Choose a swishy logo. Make sure your company name is clear and readable and get on with the hundred other things you need to produce million dollar turnover.

    Once your company is employing a hundred people, turning over 8 figures then you can afford a rebranding exercise. Before that it's so much procrastination and mental wank.

    You live and breathe your company's essence - if that's not what you want, try therapy not logos.

    However, it must have taken some time to gather that and is an impressive overview. More power to them.

  2641. Ask HN: What project would you work on if you had half a year of free time? 2014-07-25 22:19:02 hmslydia
    I would take a pet problem that I have and solve it well. Something so personal that nobody else would solve it. A personal time management app just for me. A way to manage all my contacts so that I can keep up with them intelligently. Something to get me to do that tasks I procrastinate on the worst (like going to the Dentist). There are a million general tools for this, but having your own perfect tool is like having a superpower. And it's a great way to get to know yourself.

    Alternatively, you could become the world expert in something small and bizarre. Like VIM. Just kidding. No, like some API. I got to know the MTurk api, and it then became an expert at it. Then people started treating me like an expert. It was cool.

    A third approach is find somebody you want to learn from and work with them. Any project you pick will never be as important as what you learn from the project.

  2642. Scala: Next Steps 2014-07-29 20:52:40 adriaanm
    I agree with most of your comment. Thanks for writing it down!

    First, the agreement:

    Yep, structs are a VM thing. We are very excited about Project Valhalla (http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~briangoetz/valhalla/ etc).

    Refactoring in a dependently typed language is hard. There's room for improvement. Scala-refactoring is a great example of community contribution.

    Scala style checking is on our roadmap for 2.12. I'm procrastinating reviewing the first PR for the tool (abide) right now.

    Finally, I would like to clarify we are doing everything we can think of to encourage the community to help shape the design and implementation of Scala. We publish roadmaps, review (and even rework) community PRs, do most of our team comms publicly (we are a distributed team), solicit proposals for language changes (e.g., http://docs.scala-lang.org/sips/pending/42.type.html). We spun out library modules that are now being maintained by the community. I spent last year simplifying the core build, so that we can move to a standard sbt build this year, which should also make it easier to contribute. As a first step towards updating the [spec](http://scala-lang.org/files/archive/spec/2.11/), we converted it to [markdown](https://github.com/scala/scala/tree/2.11.x/spec).

    That said, I think it's only natural that the Scala committers on Typesafe's payroll are more inclined to work on customer support issues / internal Typesafe support. We always try to strike a fair balance to give back to the community.

    Please let me know how we can do better, here or via contact info in my about.

  2643. Google Keep 2014-08-01 19:23:27 fs111
    sure it is not perfect, but whenever I used a digital note taking thing I felt I was using the app to procrastinate rather than doing the real work. It might just be me, but it does not happen with a classical note book + I can scribble in it as well.

  2644. Show HN: Miimic – Let your friends text for you 2014-08-03 20:11:44 duggan
    Friend has been asking me to build this for them for ages (unfortunately, I'm not a mobile app developer).

    He's pretty insightful when it comes to these sorts of things, the kind of "idea guy" that actually makes an excellent product designer. People want this app.

    Thanks for saving me the hassle! (of future conversations about how I should build this, rather than actually building it - procrastination's a killer).

  2645. Show HN: Nach – Personal goal setting for the highly ambitious 2014-08-03 23:57:55 jamesisaac
    This is something I started working on around a year ago to scratch a personal itch - none of the goal setting / task management tools I could find really felt like they were aimed at power users. It's been a big help for me in overcoming procrastination, and focusing myself towards the big things I want to achieve.

    Would love some feedback, and happy to answer any questions.

  2646. Don't you *DARE* break the chain–to make the productivity method work 2014-08-04 03:12:17 tkmadera
    What's wrong is the procrastination... ;-)

  2647. Getting rid of burnout permanently 2014-08-04 22:17:12 valevk
    In my opinion and unfortunately experience, burnout is tightly coupled with procrastination. Neither burnout, nor procrastination is classified as disease, though. It is known, that a burnout is a life-management difficulty. [1]

    To get to my point, the whole burnout process starts with procrastinating. However, the sources for procrastination can be very different. This is where you should fight the problem. If you have depression, get help. If you are lazy, well that sucks. (Sounds easy, I know. It is not easy in real life, I know). But in the end, your own inaction is digging your grave.

    It's not the break you need. You need a new approach to handling life. Handling life differently. If you keep "only" taking breaks, the burnout becomes a cycle, instead of a one-time exhaustion. And you will go throught this cycle often.

    The fact that I'm writing this, instead of studing/working, shows that my procrastination problem continues to grow, and eventually enlarging the burnout on the horizon.

    [1] http://apps.who.int/classifications/icd10/browse/2010/en#/Z7...

  2648. Show HN: Free Survey Creator 2014-08-05 02:55:44 wallawe
    Completely agree and will be adding the official stuff later this week. I had been procrastinating on getting this out there so I figured I'd throw it on HN and see what people thought, then go from there. If people didn't see a need for it, no use in putting all the official jargon in.

    edit: my personal site and info can be found at www.will-wallace.com, just to put a face and name with the site

  2649. Entitlement issues (2009) 2014-08-05 23:00:45 carlob
    While I agree wholeheartedly with the article I feel there is a flip side to this: announcing what you're going to do can be a way to put some pressure on a late project. Be it a business project (signaling we're in crunch because we've half announced it), or a personal (as in a way to fight procrastination).

    Now I don't know how much GRRM tells about his progress on his blog, because I don't follow it, but I'm sure some authors in the past have used this technique to feel some pressure to finish up something.

  2650. A Fast, Minimal Memory, Consistent Hash Algorithm 2014-08-06 13:24:34 dchichkov
    It takes time and effort to do a writeup. And it is easy to procrastinate. That reminds me...

    A bit of a plug here. I have a cute nearly-minimal perfect hashing algorithm designed to have good cache-friendly properties. Briefly, it is somewhat similar to hopscotch hashing, only you pre-calculate the positions of the elements to put them into the 'best' spots by solving the assignment problem. Works for up to about 50k elements. It feels like it might have good theoretical properties too, might be even optimal, but it was a while since I've taken the algorithms class.

    If anyone is interested to do a writeup and publish clean source code - you'd be welcome.

  2651. Pissed off about functional programming (2005) 2014-08-06 18:06:21 zaptheimpaler
    I was looking for some technical discussion to half read through and procrastinate, but I found wisdom instead.

  2652. Transducers are coming to Clojure 2014-08-07 06:04:04 graycat
    Thanks. I just looked up "map/reduce" on Wikipedia. Gee, I've been speaking 'prose' (an old joke) all along!

    So, I was procrastinating from working on my code, and there I have some data base data split, for some positive integer n, into n 'partitions'. The intention, later, is to use n servers, one server for one partition.

    Then I have some data X to be 'applied' to all the data in all the partitions, and from each partition I get back some data, say, for partition i = 1, 2, ..., n, from partition i I get back data Y(i). Then I combine all the data Y(i) to get my final results Z that I really want.

    I've programmed the communications, etc., but it looks like I've just reinvented the wheel, i.e., map/reduce. Looks like a library of good map/reduce software could save me from programming the low level details (serialize to an array of byte an instance of a class and send the array via TCP/IP sockets) and also get some fault tolerance. Sounds good. So, I reinvented the 'pattern'.

    For the OP, I'm not so clear on how in most compiled languages the 'transducer' could work; that is, it sounds like the programming language would need some means of 'reflection', 'entry variables', 'delegates', dynamically written, compiled, and linked code, interpretative code, or some such. There, 'static analysis' of 'dynamic code' seems a bit clumsy!

  2653. Stupid Apps and Changing the World 2014-08-08 02:27:41 adamzerner
    > Facebook, Twitter, reddit, the Internet itself, the iPhone, and on and on and on—most people dismissed these things as incremental or trivial when they first came out.

    With the exception of the internet itself, I think they still are. Are we really that much happier with our social media and iPhones than we are without them? I think that for the most part, the answer is no. Most use is superficial and procrastination rather than meaningful connection with people.

    Check out The Progress Paradox by Gregg Easterbrook. He talks about how we've made all of this "progress" in our standard of living, but that it isn't actually making us happier.

    However, I agree with the central idea that "toys" are often dismissed prematurely.

  2654. Show HN: Use email subject lines to save personal stats and chart them 2014-08-08 17:21:43 roh26it
    This is superb. I'm going to use it as a daily logging service for the number of users who sign up for my service. I get this email everyday telling me the number of signups and I've been procrastinating adding a line chart to give me some historical data along with it. Hope you don't mind me linking this to a server. :-)

    Also, +1 for more options to power users. This is dead simple which is why it works but if I have data for than a month, this might start to get messy for me.

  2655. Ask HN: Should I code in the path of least resistance? 2014-08-11 04:48:09 logn
    Ain't nobody got time for that.

    Forget about all of this and write software. Put a moratorium on learning new languages and totally strike from your brain any code style concerns. When there's a time to worry about languages, formatting, and style, worry at that time, not now as it's a subconscious way to procrastinate or avoid thinking about actual programming issues.

  2656. The 5 types of procrastinators: which one are you? 2014-08-11 23:08:50 zawaideh
    The perfect procrastinator :)

  2657. I'm A Thinker, Not a Do-er 2014-08-12 00:57:12 hashberry
    You're not a thinker--you're a procrastinator.

    There a deep emotional issues causing your anxiety, probably from your childhood. You need to get out of your head. You're stuck in an endless loop.

  2658. Ask HN: How do you balance being a dual-income household with a baby? 2014-08-12 16:40:41 specules
    I'm an interaction designer and have 2 kids, ages 2 and 5. During the school year when my husband has his full-time public high school English teaching job ("English" = "tons of lengthy essays and never caught up until the end of the school year"), I am barely treading water. I dream of quitting constantly. It. Is. SO HARD. To afford the Bay Area mortgage in a modest little home, I work full-time year round, from the office 2-3 days a week, the other days from home. The WFH helps, but it's not the panacea people think. You save time on the commute but you are surrounded by the things you didn't prioritize (read: mess, unfinished to-dos) because you prioritized your kids and bills higher. And because you're home, your work stops (if you're Mommy) when the kids come home or when you pick up, whereas if I'm still at the office, I can (guiltily) still work an extra hour while my husband deals with pickup and dinner for both kids. It's a trade-off, really.

    Husband handles groceries and dishes and most cooking. We order more takeout/delivery than my parents ever dreamed, maybe once or twice a week. That helps a bit. I handle laundry and everything else, including hiring help to clean our house every two weeks, all the bills, money- and health-related stuff, clothing, school-related anything, buying whatever we need for the house, and I'm the person who drops their job when I get the dreaded and frequent call that one of my kids is sick at school, and then has to stay home while they recuperate and either burn a sick day and then inevitably my vacation days, or "work from home" meaning divide my attention ten ways from Sunday.

    We live across the country from all our family except my younger brother who is not in a position to help watch kids. We do it all ourselves. So hard. I think about moving all the time but almost all our relatives whom I'd trust to watch our kids in a pinch all still have day jobs. In reality they couldn't help. The one whom I'd trust has her own toddler to look after and I wouldn't want to dump my sick kid on her so that her own child gets sick. My parents are retired but I don't trust them to watch our kid. So moving across the country to be near family wouldn't improve our situation at all. I think about moving to a cheap place where we could own the house outright, which would help some, but I did the math and I would still need to work at least part-time to pay the rest of the bills. And then I'd be stuck in upstate NY with its freezing winters and sweltering summers. So I haven't made the leap yet. I'm hangin' on, in protest sometimes.

    Our summer time schedule is more lax and I'm just figuring out this year's schedule at a new elementary for the older one, but it will go something like this.

    ----- start -----

    6 - 6:30) every damn day, 2yo wakes up and makes Mommy get up

    6:30 - 7:30) I diaper, dress, feed, and pack lunch for the 2yo. (I can not pack ahead of time - picky guy only eats soup or dumplings which has to be warmed up and put in a thermos in the morning.) In that time, I also shower and get dressed, and my husband wakes up, showers, eats, and gets dressed.

    7:30) Husband takes 2yo to daycare and goes to teach

    7:30 - 8:15) 5yo wakes up, rush through morning routine: potty, get dressed, eat, tame her long hair, brush teeth. At same time, shove food in my face and pack AM and PM snack as they are not provided by school. Get out the door.

    8:15 - 8:30) I take 5yo to school

    8:30 - 4:30) Work/school/daycare. If working from office, hour-long commute for me from Lake Merced to downtown on Muni. Same if I drove to nearest BART with parking. Joy.

    4:30 - 5:15) Husband picks up both kids OR

    4:45 - 5:15) Husband and I split kid pickup if I'm working from home (see? save time commuting, spend time picking up kids)

    5:15) cook, eat dinner, 2 allotted TV shows, play, see spouse if I've WFH

    7:00) baths/pajamas, reading. If I worked in the office, I come home around this time.

    8:00) one last snack

    8:30) brush teeth

    8:45) bed - I lie down with them as I still nurse my 2yo and enjoy the snuggle time. It means I don't get things done like other parents, but it won't last forever and I know they'll grow up fast.

    Middle of the night) I wake up from typically having fallen asleep with the kids, and cross things off my to-do list or catch up on work I never finished

    6 am) Do it all over again, maybe having gotten a few more hours sleep, sometimes having worked all through the night

    ----- end -----

    There's no exercise in that schedule, no watching shows regularly. I could fit exercise in the workday but feel guilty at how much time I have to spend with family as it is, so I am loathe to take more attention away from work (except when procrastinating by commenting on threads like this!)

    I know other people would make different choices and criticize mine, tell me I could fit in more if I moved this or that around, but fwiw that is our life, that is how we're getting by at the moment, to answer your question.

    I wish you all the best. Each family situation is different and I'm sure you'll find something that works, even if barely, haha. And once it works, it will change. :-)

  2659. Show HN: Vulnerability scans for WordPress. No installation or code required. 2014-08-14 11:41:37 xSwag
    Hi everyone, this is the MVP I have been working on. It's almost 5am in the UK right now and I just wanted to launch as soon as possible and stop procrastinating (and waiting for my A-level results). It's funded entirely by my Google bug bounties, so thank you Google. I have not done any design stuff for it yet -- the site is very bare bones but functional.

    Current solutions to vulnerability scanning such as WPscan are good but not user-friendly -- which is what I believe what WordPress users want. I've already got my first 5 customers prior to launch that wanted this product which I think is a good start, hopefully there is a market for this stuff.

    I would love to hear any sort of feedback.

  2660. Poll: What is your #1 productivity killer? 2014-08-14 13:28:12 richardw
    Procrastination?

  2661. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-14 19:06:32 visakanv
    TL;DR for the busy:

    The post focuses on the fact that it's hard for us to think about our future selves. So procrastination is the result of short-term bias, and a desire for immediate gratification.

    ---

    I personally think that's irresponsibly oversimplistic. Procrastination can get much, much more complex than that.

  2662. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-14 19:17:39 irremediable
    > I personally think that's irresponsibly oversimplistic. Procrastination can get much, much more complex than that.

    Well said. I find there are two main reasons I might procrastinate. Sometimes it's because I'm working on something boring or frustrating, and I just want a break from it. Sometimes it's because I'm scared I'll fail, whereas if I never start, I'll never risk that.

    I'm trying (with a bit of success so far) to reshape my habits to stop the second kind of procrastination. The first kind, I don't even consider to be a bad thing. When I was a child, I learned to program and do maths because I found "school maths" boring. I read a lot of amazing books because I couldn't be bothered to memorise facts in a sub-par geography class. Now I'm (supposedly) an adult, this form of procrastination consists of deferring low-priority but necessary tasks (e.g. timesheets, marking students' work, health and safety reviews) and working on cool things that motivate me.

  2663. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-14 19:30:33 spindritf
    We humans, Parfit argued, are not a consistent identity moving through time

    Our identity is more stable at some times than others however. Supposedly, stability peaks mid-life[1]. I wonder if middle aged people procrastinate less.

    Also, how much do people differ in their ability to identify with their future selves? We know that people have different time preference and some people emphasize the immediate (discount) more than others. Do they procrastinate more, too? Is this difference innate, cultural, ideological?

    Peter Frost theorizes that viewing yourself as part of this great chain of ancestors and descendants was very adaptive (maybe even more important than mastering agriculture) at one time and helped drive human expansion.[2] Which would make it at least partially cultural.

    Finally, some people view procrastination as a fundamentally rational way to avoid doing work that may never need to be done, like you would a gut feeling about someone's trustworthiness. This doesn't work in an artificial setting of term papers but in a complex system you can simply wait things out quite often.

    [1] http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-stabilit...

    [2] http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-agricultural-rev...

  2664. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-14 19:32:31 visakanv
    Yeah, I think the main thing about my procrastination is structural and habitual. This is something I've built since I was a child. I've always been averse to doing things that I don't instantly or immediately enjoy.

    That said, these structures and habits were built because of some set of reasons that may seem completely irrelevant today. My parents spoiled me silly and never expected me to take any serious responsibility for anything. I used to read tonnes of books for pleasure, but I never did any of my homework because I didn't see the point of it.

    Years later, I struggle to get myself to commit to doing work that I personally acknowledge as important and useful to me.

    As a serious, pathalogical procrastinator, the best explanation I've ever seen for why people procrastinate is this one: http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastin...

    I realize this also focuses on Instant Gratification as the cornerstone of the problem, but it describes the actual struggle with much more detail and nuance.

  2665. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-14 19:38:22 visakanv
    Yeah, I think procrastination, like laziness, might be better described as "work aversion". Procrastination and laziness both imply that the "problem" is with the individual who's afflicted with it, and it also almost implies that the environment has little-to-nothing to do with it. But there are many 'procrastinators' who actually work really hard at certain things. (World of Warcraft strikes me as one of those things that actually requires a lot of hard work.)

    So again, for the people who do struggle with procrastination in their own lives, figuring out how to do something about it (if they want to do something about it at all!) requires a very thorough self-examination.

  2666. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-14 19:44:42 seren
    Procrastination is an avoidance mechanism, but you are not necessarily trying to avoid work, it could be pain, unpleasantness, or fear of failure as mentioned earlier. To take your example of WoW, compulsive players are likely trying to avoid some real world issues, but it could be social anxiety and not "work aversion".

  2667. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-14 20:18:31 electromagnetic
    I've always wondered where the notions of procrastination and laziness came from. No one actively compromises their survivability through either.

    To me it seems like the notion came from our history of servitude. Of course a Lord is going to pressure his peasants to work harder. So of course the head of a hide is going to be pressuring his nephews to get working.

    Laziness and procrastination only become negative in the concept that we have to work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. I'm sure the generation before Henry Ford reduced work hours to 8 hour days and work weeks to 5 days thought their kids were lazy. Who wouldn't when you're working 12 hour days 6 days a week!

    My son might be of the generation working 4 hour days 4 days a week. He might be of the generation where mandatory work is a thing of the past.

  2668. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-14 20:28:25 visakanv
    Your perspective is completely consistent with my experience. For most of human history, we probably hunted animals in short bursts of activity then sat around "procrastinating". Laziness as a term is almost a subtle act of violence, useful for policing the behavior of others.

    The idea that we should spend most of our time actively working on things or working towards things is kind of odd when you examine it closer.

  2669. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-14 20:28:57 cturner
    It's an interesting idea - could we deal with procrastination by visualising ourselves in the future position where the task is not done? I don't think it's the full story on procrastination though.

    Procrastination can be rational. If you have a difficult phone call to make, and you can't get focus to deal with it, it's rational to not do the obvious thing of picking up the phone and making a mess of the call.

    I procrastinate when I don't feel able to get a task sufficiently into focus that I can progress it. There's a particular struggle with sequencing steps - working out a series of things to do to contain the task.

    My technique for getting around this is to brainstorm simple things I could do around my outcome. This could be as trivial as writing a paragraph about why it feels hard.

    After a bit of this, I can string together four or five tasks. Once I have a sequence of things, I can get some motion. Then procrastination ceases to be a problem.

    Something else I find useful is to accept exhaustion. If I can't sequence, it may be because of exhaustion. Go and lay on a couch with no intent, and try to think about it with no pressure. Sometimes new ideas come here. But if I fall asleep - it was needed. Come back after rest for another go.

  2670. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-14 20:40:00 istjohn
    An interesting solution to procrastination that I just came across is Beeminder [1], which lets you set a goal and a matching consequence for not staying on track to meet your goal. If you fall off track, you pay the consequence.

    1. https://www.beeminder.com/

  2671. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-14 20:54:27 tokenrove
    But the research cited in the article indicates that people are more willing to submit their future self to consequences that they wouldn't want in the short-term. That's consistent with my experience with approaches like the site you cited, which is that it doesn't help me procrastinate less, but vastly increases my stress and panic associated with a deadline as the consequence approaches, when it's too late to work effectively.

  2672. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-14 21:15:46 ryanklee
    >you can't get focus to deal with it... working out a series of things to do to contain the task... brainstorm simple things I could do around my outcome... writing a paragraph about why it feels hard... string together four or five tasks... Come back after rest for another go.

    This is not what I consider procrastination, and I consider myself a major procrastinator, struggling constantly with time management issues because of it.

    What you are describing is a context of ancillary effort surrounding the task. These are Things Being Done To Do The Thing.

    Necessary but insufficient. Secondary, but nonetheless essential.

    Procrastination, on the other hand, is the Absolute Evasion Of All Things Related To The Task At Hand.

    Not lead up. Not preparation. Not sequencing. Not anything.

    Anything But.

    Do Something, but make damn well sure it's Not The Thing That Relates To What You Ought To Be Doing.

    Email fidgeting. Netflix grazing. Guitar strumming. Water boiling watching. But not The Thing. And not Near The Thing.

    Anything But The Thing.

    This is doubly hard when creative (read: conceptual, thinking, fuzzy, ethereal, imaginative) work is The Thing To Be Done. Because sometimes Not Doing The Thing is what Needs To Be Done To Do It.

    But just as often, oh man, do we like to fool ourselves into even avoiding Not Doing The Thing Needed To Do the Thing We Need To Do by simply Not Even Doing That.

    If you pack batteries all day into tiny boxes in a warehouse filled with angry and watchful foremen (I've done this), there's no possibility for confusion between Getting It Done and Not Getting It Done.

    But if you've got 600 words to write on how SEC New Rule 506(c) pertains to real estate crowdfunding, who's to say that sitting on your ass and watching 7 episodes of Adventure Time isn't integral to your effort. (It's not. But still, who's to say?)

    Don't even get me started on billable hours. That's a whole nother can of worms.

  2673. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-14 21:39:05 jabelk
    Out of curiosity, what are some of the things you're trying to combat the 2nd type of procrastination? I've been experimenting with habits and other organizational systems to use my time more effectively, and it's been going pretty well so far.

    The main thing I do when I realize I'm frittering away time when there's something pressing that I really should be doing, I think "OK. On xxx Date in the future, you are going to be held accountable for The Thing. That date is approaching, and when it gets here, you are either going to fail or succeed, and the difference will likely be what you spend your time on right now."

    This is moderately successful for important tasks with important consequences, but not so helpful when I really should, say, do my laundry. But I figure that if I can get the hard things sorted out, I'll slot the laundry in somewhere later (textbook procrastination rationalizations, yes, I recognize the irony).

    I'm also playing with todo lists to help me plan better - keeping everything in my head is certainly not optimal. I sampled a bunch of methods: so far Wunderlist has been the best for just straight todos. I would like to change my habits so that when I'm too tired (physically or mentally) to do intellectual work, I default to a less demanding task - exercise, errands, whatever - instead of HN. But that's still a work in progress.

    One other thing is that I've been keeping more notebooks. If something happens, and after the fact I think "Hmm, that could have gone better..." I'll jot some notes down about what I could have done instead. When the semester starts (I'm an undergrad student) I also want to start keeping a rough weekly plan in the notebook, like this: http://calnewport.com/blog/2014/08/08/deep-habits-plan-your-...

  2674. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-14 21:46:43 rubiquity
    Whenever the topic of procrastination comes up I always like to refer to pg's essay on it: http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

    Procrastination comes in all various sorts and forms. We have to remember that things other people perceive as productive, but we know aren't productive to what we need to accomplish, is procrastination as well. Of course, there's also the form of procrastination that represents fear of failure.

  2675. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-14 22:02:15 visakanv
    Some severe procrastinators, I think, also sort of hate themselves and their future selves, and see themselves as unworthy and undeserving of anything substantial. The procrastination might be a symptom of depression, etc.

  2676. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-14 22:14:32 courtf
    In a physical sense, future you _is_ someone else. All the atoms that make up our bodies are replaced within some timeframe. Sympathizing with future you shouldn't be predicated on that person having your personality anyway: we are all more than capable of sympathizing even with complete strangers. Perhaps we've been procrastinating much worse than we realize on that.

  2677. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-14 22:26:03 ambler0
    Discounting the future self is only one of many possible reasons for procrastination, which is a complex subject. If you want to listen to a podcast that reviews the many different lines of inquiry into the subject, including several branches of science and also philosophy, check out the iProcrastinate podcast with Dr. Tim Pychyl.

    http://iprocrastinate.libsyn.com/

  2678. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-14 22:28:05 CaRDiaK
    What you describe here my friend, doesn't seem to be procrastination. The above are pretty much all the hallmark signs of resistance. An interesting read; "The war of Art" -Steven Pressfield.

    edit: care to explain the downvote?

  2679. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-14 22:34:14 roskilli
    Listening to a Podcast about procrastination instead of coding on one of the rare days I get to the office before 8am... interesting suggestion you make mon frere

  2680. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-14 22:50:12 agumonkey
    I will assume being a suffering procrastinator, but wanna add something. Sometimes procrastinating feels like the 'creative high', except it's obviously twisted. I will jump into playing music because I suddenly have an 'idea'. Or will delve into a programming language for the same reason.

    It's like a parallel choreography of desires ending being counter productive.

    Fight it. (I wish I was taught courage patience and application earlier)

  2681. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-14 23:05:54 TeMPOraL
    > That's consistent with my experience with approaches like the site you cited, which is that it doesn't help me procrastinate less, but vastly increases my stress and panic associated with a deadline as the consequence approaches, when it's too late to work effectively.

    That GP's quote describes my exact experience with Beeminder. I lost a bit of money there, while procrastinating even more because of huge amounts of stress related to failing the task and losing money I can't really afford to lose.

  2682. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-14 23:50:02 cgriswald
    I believe I procrastinate for similar reasons and my techniques for getting around it is similar to yours.

    However, I do consider my past and future selves as different people in my mind. I am someone who talks to himself constantly. I've added talking to my past and future selves. I will say, out loud or mentally, "Thanks Past Me." There is something about being grateful to my past self for things I have done that have made my life better today, that makes me more able to do things that will make my life better for my future self. And I think a part of it is that I know, because I am grateful to my past self, that my future self will be grateful to me.

  2683. I'm 25 years old and I am lost 2014-08-14 23:58:25 shadowfiend
    Some realize it later than others, but life is long. There's a lot of emphasis on carpe diem, live today like it's your last, etc. That's actually a very good way to get anxious about what you're doing today when you could be doing it tomorrow. Sounds like procrastination, I know.

    The thing is, putting things off makes sense. You can't do everything you could ever want today, or tomorrow, or this week, or next. But you also have several decades to do things. I think my greatest peace of mind comes from the knowledge of three things:

    - I have plenty of time. And if I die suddenly from disease or accident or whatever, the bad thing will be death, not “I didn't do everything!”\n - I won't ever do everything I want to. My mind is coming up with new things that might be interesting to explore on a reasonably regular basis. But that's okay. The things I choose are what make my life distinct from that of others.\n - What I want to do is going to constantly change. More of a corollary to the previous one, but what I'm doing today will have inevitable influence on what I want to do tomorrow.

    Choosing to focus on taking care of your family now doesn't mean you'll never have another opportunity to attain financial freedom. That opportunity may take a different shape than what you're thinking of right now though. Sometimes it's good to just let things settle for a while before launching into the Next Big Thing. Sometimes you let things settle out and you realize the Next Big Thing wasn't what you originally had in mind. That's what makes things fun ;)

  2684. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-15 01:10:21 sliverstorm
    My personal theory is that my lizard-brain procrastinates in the hope that some percentage of the things it puts off doing, will eventually not need to be done. (Either they take care of themselves, or turn out to be unimportant)

    Basically, procrastination is a rational manifestation of laziness, which as has been discussed in the past is a survival trait (avoid expending energy if possible)

  2685. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-15 03:12:01 plainOldText
    I recommend the book "The Now Habit" to anyone interested in fixing procrastination. It's a decent read, and you'll learn a thing or two about how to deal with procrastination.

  2686. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-15 03:32:39 glibgil
    "Sometimes it's because I'm scared I'll fail, whereas if I never start, I'll never risk that."

    The idea from the article is that you are actually wrong about what you think your reasons for procrastinating are. They may feel intuitive to you, but they are inaccurate. The idea is that if you identify with your future self more often, you will align the interests. People who naturally do this procrastinate less.

    Rather than thinking about fear of failure, imagine a future self that has done the thing. Even imagine a future self that has done the thing poorly and another that has done it well. Imagine a future self that just gets to talk about doing the thing poorly to someone interesting at a party. Imagine another future self that has been rewarded and recognized for having done the thing well or just got lucky. Identify with those future selves and let them compete with your current self. Each of the future selves results in doing the thing. They are way cooler than the current self who wants to not do the thing. Make it a competition between done-well and done-poorly to see who wins rather than letting done-not-at-all getting too much attention.

  2687. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-15 03:38:09 squeaky-clean
    Also not the downvoter, but I can also see why. Your comment doesn't really give me much to understand or respond to. What do you mean by it is not procrastination? You're going to have to explain that. The only thing I could about resistance in the sense you use was a small paragraph on Wikipedia about a term coined by Steven Pressfield. So it's probably not something known by anyone who has not read that book (which does seem interesting by the way, thank you). Even then, the way it was described, it doesn't sound like procrastination and resistance need to be mutually exclusive.

    Also looking into it (just based on the wiki blurb, not having read the book. So it's entirely possible I'm misunderstanding it). But a "universal force that he claims acts against human creativity" sounds cheesy. There's no external force acting against me when I watch Adventure Time instead of accomplishing something (I'm guilty of that too), or browse HN while at the office. I'm just being lazy and doing something easy and enjoyable, instead of something hard but beneficial. And that matches the definition of procrastination pretty well.

  2688. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-15 13:04:01 yellow_and_gray
    Hi Visa, sorry to put you on the spot here but you carry the distinction of being both an expert in the procrastination field and able to describe it well.

    (1) A link from the link you posted (http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/11/how-to-beat-procrastination.ht...) suggests two explanations (low-confidence in kicking the habit, and inability to change their storyline) and some ways to beat procrastination.

    Do these two explanations ring true? Also, have you tried the advice there?

    (2) You might have been task-averse in answering this but can you comment on the following point by seren:

    > it could be social anxiety

    (3) How can I get in touch with you? I have something to try and fix procrastination if you are willing to be a guinea pig. I would appreciate the feedback.

  2689. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-15 15:55:41 CaRDiaK
    Thanks for taking the time to explain this to me, I really appreciate the feedback. I shall ensure replies are more thought out in future. Sometimes it takes someone pointing something out to me, to allow me to course correct and I thank you.

    I guess I really connected with what you said and it was well written. You said it in a way that would take me quite some time to get across, and described it much better than I could. That blended pretty well with my own experiences. I could procrastinate about procrastinating myself, it's not a good place and a frustrating feeling. I tried to read as many books and read about as many other people as possible to try better my understanding of why I do it so much, so often, despite me knowing a lot of data about it. I believe what Petsfold is trying to do is to personify procrastination to a recongizable point, like a character, so you can consciously choose to not let that character win. That's my main takeaway from the book. It's certainly helped me. I still procrastinate, but I feel like I know a little more. Almost like "what is it I'm resisting about x that's making me procrastinate so much". This can sometimes, not always, help me identify and act on variables that might be affecting me at that moment in time. Best of luck, and thank you again.

  2690. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-18 05:51:17 irremediable
    > Out of curiosity, what are some of the things you're trying to combat the 2nd type of procrastination?

    Yeah, like you, changing habits/organisation is a big thing. Another is that I've set things up such that it's far easier to exile myself from the internet. I try to restrict my leisure browsing to one VM and my work to another VM. So on.

    > This is moderately successful for important tasks with important consequences, but not so helpful when I really should, say, do my laundry. But I figure that if I can get the hard things sorted out, I'll slot the laundry in somewhere later (textbook procrastination rationalizations, yes, I recognize the irony).

    I don't mind letting these things languish. If it takes me a long time to do laundry, so what?

    Thanks for sharing your findings about todo lists. My todo list is essentially the same thing as my calendar, and I wonder if I'd benefit from separating them a bit.

  2691. Hextris 2014-08-18 06:46:29 prawn
    Same. I used to procrastinate and play Hextris for so long I'd enter a trance and zone out.

    Remembered it recently and based my own game on hexagons!

  2692. Why We Procrastinate 2014-08-19 03:41:12 lesterbuck
    I've read "Do The Work", the later, shorter companion to "The War of Art". Resistance and procrastination and related, but not identical. You get resistance about creative acts that expose you to public assessment of your work, or really anything that might upset the status quo in your life. Sure, you can procrastinate about a 600 word article or a term paper. But when you avoid even starting to write your first novel, or coding on your side project startup, that's getting into resistance. I think the more ego we wrap up into a task, the more resistance rears its ugly head.

  2693. Letter to a Young Songwriter 2014-08-23 01:31:07 visakanv
    I wrote this blogpost for my younger self, and for other young creatives who might be going through what I did when I was a confused young songwriter trying to do everything all at once (and tragically doing less than I think I would've been able to with proper guidiance). I'm sharing on HN because I think there are some parallels in all creative work, and that some of you may find some utility in this.

    A quick recap/rewrite of this post:

    1: Aim to be prolific, rather than “to be great” or “to have fun”. We can have much more interesting conversations once you have a body of work.

    2: Screw ‘best’. Avoid trying to write the best possible song. Your definition of ‘best’ will be a moving target.

    3: Write badly. Deliberately try to write bad songs, rough songs, strange and awkward songs. They’ll teach you more than you’ll learn from writing what you think is “okay”.

    4: Screw originality. Forsake the quest for originality, it’s a mirage. Learn other people’s songs as much as you can. Learn songs from genres you don’t really care for.

    5: Think less, write more. Don’t try to be smarter by thinking harder. Be smarter by processing more, recursively. Write new songs. Learn songs you didn’t know. Learn new chord progressions. Take long walks through unfamiliar territories.

    6: Play scales. It’s like learning to play with the underlying code of music itself. It’ll improve your appreciation of music that you listen to, and it’ll improve your ability to navigate the music you play.

    7: Play slow. Don’t rush after music. Immerse yourself in it. Imagine really bad sex, and then imagine really good sex. What’s the difference? Good music is like good sex.

    8: Always Be Creating (Or Listening). If you’re not doing one of the two, you’re probably procrastinating. Ask yourself which of the two states you’re closer to, and dive into that.

  2694. Notch programming a Doom-like in Dart 2014-08-26 08:37:55 prawn
    I imagine that having a live feed of you working also motivates you to avoid procrastinating.

  2695. Coffee naps are better than coffee or naps alone 2014-08-29 07:34:58 8_hours_ago
    I used to do similar before pulling all-nighters in college. I would take an adderall and go to sleep around 11pm, my normal bedtime, then after a 30 minute nap I'd be wide awake and ready to conquer whatever project I had been procrastinating on.

  2696. Taking it to Th’emacs 2014-08-31 04:31:09 TeMPOraL
    Shameless plug, but I wish I had this feature in Emacs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8247426 ;).

    I'd make it myself, but between work, thesis and procrastinating on HN, I'm not going to do this anytime soon.

  2697. Ask HN: How do you manage time between working and “absorption”? 2014-09-01 16:32:37 SergeyDruid
    Hi, thanks for the reply,

    I think that I'm trying to avoid 2 things here:

    A: disorganization of this information and

    B: Procrastination\n(I dind't mention procrastination in my post because I didn't want it to be "procrastination-centered")

  2698. Ask HN: How do you manage time between working and “absorption”? 2014-09-01 17:27:18 kiechu
    Hi.

    I think it is common problem.

    With HN and Reddit I got rule that I am reading the top 10 posts and that's all. Not that bottom 20 wasn't worth reading, but there is no limit to absorption if you don't make one.

    Second trick is "Stay Focused" Chrome extension. You can add there your favorite absorption sites and set time limit how much a day you can spend on them. After you use your daily quota it shows you "Shouldn't you be working page". Pro tip: change it for redirect to Google or your corporate page. You don't want your boss seeing that page and having first thought: "So, he hasn't been working!". It makes worse impression than seeing you actually reading some tutorial.

    For the procrastination enemies use Block Site Chrome extension to block them completely.

    At the end, I think it's ok to absorb reasonably in work. Your work is not repetitive manual job. Once in a while, you have to give your brain a rest to be productive. Unless it turns into procrastination (I bet it happens sometimes) I think HN widens your horizons. It's not the same as bing bing and sweet kitten photos - it pays back for your employer too and you need regular breaks anyway.

  2699. Ask HN: How do you manage time between working and “absorption”? 2014-09-01 18:19:43 wastedhours
    I absorb perhaps more than I should, I use it as a kind of positive procrastination from a not completely engaging job. I break it down similarly to you, spend more time on SO style answers as it looks "codey" if anyone can see my screen and answers my own (work or personal) coding Qs.

    Midweek sounds about right for me too, it makes me think that actually a 4 day work week, with Wednesdays off, might actually be a better working pattern, but then, I am learning whilst browsing, so, there's pros and cons...

  2700. Ask HN: How do you manage time between working and “absorption”? 2014-09-01 18:29:15 iopq
    I work from home and the lines are very blurred. I can code for 12 hours one day, and then the next day do no coding at all. Then a few hours on the weekend while the girlfriend is sleeping. Then I make a trip up to the office once a week and put in a 16 hour day (including bullshitting and ping pong, though) and sleep in.

    I really like being focused on tasks rather than being busy at work. As long as I accomplish things, there should be no issue about my productivity.

    Suddenly, there is no procrastinating. It's just time I happen not to spend working.

  2701. Ask HN: How do you manage time between working and “absorption”? 2014-09-01 23:15:19 analog31
    For me, it's procrastination, plain and simple.

    In my better moments, I try to spend my procrastination time "doing" something, so I load my computer with toys such as a new programming tool that I want to learn, an evaluation board for a microcontroller, etc. I give myself little projects. The cycle is complete when I begin to use one of those toys for my regular job.

    And to anybody monitoring my activities (which I always assume), it looks just like work.

  2702. My year with a distraction-free iPhone 2014-09-02 00:47:18 computerjunkie
    Agreed, I'm actually grateful that I stumbled upon HN last year. At first, I thought the content posted here would not suite my taste and then I checked HN comments on each post and I knew immediately that this would be my homepage.

    What I like about HN is the built in procrastination tool.The fact that the community knows that HN can be a distraction and they actually built a procrastination tool is awesome. You won't see Facebook, Instagram or Twitter give you an option to stop procrastinating.

    I stopped reading regular news and the comments, at most I will read articles from well informed media websites. Also over the years, the quality of articles from news sites has dropped massively. I feel like they are writing just to get hits on their websites. Add a misleading, controversial heading in the mix and it just makes the whole experience worse.

  2703. My year with a distraction-free iPhone 2014-09-02 05:49:37 Theodores
    This is the best thing I ever did. On my work PC there are precisely zero 'leisure surf' items in my browser history. If I am working with someone then that autocomplete is never going to suggest anything other than work related. Switch to any tab, same again - work.

    I go for a walk at lunchtime rather than read clickbait. Even if I work s-l-o-w-l-y, at least I am working rather than brazenly procrastinating. I never take my work home, I just get in early and get it done.

    This 'regime' is like freedom, it does not require any discipline, now that I am set into it I see no reason to change. The news will still be there when I get home, as will sports results, HN and anything else. I have no need to read any of this trivia at work. If I want to read I have plenty of time for that outside of work where I can read something more substantial on my own clock.

    We had a bright intern with us recently, he needed little help, however, I was most keen to stress to him how liberating it was to not recreationally surf at work and to have a phone for personal emails.

  2704. Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Using Wage Earnings to Support a New Business (2012) [pdf] 2014-09-05 04:47:29 vonmoltke
    That has been one of my problems. I frequently come home so drained that I don't have much capacity left for the day. That exacerbates my motivation/procrastination problems.

  2705. Can You Fly Without an ID? (2013) 2014-09-06 02:09:14 tlb
    Procrastinator that I am, I learned that you can use a driver's license for US airport boarding up to 1 year after the expiry date.

  2706. Can You Fly Without an ID? (2013) 2014-09-06 02:14:03 codezero
    I had inconsistent experience with this. I am also a procrastinator, I found that one leg of the trip they didn't care or ask, but on the way back they made a fuss over it. Possibly I could have spent more of my time arguing with them, but luckily I also had my not-expired passport so just moved along.

  2707. Why Flunking Exams Is Actually a Good Thing 2014-09-06 03:32:03 jere
    In college, I had a fairly consistent habit of bombing the first exam in a class and then going on to ace the class anyway. I got a 50 on my first exam in my very first class, Calc III. It's like I didn't take a class seriously until I was in panic mode. There are some parallels between my struggles with procrastination I think.

  2708. GNUzilla and IceCat 2014-09-09 03:27:58 oscargrouch
    My two cents for mozilla, and im sure they will be sort of offended by this, but the best strategy, one that should be pursuit years ago, is to get the chrome engine, and replace the webkit/blink layer with the mozilla web rendering engine..

    That way, they would have the multi-process architecture, they need badly, but with their core, the web layer intact..

    The chrome architecture is good enough, that you can replace the webkit layer without mess with other core parts

    Dont know why they are procrastinating with servo instead, and doing the same mistakes netscape did years ago, to rewrite the whole engine, while IE was capable to take the lead in the browser wars back than.. the same mistake!!

    Theres a good Joel Spolsky article about this (from 2000):

    Things You Should Never Do [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html]

  2709. GNUzilla and IceCat 2014-09-09 05:59:44 doublec
    Servo is a research project exploring the design space of writing a modern browser from the ground up in a language designed for it. It's not being developed as a Gecko (Firefox internal framework) replacement. So I don't think they are making the mistake of restarting from scratch for their core product. The Servo project is done by a different team and Gecko development continues uninterrupted. No procrastination in that area is going on.

  2710. Effective Productivity Hacks from 80 Startup Founders 2014-09-09 19:58:08 moron4hire
    When I was a kid and procrastinating my homework, my father would sit me down at the dining room table, stand over me, and command "put the pencil on the paper. Move your hand. Move. Your. Hand."

    Productivity hacks are nice tricks to get you over a little resistance sometimes. But for really bad blockings, nothing beats just sucking it up and doing the work. I can't always get the perfect cup of coffee. Sometimes I'm forced to work with unfamiliar tools. Occasionally, I might not even have my desk available, say nothing about it being clean and uncluttered.

    That said, one of my favorite productivity "hacks" is to take a long train ride. Amtrak has free wifi and coffee in business class, the seats are large and comfortable, and lunch is pizza and beer. Airplanes don't do it for me, I think because I've never been on one with free wifi, they are uncomfortable, and most of the places I'd be traveling to are only two or three hours away. I take the train any time I'm traveling on the east coast.

    Semi-related to that, I also accompany my wife on her business trips. Since she will already have a hotel room paid for, I use the wifi while she's working in a helicopter somewhere. I get a ton done during the day and then feel absolutely no guilt about kicking off at 5pm and doing nothing for the rest of the night but sit and drink with my wife.

  2711. Ask HN: 21-year-old coder recent grad has no idea what to do with his life 2014-09-10 03:25:39 yason
    I know that coding just for business can suck big time.

    So, that's called life.

    During life you do spend a lot of time wondering what the heck you are doing here after all. Some people say the point is not to find the meaning of life but to make your life meaningful. Others prefer to just enjoy the ride and make the most of it. Your mileage may vary and nobody knows what paths your life will want to take.

    But there's one thing that makes life so vivid and that is death.

    Without death you would never reach even a partial conclusion of what to do here because you just wouldn't be bothered to and you would be procrastinating instead for your whole life. Death conveniently and equally applies to everyone, and it makes you think about what really matters for you in your life.

    The unescapable end of your life may seem like a long way ahead for someone who's 21 years old but when you're older it feels that was just a moment ago when you actually were 21. Years go by quicker than you think, and each year you will be thinking about it more and, most importantly, prioritizing your life accordingly.

    Some people see it coming early, and make a better life of theirs after that realization. Some people hit it late, but that's all right too because eventually you will not only merely know but also realize, with all the cells in your body, that you won't be here forever. For real. And why that matters is because you know you can't fool yourself anymore.

    And suddenly then some things don't matter anymore and other things really start to matter. You will see for yourself at the time but I'm willing to bet a lot that your career won't be one of your key questions.

    Rather, it sounds to me that what you were really worrying about was whether you will "never ever create something that truly changes the world". But that may or may not involve your career: you don't know it yet. Life unfolds in most unexpected ways: if only you go with whatever works for you, you will bump into something that truly changes your world.

    And it is then you know what you will do with the rest of your life.

  2712. Ask HN: How long can you code before got stuck and start googling? 2014-09-12 21:39:42 junto
    Perhaps a better better question: How long do you spend procrastinating on HN before you can start coding? :)

  2713. Google Voice is now supported on OBi VoIP devices 2014-09-14 10:20:03 jqm
    Hmm... that happened to me as well. I went ahead and switched to Phone Power (Obihai recommended) which was around $40 a year.

    Turns out this is one of those times procrastination would have been a good thing.

  2714. Yes, we’re being bought by Microsoft 2014-09-15 22:46:21 tellarin
    Actually, just found out about another one. Olympic Decathlon, released by MS for the TRS-80 in 1980.

    PS: Separate comment as the anti-procrastination filter kicked in. ;)

  2715. Why Sometimes I Hate Myself 2014-09-16 19:13:36 TeMPOraL
    > and have reply notification to comments set up

    How do you do that? That would probably cut my procrastination in half! HN used to be connected with some push notification startup and there was an option for it in profile, but it seems missing now.

  2716. Perceptions haven't caught up to decline in crime 2014-09-17 11:17:42 dfc
    The abortion explanation has been repeated so frequently that many people have accepted this explanation without digging further into the details. This is one of many explanations that Steven Pinker discusses in his book "Better Angels of our Nature." I am not sure it is as clear cut as you imagine: (I apologize for the lengthy excerpt)

      When I  told people  I was writing  a book on  the historical  decline of\n  violence, I was repeatedly informed  that the phenomenon had already been\n  solved. Rates of violence  have come down, they explained  to me, because\n  after abortion was  legalized by the 1973 Roe  v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court\n  decision, the unwanted children who would  ordinarily have grown up to be\n  criminals were not  born in the first place, because  their begrudging or\n  unfit mothers had had abortions instead. I  first heard of this theory in\n  2001  when it  was proposed  by the  economists John  Donohue and  Steven\n  Levitt, but it  seemed too cute to be true.147  Any hypothesis that comes\n  out  of left  field  to explain  a  massive social  trend  with a  single\n  overlooked event will  almost certainly turn out to be  wrong, even if it\n  has some  data supporting it at  the time. But Levitt, together  with the\n  journalist  Stephen Dubner,  popularized the  theory in  their bestseller\n  Freakonomics ,  and now a  large proportion  of the public  believes that\n  crime  went down  in the  1990s because  women aborted  their crime-fated\n  fetuses in the 1970s.\n\n  To be  fair, Levitt went  on to  argue that Roe  v. Wade was just  one of\n  four  causes of  the crime  decline, and  he has  presented sophisticated\n  correlational statistics  in support  of the connection. For  example, he\n  showed that  the handful  of states that  legalized abortion  before 1973\n  were the first to see their  crime rates go down.148 But these statistics\n  compare  the  two  ends  of  a long,  hypothetical,  and  tenuous  causal\n  chain—the  availability of  legal  abortion  as the  first  link and  the\n  decline in crime  two decades later as the last—and  ignore all the links\n  in between. The links include the  assumptions that legal abortion causes\n  fewer unwanted children, that unwanted children are more likely to become\n  criminals,  and that  the first  abortion-culled generation  was the  one\n  spearheading the  1990s crime  decline. But there are  other explanations\n  for the overall  correlation (for example, that the  large liberal states\n  that first legalized abortion were also  the first states to see the rise\n  and fall of  the crack epidemic), and the intermediate  links have turned\n  out to be fragile or nonexistent.149\n\n  To begin  with, the freakonomics theory  assumes that women were  just as\n  likely to  have conceived  unwanted children before  and after  1973, and\n  that the  only difference  was whether the  children were  born. But once\n  abortion was legalized, couples may have treated it as a backup method of\n  birth control and may have engaged  in more unprotected sex. If the women\n  conceived  more unwanted  children  in  the first  place,  the option  of\n  aborting more of them could leave the proportion of unwanted children the\n  same. In  fact,  the proportion  of  unwanted  children could  even  have\n  increased if  women were emboldened by  the abortion option to  have more\n  unprotected sex in the heat of the moment, but then procrastinated or had\n  second thoughts once they were pregnant. That may help explain why in the\n  years since  1973 the proportion  of children born  to women in  the most\n  vulnerable categories—poor, single, teenage, and African American—did not\n  decrease, as the freakonomics theory  would predict. It increased, and by\n  a lot.150\n\n  What  about  differences  among  individual women  within  a  crime-prone\n  population? Here  the  freakonomics  theory  would  seem  to  get  things\n  backwards. Among women  who are  accidentally pregnant and  unprepared to\n  raise a child, the ones who  terminate their pregnancies are likely to be\n  forward-thinking, realistic, and disciplined,  whereas the ones who carry\n  the child  to term  are more  likely to  be fatalistic,  disorganized, or\n  immaturely focused  on the thought of  a cute baby rather  than an unruly\n  adolescent. Several studies have borne  this out.151 Young pregnant women\n  who  opt for  abortions  get better  grades,  are less  likely  to be  on\n  welfare, and are more likely to finish school than their counterparts who\n  have miscarriages or carry their pregnancies to term. The availability of\n  abortion thus may  have led to a  generation that is more  prone to crime\n  because it  weeded out just  the children  who, whether through  genes or\n  environment, were most likely to exercise maturity and self-control.\n\n  Also, the freakonomists’  theory about the psychological  causes of crime\n  comes right out of “Gee, Officer Krupke,”  when a gang member says of his\n  parents,  “They didn’t  wanna have  me,  but somehow  I was  had. Leapin’\n  lizards! That’s why  I’m so  bad!” And it  is about  as plausible. Though\n  unwanted children  may grow up to  commit more crimes, it  is more likely\n  that women in  crime-prone environments have more  unwanted children than\n  that unwantedness causes criminal  behavior directly. In studies that pit\n  the  effects of  parenting against  the  effects of  the children’s  peer\n  environment, holding  genes constant, the peer  environment almost always\n  wins.152\n\n  Finally,  if  easy  abortion  after 1973  sculpted  a  more  crime-averse\n  generation,  the  crime  decline  should have  begun  with  the  youngest\n  group  and  then  crept  up  the age  brackets  as  they  got  older. The\n  sixteen-year-olds  of 1993,  for example  (who  were born  in 1977,  when\n  abortions were  in full swing),  should have committed fewer  crimes than\n  the sixteen-year-olds of  1983 (who were born in 1967,  when abortion was\n  illegal). By similar logic, the  twenty-two-year-olds of 1993 should have\n  remained violent,  because they  were born in  pre-Roe 1971. Only  in the\n  late 1990s,  when the first  post-Roe generation reached  their twenties,\n  should  the twenty-something  age  bracket have  become less  violent. In\n  fact,  the opposite  happened. When  the first  post-Roe generation  came\n  of  age  in  the late  1980s  and  early  1990s,  they did  not  tug  the\n  homicide statistics downward; they indulged  in an unprecedented spree of\n  mayhem. The crime decline began when  the older cohorts, born well before\n  Roe, laid  down their guns and  knives, and from them  the lower homicide\n  rates trickled down the age scale.153

  2717. A Long, Ugly Year of Depression That’s Finally Fading 2014-09-20 03:26:16 thr0w4wy33
    I could have written something similar when I was in my late 20s.

    My teenage years were filled with depression. My circle of friends consisted of a handful of people I knew from IRC. My 20s consisted of a string of failed business ventures. I was living at home. I had almost nothing in my bank account. I had very few friends and I would inevitably sabotage every friendship I had. I was overweight. I didn't have a girlfriend and had never even experienced a kiss. I lost a parent and then lost a step parent. I felt like the supposedly best years of my life were slipping through my fingers.

    After being rejected by a girl I met online because of my weight/appearance, I decided that getting in shape would help. Eventually I was able to lose weight and I met a girl after attending a rare social event. I thought she was perfect and we hit it off but after our first date she rejected me in a very harsh way. I was devastated and decided to end my life.

    I'll spare the details but I spent considerable time researching. I purchased the instrument of my demise. I wrote letters to the few people who I thought would care apologizing for my shortcomings.

    Before I took what I believed would be the solution to my pain I took all of the money I had from a gig and went on a solo trip overseas. The first night I cried myself to sleep. I literally walked everywhere until the heels of my feet bled. I talked to some people I met and had a wonderful experience that reminded me good can enter your life in the most unexpected of ways and at unanticipated times. But most of my travels were in my mind.

    My pain didn't end when I came back but I didn't end my life. Today I am in much better financial shape but I don't feel I have lived up to my potential and I'm still very much a procrastinator. I still don't have many friends. I have a girlfriend although anyone in a relationship can tell you they look easier than they are. There are days when I feel lost or like an impostor. I still have more regrets than I can count. I am currently mourning the loss a pet who I considered one of my best friends.

    You're not silly or pathetic. I don't know what the purpose of life is either. Life is absurd and undeniably impermanent. I don't have any advice to give but if I could suggest one thing, it's that absurd, impermanent things aren't inherently worthless and incapable of providing happiness. "Nothing matters anyway" is as much an invitation to experiment with life and live it without worry or expectation as it is to give up on it.

  2718. Write every day 2014-09-22 20:07:47 qwerta
    I would recommend not to concentrate on quality too much. Just hire corrector to do final polishing. Be being perfectionist one can easily build anxiety and procrastination.

    I write daily as well. I have personal wiki I use for planning, diary and keeping notes. Right now it has about 1 MB of text and 50 MB images. I use ZIM, they have some nice workflows: \nhttp://zim-wiki.org/manual/Usage/Getting_Things_Done.html

    Over time it kind of grows. My main project TODO list has 1500 items. I even have check list for packing luggage :-)

  2719. TempleOS: 5 minute random code walkthrough 2014-09-23 06:30:03 M4v3R
    It makes me sad that even with his illness he delivered more working code than I probably will ever do. Maybe not because I can't, but because I procastinate so much and I really have hard time focusing on doing work.

  2720. Brave New Phone Call 2014-09-23 13:09:10 themodelplumber
    Depends on the case, but yeah, those extra emotional cues are very important to me now.

    My business consultant, a retired SV engineer & entrepreneur, has been incessantly reminding me, "make that one a phone call, not an email," for four years now. And he's absolutely right. Many situations jut work better when people can hear your voice and v/v. I feel I can communicate far more effectively over the phone in many cases than I can via email. Any time you could do with some extra empathy, e.g. during negotiations, introductions, heavy procrastination, tense moments--you pick up the phone and the extra boost is like getting free money compared to email.

  2721. TempleOS: 5 minute random code walkthrough 2014-09-23 15:10:24 Cthulhu_
    With or because of his illness? You call it procrastination, but I think my brain just isn't capable of working on code 16 hours a day.

  2722. TempleOS: 5 minute random code walkthrough 2014-09-23 18:35:52 mahouse
    I don't understand. If you're happy procrastinating, why do you care? Life is about being happy and enjoying what you do, not about just doing more work, coding more... You are a person, not a robot.

  2723. Hard Drive Reliability Update – Sep 2014 2014-09-24 08:45:44 robomartin
    Thanks for sharing such useful data. I just had a Seagate drive fail. Was able to recover data since the last local backup with various tools. It took hours of repair work.

    I've been procrastinating about getting off-site backup. This post on HN reminded me that I've been meaning to get an account going with your company for a while. I just signed up and will test on my machine before deploying to other machines in my business. Thank you.

  2724. How to Stop Time 2014-09-29 04:26:36 tsunamifury
    As I've matured and grown in my technology career, I've found procrastination pays enormous dividends with only small drawbacks.

    Procrastination pushes you to wait to do a task until you find the optimal amount of time you know you need left, while doing it in the most relevant environment.

    For example, If I code or design something to early it is more likely that research, marketing or product direction could have changed, causing a percentage or all of my work to become moot.

    However, If I wait to do my work until I know I have just enough time left, I find my work is the most relevant and least likely to require changes of substance due to shifts of other parties.

    I whole heartedly advocate for procrastination due to this. Its a beneficial decision making response that we should stop fighting.

  2725. How to Stop Time 2014-09-29 05:25:34 nate_martin
    Also a good read on the subject http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

  2726. How to Stop Time 2014-09-29 05:26:08 leopoldo
    Though this is a good point, you are not really procrastinating at that point. Procrastination almost always implies being late to your due dates. You are just very good at calculating time you need to do something.\nI think you can consider yourself a procrastinator when you are habitually being late and making others be late because of your behavior (laziness or whatever it might be).

  2727. How to Stop Time 2014-09-29 06:14:08 busted
    I'm bummed he had no advice for type-a procrastinators like myself

  2728. How to Stop Time 2014-09-29 06:28:49 rheide
    What you are describing is optimal task scheduling. Procrastination is what you do with the time that you're not spending on your task.

  2729. How to Stop Time 2014-09-29 07:11:14 hnriot
    I need fewer developers with that attitude, I want people who can get stuff done, but by their nature, put it off. There will always be those that procrastinate in a team and there will, thankfully, always be those that just get it down. The reason why your technique seems to work for you is more likely because are picking up your slack.

    I wholeheartedly advocate you getting off my team :)

  2730. How to Stop Time 2014-09-29 10:45:21 agumonkey
    This is not procrastination, this is late-binding ;)

  2731. How to Stop Time 2014-09-29 11:50:40 skinnybatch
    I agree that there are a great many number for whom "time crunch" and the pressure of an imminent deadline help to produce a superior outcome. For those that know themselves well enough, I agree absolutely simply set your own start time, and don't built yourself up over "procrastination." You're simply scheduling your own work.

    However, there is also another subset of people that put off starting projects and work until the last minute, and don't function well under pressure. Many produce inferior work; some break down.

    Ultimately, the key is self-awareness and self-acceptance. Identify what kind of person you are, in terms of work habits and conditions, and be completely honest with yourself. Then don't feel guilty or silly or whatever other negative attitude people want to attach for structuring your own production schedule according to your strengths and superior functioning.

  2732. How to Stop Time 2014-09-29 11:55:33 skinnybatch
    Simply not doing what one is specifically "tasked to do" does not necessarily represent procrastination. It may be not be a direct route to one's specific end; however, it's important to recognize that sometimes on the journey from side to side, one learns, finds, or imagines a new way to move forward. \nThe internet simply provides new ways (which society moves to chastise and to ascribe blame) to wander off the beaten path. I find that when my internet clicking and surfing become as wayward as a three year old following a butterfly in flight, usually I come away having learned something unexpected or something I didn't know I wanted to know, in both cases, of value. Do I think people spend/waste a lot of time watching random fart contests and people acting the fool? Well sure. But, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The benefit of online "procrastination" in many cases is significant.

  2733. How to Stop Time 2014-09-29 16:13:55 dgreensp
    The quality of discussion about procrastination is shockingly low. Try telling people you're reading a book on procrastination, and some joker will say, "Ha! Ironic, right? Get it?" And everyone will chuckle good-naturedly at the thought of someone procrastinating by reading a book on procrastination.

    No one stops to examine why we should assume someone reading a book is shirking their duties. Even watching a YouTube video is not inherently an act of procrastination. If anything, our culture has an epidemic of people not being able to relax without being filled with guilt and shame over their momentary lack of productivity.

  2734. Physical activity can have a positive effect on children who suffer from ADHD 2014-09-30 15:42:17 chunkiestbacon
    +1\nADHD is real.\nIt was a lot harder to get a career as a software developer started. I feel like without finally discovering the root of my problem and taking meds at age 18 it wouldn't have been possible. \nAll those afternoons spent over procrastinating on homework.

    Excercise helps. I feel lasting positive effects on mood and concentration when I lift regularly. Sadly, It doesn't alleviate the symptoms completly and doesn't cure the syndrome.

    I think we'll be able to treat ADHD much more efficently when we have cheaper EEG that can be worn always. Recently the muse headband was introduced. I own one and it's a great leap forward. Sadly there's no app for neurofeedback training that is working with it yet...

  2735. The Reason Why Ello as an Ad-Free Project Is Not That Exciting 2014-10-02 21:58:01 Kristyna_Z
    Also, this "If you choose to use a Chrome web browser, an Android smartphone, or if you have recently used services like Google Search or YouTube, your web browser or device may be sending data back to Google that Ello can't control."

    As if the whole world would stop googling and procrastinating on YouTube.

  2736. Hacker's Guide to Setting Up Your Mac 2014-10-03 10:50:09 burntsushi
    Well... I guess I need to clear up a few things!

    - What I said in my previous comment in no way applies to programming languages. It applies to my programming environment. I very much enjoy using different kinds of languages. (There are definitely some that I dislike and stay away from though.)

    - I do not think I've found the perfect anything or "the one right answer." I continue to improve my setup. I have spent more years in Windows than in Linux, so I am aware of what I'm missing in that regard. My tactic is not to remain static; it is to iteratively improve. So far, it has lead me deeper and deeper into the terminal. (My next big task is migrating email into the console. It is a task so daunting and terrifying that I've procrastinated on it for years.)

    - I very strongly disagree with your disconnect between annoyance and efficiency. If I'm getting annoyed, then my emotional state is an impediment to focusing and working productively. Drudgery is annoying and frustrating and error prone. I don't really swear by any particular config as some Universal Truth, but I do have strong opinions about what works well for me. And I will spend an exuberant amount of time fixing it, especially if there is an engineering challenge involved (because, why not, we're hackers and it's fun to do that stuff). If the only thing you think you gained is "saving a few key strokes," then I agree that it probably isn't a useful tweak in most cases. What I gain by tweaking is compartmentalization and automation, and they usually pay for themselves in due time.

    - Haha yes, I'm not quite old yet, but I've been at it for over a decade at this point. So not exactly a fresh lamb either. :-)

    Thanks for indulging in some friendly banter!

  2737. Ask HN: What are your sources of inspiration and motivation? 2014-10-05 07:52:53 pjmorris
    Along those lines, I was inspired by pg quoting Richard Hamming's three questions [1]:

    1) What are the most important problems in your field?\n2) Are you working on one of them?\n3) Why not?

    [1] http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

  2738. Show HN: Nightmare – Simple browser automation 2014-10-07 02:42:53 ssharp
    Thanks, this should be absolutely perfect for a project I've been procrastinating on :)

  2739. Mouse Speedometer 2014-10-08 06:40:06 jlaurito
    Is there no honor among procrastinators? ;)

  2740. Ducksboard is joining New Relic 2014-10-08 21:26:23 wulczer
    Obligatory Show HN where we first showed Ducksboard to the world (1301 days ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2332464

    Thanks for all the feedback and interest we got from the community through all those years and just because we now work at New Relic doesn't mean we'll stop procrastinating on HN!

  2741. Holy War on Sites That Demand Pinboard Passwords 2014-10-15 08:49:15 idlewords
    No apologies needed. I'm the one who's been procrastinating a proper API update. Hats off to enthusiastic contributors who shake us out of our torpor!

  2742. Ask HN: Feedback on my landing page? - http://gini.io 2014-10-16 03:08:16 revorad
    Thanks. I'm sorry about the crappy landing page. I'm going to put up my proper design tonight. I was tired of procrastinating on it and just posted it on the spur of the moment.

  2743. Discovering Two Screens Aren’t Better Than One 2014-10-16 10:25:23 coldtea
    And now you're split between two productive things. More reason to procrastrinate.

    Better just have the productive thing you should be focused on one at a time up on a sigle monitor.

  2744. Discovering Two Screens Aren’t Better Than One 2014-10-16 11:16:23 Dewie
    > But if you wouldn’t watch a movie or play a video game while you’re trying to get something done, why would you keep an app as distracting as email sitting within your field of view?

    Because... I wouldn't? I use a window manager and I don't have a system tray (so no email notifications, for example). Often, I have one application open on each screen, perhaps a PDF reader, a text editor or a browser. Then, if I need to actually look at two things fairly back and forth, I'll split that screen into two, or use both monitors. What if I don't need the second monitor? I guess it could just be looking at the wallpaper, or displaying an analogue clock (that is: if I'm not looking too much at the clock, pining for the time to pass quicker!).

    Does using two monitors make me more productive? I don't know yet. But I don't see how two monitors would make me more susceptible to procrastination. If I feel the need to fire up the browser and go to reddit or something, that's pretty much as with one monitor as with two. The time and effort I save by not having to minimize the currently focused app in order to open the browser, compared to just opening a browser on the already blank second monitor, seems so small as to be inconsequential to a bored, wandering mind.

  2745. Upgrading to Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite as a Developer 2014-10-18 05:40:17 borked_borked
    (Gah! HN's anti procrastination measures have kicked in so I can't login with my normal account... ) Anyway, I've got threads open at Apple ( https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6603910 ) and at MacRumours ( http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1803281 ) describing my situation - hopefully some kind soul will be able to help out.

    In the meantime I've restarted the process one more time. The laptop still boots straight into the Yosemite installer so I don't think the hard reboots have adversely affected the machine.

    edit: It occurs to me that the longest I've waited has been 12 hours (my first attempt). I've now seen reports of 15 hour installs, perhaps I didn't wait long enough? Even if the log buffer is full, that wouldn't necessarily mean that install has outright failed... hmm

  2746. Towards Reliable Storage of 56-bit Secrets in Human Memory [pdf] 2014-10-19 06:34:08 twotwotwo
    Yeah, I did some rough calcs (after my anti-procrastination timer expired and I couldn't waste more time here, haha). If you have ~1000 words, ~10 bits/word, seven words is 70 bits, and you lose about 12 of those by allowing reordering, and obviously 10 if you let them flub a word (via a parity word or storing 8 hashes). Seven words could be 48 bits with both kinds of variation allowed, or 58 or 60 with only one kind allowed. It might also help users remember to give them limited choice of code (pick one of 4 or 8 codes, say), which could cost you up to 2-3 more bits (on the paranoid assumption that users will pick according to predictable patterns).

    How much entropy you target depends on the system. If it needs to work as a crypto key, then you really need entropy, and good luck to you. (Maybe you have folks remember a piece and write a piece down, and use an expensive key scheduley thing to stretch the concatenated result out.) If it's for a login system where you can rate-limit, then, hey, even 32 bits is a lot if the attacker has to wait one second between tries.

    Just realized, if you use a parity word to recover from the user flubbing one word in a login system, you don't need to store the cleartext in order to correct the word they missed--you just redo the parity calculation on the remaining words to recover it. Yay. Also, to recover after a parity error in a seven-word phrase, you have to check seven different potential passphrases (assume word 1 was erased, apply parity to recover it, check, repeat), so I guess it takes another three bits off your security on top of the 10 of losing a word.

    On users just omitting a word all the time if the system lets them, I think 1) you require them to enter the full number of words every time, 2) if you see an error recoverable using parity, first you tell them which word was wrong and ask them to re-enter it, 3) if they still can't get it, you tell them what the word was (shoulder-surfer issues obv) and they have to type it. Then you minimize how much you show, you (try to) keep the user from slowly forgetting the passphrase one word at a time, and you make sure that entering your whole passphrase is the fastest way to log in.

    Though it's nice what weird stuff you can do while keeping a hashed cred DB, if it were a login code (not crypto key) and there were big wins to other aspects of the system to keeping the clear version around (for example, it let you do some significantly better error-tolerance strategy), I'm not sure you have quite the same level of obligation around a random token that you give out specifically for your app as you do around a password the user entrusts you with that they also use elsewhere.

  2747. Cursors 2014-10-19 21:28:44 Dewie
    That's what I don't like about these "throw you into our world" games/websites. Sure, it's kind of adventurous to just be thrown into some game you don't know what is about or for, but it's not good for the web surfing procrastinator in me. OK, nice game and all, but is this going to be taking 5 minutes or two hours to complete? (Yes, I did finish this particular game. Someone pointed out how many levels there were, in one of the comments.)

  2748. Haskell Is Exceptionally Unsafe (2012) 2014-10-20 21:09:28 berdario
    Thanks. Since we got the ball rolling (I planned to ask it on some mailing list, but I kept procrastinating to write a semi-formal mail).

    Do you know of any way to use multiple stackage repositories? (for now it's not a problem, but I envision a future when I'll have dozens of projects, and updating everyone of them to use the same library versions might not be feasible)

    I know that I can `cabal --config-file=/path/to/cabal.config` but I'm wondering if there's an easier way and/or any convention

    I'm especially worried of forgetting something (like reusing the same ~/.cabal for multiple stackage-cabal configs)

  2749. Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results 2014-10-21 07:15:56 wiredfool
    Would you guess I did the same thing (procrastinated) with Tesla? Thought hard about it at <20, popped to $30 and I thought the run was over.

  2750. Google Inbox 2014-10-23 08:46:16 kulkarnic
    I wrote a review of the Inbox on facebook (that was my deal with the person that invited me). Cross-posting here if it interests you.

    My review of Google's new Inbox, based on two hours of use (thanks [redacted] for the invite).

    First the good parts: 1. I really like bundles. The idea that I can "Sweep" all the promotional emails I get in one click fills me with glee (and marketers with anxiety, I imagine). It's also nice to have all the travel related emails in one place. Never again am I going to be confused whether I should be going to SFO or SJC.

    2. I like the new compose. My emails are too long (both those I write and those you do), and I'm praying that showing just one line to write a response will make emails briefer.

    3. Snooze/procrastinate: How I like the idea of "someday". Combined with my own future discounting, I'm not going to feel guilty about not responding anymore.

    The not-so-good parts:

    1. Boy is this opinionated software! There is an inexorable push to empty your inbox. I guess I'll like it if I get with the program.

    2. It's too pretty. No, seriously. The title-bar is too bright, there are too many people's faces, too many colors and font styles. I like my email drab so I can focus on what people are saying and not get distracted by the colors.

    That's all I see with two hours of use. Oh, also, I don't know how to invite people yet. If someone tells me, I'm happy to invite y'all.

    edit: formatting.

  2751. Ask HN: What do you do while compiling? 2014-10-24 15:44:53 amarraja
    I currently work on a large C# app, and even though we got the compile times down to sub 30 seconds, I suffer from the same issue.

    Nowadays, I will usually work on a feature in isolation in a new project so I get a nice focused feedback loop. It doesn't stop the procrastination when I have longer compiles, but it reduces the frequency at least.

  2752. Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns 2014-10-26 12:46:37 treehau5
    I can relate to this so much it's not even funny. Don't let your fear of failure get in the way. I currently struggle with the same -- applying myself to a difficult task. Staying focused longer than 10 minutes at a time was difficult -- so difficult I was even suspicious I may of had adult ADHD. Turns out that I don't. What I have is the fear of failing and rejection. The fear of exposing my weaknesses to others, and my coping mechanism is procrastination. My procrastination shields me from the possibility of ever failing because, hey, I never gave it my best shot anyway, right?

    Hopefully this wasn't too off base, Just thought I'd share as well because I related to this so much.

    I wish you all the best!

  2753. Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns 2014-10-26 14:56:03 visarga
    > Staying focused longer than 10 minutes at a time was difficult

    I found an unexpected solution in working with someone else - that is - not working alone on the project. The more social interaction is involved, the less I am affected by procrastination. You have to make yourself visible and accountable to other people, to feel shame if you slack off, to feel energized when you make progress and then discuss it with them. In other words, you need to have a person witnessing you as you work.

    Think back - in school and while being employed you always had a teacher or boss to witness your work, you had colleagues, but when you are alone with a project, then all this social stabilizing effect is gone.

  2754. Ask HN: How I can get out of a job that has me burned out and exhausted? 2014-10-27 05:42:00 zghst
    I like this part if the thread. I always like to push he boundaries of myself, redefine what I can be, expand on what I am capable of, but procrastination is tough to deal with.

  2755. Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability 2014-10-27 06:53:24 nraynaud
    hum, saying someone is a procrastinator is still a blame culture, it's just blaming them. Moreover if it's really genetic, then you'll need a system around them, probably managed by a government to compensate for the deficient genetic trait.

    I see you where looking for confirmation for some kind of ideology, but I don't think I would blame short people for being short, but try to identify in which areas height is a issue and route around in various ways (climbing on stuff, abandoning some activities, or finding taller surrogates to do them).

  2756. Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability 2014-10-27 08:20:34 gwern
    Maybe they're just tired of it. I'm personally a little sick of how every single article I post on willpower or procrastination to Reddit or HN or anywhere else will attract the same damn joke. Like, do you really think anyone hasn't seen that before? Or that everyone doesn't think of it in the first second? (By this point, I've come to see it not as a genuine attempt at humor, but basically like posting 'First!' or pissing on a wall - it's just doing something to mark your existence.)

  2757. Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability 2014-10-27 09:27:59 icegreentea
    They compare the degree of correlation between their identical and non-identical twins. If in both groups, twins show on average the same level of procrastination/whatever trait, you can infer that the trait is not strongly genetically linked. If the identical twin group shows more correlation between siblings than the non-identical twin group, then you can infer that the trait is strongly genetically linked. You can read more under the first few paragraphs of their data analysis section.

  2758. Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability 2014-10-27 09:39:01 iribe
    I wonder if this lack of being able to set / keep goals correlates to math which often involves goal setting then working backwards to find the right steps to reach a solution. Are procrastinators worse at math?

  2759. Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability 2014-10-27 10:05:41 jacobolus
    Anecdotally: I’m one of the worst procrastinators I know, and also one of the best mathematical problem solvers. Some of the most organized and diligent people I know are terrible at logical/mathematical reasoning.

    I don’t think there’s a strong relationship. If anything, mathematical problem solving requires a lot of drifting around in the problem space and doodling that can be difficult for someone who approaches work/problem solving in a start-working-now-and-work-until-it’s-done kind of way.

  2760. Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability 2014-10-27 11:43:33 jrapdx3
    As a clinician not surprising that procrastination, impulsivity and poor goal-direction could be genetically linked. Combinations of such behavioral attributes (along with other manifestations) are associated with certain behavioral disorders, for example, these behaviors are common among adults with attentional disorders.

    Of course, just having those traits is not sufficient to establish any specific diagnosis. Digesting the article more thoroughly will take me some time. However, it does seem to show these traits appear to have common genetic roots, but the traits also cut across nominal diagnostic categories.

    That last point has merit. Behavior has to be considered along with its complex context in order to determine the significance of the behavior. It's difficult to figure out connections among the many contextual variables, far too many to glean quickly. "Explanations" whether applied to self or others bear risk of being wrong.

    OTOH, procrastination or impulsive action may have non-trivial consequences. If these really are causing problems finding solutions is imperative. If self-help doesn't solve it, seek professional help. Most places, it's not hard to find, and it can make a big difference. If you need it, go get it.

  2761. Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability 2014-10-27 15:58:17 goblin89
    “Procrastination” is such a weasel term when used without an object. Whenever you do anything you’re procrastinating everything else you could’ve been doing instead.

    Doing your job may mean procrastinating asking for a raise, looking for a better position at another company, starting your own business and many other things.

  2762. Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability 2014-10-27 22:52:16 icegreentea
    One of the scales used to measure procrastination in this study is linked here: http://www.yorku.ca/rokada/psyctest/prcrasts.pdf (The study did not use any of the star marked questions). Basically, they found that there is a strong link between your genetics and how you will answer this questionnaire.

    The questions tend to cluster around things with firm deadlines, or otherwise of more or less known time components to it, and which furthermore have more or less the same costs to you. In your examples, things being put off have unknown time components and a relatively large degree of risk. Putting off those actions is in many ways the result of a pretty rational calculation.

    In contrast, typical things that we 'procrastinate' about (like returning a library book, or washing the dishes, or doing some assignment) are things with little or know risk, as well as relatively well known time and effort (or we believe to be well known) costs.

  2763. Genetic Relations Among Procrastination, Impulsivity, and Goal-Management Ability 2014-10-28 03:42:59 goblin89
    Thanks for linking to the document. I can’t argue with the evidence regarding genetics, and I agree that real procrastination likely indicates troubles with goal management, but I strongly disagree that what these questions indicate is in fact tendency to procrastinate (by Wikipedia’s definition[0] and my own understanding of the word).

    My main objection is that what appears as procrastination to an outsider may not necessarily be procrastination per individual’s plan.

    Moreover, I think the common attitude to this is unfortunate, because avoiding externally perceived procrastination may actually go against individual’s own interests. Such conflict could be enough to induce actual procrastination in those sensitive to public pressure but not willing to fully cave in[1].

    Meanwhile, the majority of questions in the document judge the procrastination by this “external” standard.

    [0] “Procrastination is the practice of carrying out less urgent tasks in preference to more urgent ones, or doing more pleasurable things in place of less pleasurable ones, and thus putting off impending tasks to a later time…”

    [1] “I want to go freelancing (fire my client, etc.) but when I lurk and read up on this topic (polish my resume, etc.) I feel like I’m procrastinating, so I’m writing Hacker News comments instead” is roughly how I imagine this.

  2764. Is Facebook really down? 2014-10-29 07:17:32 fjcaetano
    So, how will I procrastinate now? Tumblr, I guess...

  2765. Demystifying the MOOC 2014-11-02 17:03:29 mafribe
    The "constraints of college" are a key part of what makes education work. Deadlines are an anti-procrastination device.

    This is rarely acknowledged.

  2766. Show HN: I updated the Smackbook script for OS X Yosemite 2014-11-05 18:06:15 dabockster
    Hey guys!

    Thanks for the comments on this small side project/homework procrastination of mine. When I originally saw this back in 2006, I thought it was one of the best tricks ever to do with a laptop computer. I was 13 at the time. Fast forward about 8-9 years, add some CS and Perl education, and bam, I finally know enough on how to update the script to save it from the black depths of the Internet.

    Took me a while to find an implementation that referenced enough to OS X Spaces, but I'm glad I could revive the idea.

    If I have the chance, I would love to write a clone of this and not have AMStracker as a dependency. Or if someone else wants to, that's cool too. I just don't know how long that AMStracker site will stay up.

  2767. The Art of Not Working at Work 2014-11-05 19:40:58 lordbusiness
    Exactly. Some people work better when they're 'up against it' under a crushing deadline, or just don't take as long as the average person.

    Personally, I am able to achieve a lot more when I am under the gun, and often find myself procrastinating until the last minute and then pull a rabbit out of a hat. This is not a new phenomenon, nor is it misunderstood. Some people work like marathon runners, some people work like cheetahs. The cheetah cannot be expected to be at full capacity 100% of the time.

    If two people both produce the same output, but one of them needs 40 hours and the other can do the same work in 2, who is the 'inefficient' person here? Let's evaluate the product, not the workflow.

  2768. How to Survive in SF as a Broke Startup 2014-11-07 00:58:41 junto
    I speak to people in "the office" via Skype regularly throughout the day.

    I have a daily 10 minute team stand-up via conference call (our team has a good microphone in the main office).

    My code check-ins are there for everyone to see. If there was a lack of them, it would be pretty obvious that I was not pulling my weight.

    The people in my co-working space are heads down busy. I go for lunch with some of them, but other than that, there isn't that much chit-chat whilst we sit at our desks and work.

    That's not to say that I'm never distracted or procrastinating. However, the cause of my procrastination is the same regardless of environment. Whether it is my old corporate cube environment (surrounded by by co-workers), my co-working space (surrounded by random people working), and my home office (surrounded by my cat) the root cause is that the work is uninteresting and uninspiring. A change of project is the best way to change that. A new feature rather than support another. A walk around the block and some fresh air a short term fix.

  2769. How to Survive in SF as a Broke Startup 2014-11-07 23:37:18 lsc
    >That's not to say that I'm never distracted or procrastinating. However, the cause of my procrastination is the same regardless of environment. Whether it is my old corporate cube environment (surrounded by by co-workers), my co-working space (surrounded by random people working), and my home office (surrounded by my cat) the root cause is that the work is uninteresting and uninspiring. A change of project is the best way to change that. A new feature rather than support another. A walk around the block and some fresh air a short term fix.

    Yeah, for me? that usually doesn't work. I mean, I switch tasks and goals often, but that doesn't help me focus, usually, at least not long enough to accomplish something. Work is one of those things that is less immediately satisfying than, say, hacker news, games, or a billion other distractions, but work is vastly more satisfying when I accomplish something. For me? it takes a lot of effort and tricks to get myself to focus long enough to finish something, but when I do? it's incredibly rewarding. Maybe I need to break up my tasks into smaller chunks? But a lot of my work is support-type work, where it's already in smallish chunks.

    But... yeah. I suppose other people are better able to focus on that further-out reward than I am. Maybe it's just me? Maybe it's that I'm coming down off of a long period of being less than productive?

    Either way, I think that personally, I'm way better off showing up.

  2770. Computers Are Not Designed for Productivity 2014-11-08 03:30:38 Dewie
    It sounds like we have similar setups. I use xmonad with no system trays - if I need something that happens to be a system tray, I'll ask for it and close it when I'm done with it. When I'm working in an application I don't need to see what the time is, if I've got a new email...

    > I don't like the whole "have some discipline" argument. Humans are notoriously bad at discipline- environment plays as much of a role as self control (try surrounding the most hardcore fitness nut by candy 24/7 and see how long they last). The point of our tools is that they should enable us to be who we want to be.

    Yes! I've come to the same conclusion myself. One thing that many people who complain about people's lack of self discipline nowadays is that it is most probably objectively harder to stay disciplined in the modern age then it was before. For a long time this was true for things like junk food, but most recently it's true for computers and the procrastination that they encourage. It probably isn't we who have gotten less disciplined - it is our environment that demands more discipline of us. And since computers are too-damn-convenient to be without, we need to make them help us stay on track rather than allowing them to drain our self-discipline energy (if there is such a thing. It feels like it is.)

  2771. Against Productivity 2014-11-10 19:49:25 Cthulhu_
    I wasn't reading that in the first few paragraphs, what I read was the author has a huge feeling of guilt for not being productive enough, moving abroad in a rather random attempt at being more productive - whatever that means. It ended up being goofing off for a couple years, probably because she didn't have to make any money or didn't have much expenses down there - and probably realizing that pushing yourself to be more productive will actually lead to procrastination, and feeling guilty about not being productive is self-destructive and futile.

  2772. I hate working hard 2014-11-14 02:55:11 msie
    Perhaps you can overcome your procrastination by breaking down problems into easy-to-accomplish tasks or tasks that you can concentrate your focus on. Or get someone to do them for you and that someone prods you into getting things done. I've faced this problem and the productivity experts say focus on habits/processes and not on end-goals. Do some google searching on that. Good luck!

    Edit: There's also no shame in learning a trade and doing a 9-5 job for income and indulging in your passion away from work.

  2773. Show HN: Explained Visually 2014-11-16 01:58:42 smorrow
    Visual Group Theory by Nathan Carter? I don't know, I've only ever read it while procrastinating on something else. So I haven't seen the entire book.

  2774. 12 Ridiculously effective techniques to mastering productivity as a founder 2014-11-16 09:46:15 rbajaj
    Very thoughtful and provocative. Particularly 1-5. One line of code is a neat idea. I have a problem with procrastination in general. Will try it.

  2775. Math and Movies (Animation at Pixar) 2014-11-17 04:27:34 ivan_ah
    In case someone is interested in the "eigenanalysis," the recursion formula is:

        [1/2, 1/2, 0  ] [A^n]     [A^n+1]
    [1/8, 3/4, 1/8] [B^n]  =  [B^n+1]
    [0,   1/2, 1/2] [C^n]     [C^n+1]
    \_____   _____/
           M
    And the question is, given [A^0,B^0,C^0], find [A^∞,B^∞,C^∞], which is equivalent to computing the infinite power of M. Waaaat? Enter the eigendecomposition.

    The eigenvalues of M are 1/4, 1/2, and 1. If you compute M^∞, the 1/4 and 1/2 "eigenspaces" will disappear, so you're left with the subspace of the eigenvalue 1. http://bit.ly/eigenex001 M^∞ = QL^∞Q.inv(), hence the [1,4,1] appears... very cool.

    Sometimes procrastinating by reading HN actually helps with your work---today I'm working on problem sets for book 2 http://gum.co/noBSLA

  2776. A Pragmatic Guide to Getting Things Done 2014-11-19 21:31:07 logicallee
    Well, no, not really :) But I am sure you would benefit from creating a quick one-off system for yourself.

    If for no other other reason than due to the sheer absurdity of the idea of procrastinating over creating a to-do list. It's something you can't help but do immediately, and is "self-hosting"!

    I might have been exaggerating, but I think it's a good exercise in coming to terms with your abilities and task management ideas in general, to create your own to-do system ahead of anything else you're doing.

  2777. A Pragmatic Guide to Getting Things Done 2014-11-19 22:42:48 w1ntermute
    The key is to break down each todo into clearly actionable tasks. You can do this in Wunderlist with subtasks, for example. In my case, the more I break something down and make it concrete, the less likely I am to procrastinate.

  2778. A Pragmatic Guide to Getting Things Done 2014-11-20 01:49:06 praptak
    Well, the book has its own dangers...

    I mean, now that I have this cool framework for dealing with procrastination, it won't hurt to put off this task for one more day, right?

  2779. Should I quit now before I get burned? 2014-11-21 04:47:58 xpto123
    You should try to agree to a launch date and feature set.

    He might be good on the business side but a natural procrastinator when it comes to project management, noone can have all the qualities or all the flaws.

    If a feature set and deadline agreement is not possible, then you can always give him a dealine of some sort to reach an agreement: if in two weeks there isn't an agreement then the company isn't viable.

    Because this is your company too, you shouldn't just find another job and move on. Give yourself a last chance to make it work, and if that doesn't work then move on but knowing that you gave it that last shot.

    This way you wont look back and ask yourself what if.

  2780. Fix CSS by writing it in JavaScript 2014-11-26 01:36:48 Sakes
    I do have a reason for saying "oh god not JS". In my experience, the biggest reason people try and solve CSS issues with javascript is because they don't fully understand CSS and how to structure it in a maintainable way.

    I used to hate CSS. I still think it is very flawed, just google how to center something and watch all the blogs pop up.

    But rather than cursing it the rest of my dev days, I took the time to learn it and structure it properly. I now never spend longer than a few minutes trying to resolve a css bug.

    Ideas like the OPs only procrastinate someone's true problem, which is they don't know how to properly work with the technology that they are forced to work with.

  2781. Google should be broken up, say European MPs 2014-11-27 21:24:08 Dewie
    I seem to remember that I used Altavista before google.com. I guess I would move on to another search engine. DuckDuckGo might be good enough, I guess, and there's also Bing (I guess DDGo uses Bing?). Most people would use whatever search engine that the browser than defaulted to. Maybe they'd still find what they want.

    People would have to find other video sites to procrastinate and entertain themselves than YouTube. I don't know if there are any video sites which are competitive when it comes to providing content compared to YouTube. If so I guess people would go back more to professionally made entertainment (yes, of course not all or perhaps even most of YouTube is amateur).

    People would replace Google+ with... oh that one doesn't matter.

  2782. Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2014) 2014-12-02 01:54:49 tptacek
    From the "Tales of interest!" files:

    A couple years ago, in our old office at the top of the Monadnock building, I'm working on code for a product we're doing while Vitaly is working on a pentest for a big Rails client, and, like, 5 other people in the office are working on 5 other things.

    I'm procrastinating while noodling through some stupid Riak thing and so I hear Vitaly say something about how some request he sent to the app produced binary gibberish in the response.

    It turns out I'd rather noodle around with Vitaly's app than figure out how to make Riak do whatever basic thing I want it to do, so I walk over and look at the response. Vitaly has already noticed that the "binary gibberish" is actually corrupted in the response headers; the response is corrupt.

    We both agree out loud that this is unusual and bad. A couple other team members walk over. In the span of about 4 minutes we figure out that the bug is triggered by inputs that include NUL bytes, and responses appear to be corrupted at the point where the input is, in the headers, echoed in the output. And a few reloads show that what looks like gibberish is actually stale server memory.

    This is that nginx bug that came out back when. It's approximately as bad as Heartbleed, except that it only affects nginx (and it has a more complicated trigger condition, albeit one that applies to virtually every web application). And because we were all together in the same room when Vitaly found it, we isolated, analyzed, and weaponized it in minutes, rather than in hours or days.

    (Ironically, someone else had noticed the same bug on the same day, and [fair enough!] got the reporting credit.)

    Stuff like that happened all the time at Matasano. The in-person requirement is one the company is unlikely to let go of --- not that I have any say in it anymore. ;)

  2783. The Case for Slow Programming 2014-12-02 08:47:16 overgard
    I kind of disagree with the premise here, from my own experience, it's much better to work fast but ruthlessly refactor and never be afraid to delete your own code. I find I rarely nail things on my first attempt, but by being quick and failing fast, I learn more about the problem domain and I end up with a nicer end result than the person that agonized about their decisions rather than trying things out. (Of course, the corollary is that I usually do these things on a branch so I'm not inflicting it on my coworkers)

    The problem with doing a big design up front is that you're generally going to run into something that's surprising, that you didn't account for (unless what you're doing isn't novel -- but then, why are you writing code rather than reusing it?) I think when people get all ponderous about these things, they're not really learning about the problem, they're just procrastinating. We're not building bridges here, if your first attempt isn't brilliant you're not out a million dollars of concrete.

  2784. The Open-Office Trap 2014-12-04 09:21:50 LordHumungous
    I'm a developer, and to be brutally honest, I tend to procrastinate when left to my own devices. It's much harder to do that in an open office, and I feel much more productive in one.

  2785. Ask HN: How can I remedy scatter brain and information overload? 2014-12-07 06:30:48 g0v
    You are your own worst enemy.

    [edit] After reading my post again it seems pretty scatter-brained, I guess that's appropriate in some way.

    Back in 2011 I decided that I would teach myself all this great computer science stuff and work in information security. Apart from the fact that security in itself is an advanced topic, I had given myself a very long-term goal without realizing it.

    It wasn't until a few months of research that I realized how truly enormous computer science as a topic really was. The moment I realized this I remember sitting back in my chair and thinking "fuck". So, I started with fundamentals and went from there. Thus far I've learned enough to hold my own and have the confidence that I can make it in information security once I get there.

    I can't tell you how many articles, blog posts, and comment threads I read about being productive. Books I've put on my list to read and am currently reading (about 4 right now) is virtually always growing. It wasn't until the last month or so that I realized a pattern in my behavior; I will focus intensely on one thing for a variable period of time and then lose interest in it.

    A few tactics against myself that have proven useful:

    - Blocks all websites that waste my time between the hours of 0800-2200.

    - Uninstall all games and their respective clients (done this many times).

    - Keep work/studies on screen/desk 24/7; the idea here is to have to stare at what you're supposed to be doing right now, as you do not do it.

    I still procrastinate terribly and go around my own countermeasures on a regular basis, but I've improved nonetheless. Hang tough buddy, you're only fighting yourself so identify your weaknesses and exploit them.

  2786. Ask HN: What book changed your life in 2014? 2014-12-08 22:34:58 netcan
    The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

    It's written for writers but is relevant broadly. The message is pretty simple and you don't really need to read the whole book to get it. It's one of those keep-driving-the-message self help-ish books.

    Basically the point is to name and shame "resistance," a catch all term for procrastination, fear and everything else that prevents a writer from writing a book. It also applies to starting a startup, a career, a family, an exercise regime… Like I said, the point is simple and the information could be conveyed in a short essay.

    The reason for the repetition is to actually realize how big a demonic bottleneck this resistance is and that overcoming it will take effort and more importantly, strategy. It's probably going to derail your plans unless you plan for it. Personifying (or demonifying) it is part of the approach.

    This is getting further from the book's actual content but the analogy for me is addiction. Say you are an alcoholic. It's not enough to decide to stop drinking, this is a fight. You need to realize that addiction will probably win if you fight stupid. You need a plan to beat addiction. It will fight back. You need to put time and resources into it. Everyone knows this and former alcoholics will start pushing you straight into two things, making sure you realize the scale of the problem and making sure you have a plan. They'll probably recommend AA which gives you a formulaic strategy.

    Resistance might not be the bottleneck for everyone, but it is for many. For us, we need to make war on it

  2787. Why your brain loves procrastination (and how to help it stop) 2014-12-10 09:54:40 getdavidhiggins
    Another post which gives people a biased excuse to procrastinate. It's quote-fuel for sloths

  2788. Magnus Carlsen – “I am chaotic and lazy” (2010) 2014-12-11 08:18:19 mhomde
    I think there might be a correlation between being lazy and being creative. I've seen this pattern in many other greats (and in my not so great self :)

    Aaron Sorkin talks about procrastinating a lot between writing sessions. Lots of painters and artists procrastinate as well.

    I think its a matter of digestion, your mind is focused on a "task" and churning in the background, but you don't actively work on it except when you "feel like it". I saw some scientific article to this affect that the downtime is actually very valuable for the brain to form creative thought.

  2789. Magnus Carlsen – “I am chaotic and lazy” (2010) 2014-12-11 11:22:27 chubot
    Paul Graham wrote about procrastination: http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

    I think it's commonly assumed that people procrastinate because they are lazy. Even procrastinators will berate themselves for being undisciplined and lazy. But it's not that simple; I think there is value in being "lazy", or what is perceived as lazy.

  2790. Two Simple Steps Helped Me Learn Vim 2014-12-11 12:13:32 jumpwah
    Well I guess it depends on what you do. That might be true if you use only console based (tui/cli) programs to do your work, but in your workflow, is there any non-console program you use? I'm not trying to make some sort of opposite point here, tmux is awesome, but I'm just actually curious, assuming your work is in programming of some sort (since this is hn), do you use a 'graphical' program in your workflow?

    I'm not a programmer but do like hobby programming stuff, and so when I do, I usually have to use a browser to look up documentation of things, possibly even look up bug report threads and sometimes various other things. The browser I believe has to be graphical (while terminal browsers can be very useful, I don't think it's very practical for the majority of your web browsing tasks to be handled solely in a tui browser these days), and so if you do use a graphical browser in your workflow, i.e. when you are working (not playing/procrastinating), that would mean you would have to leave the terminal.

    It could very well be that you do not need to leave the terminal since you're already familiar with your language/framework whatever so you don't need to look up documentation like I do (coz I'm hobbying). But regardless, my next question would be when you say "with ST, there's a frequent switching cost which compounds over the course of a day". But wouldn't that be the same with switching between the tmux pane/window/tab with vim in it to the one with a terminal open? Or do you just ctrl-z and fg back and forth in vim? But then ctrl-z + fg is still a form of switching, just different to tmux pane switching.

    Perhaps you meant that one never has to move their hands away from the keyboard to go to the mouse (like you would in st), as opposed to leaving the command line of the terminal/tmux (as you would with both vim and st)? And the point would be something like, needing to move hands repeatedly to and from the mouse and keyboard not only pays a toll on speed (of text editing), but also not ergonomically comfortable... etc? If that's the case, yeah I agree.

    But you might say that leaving the terminal means switching to a graphical program which means needing to use the mouse... etc. You would be right, except my point is that, that might not necessarily be the case and hence it's 'more correct' to say leave the keyboard than just leave the terminal. For example, in my workflow (for hobbyist programming that is), I sometimes need to use the graphical program, firefox, yet I do not need to leave the keyboard due to pentadactyl. Even outside that workflow, I do not need to leave the keyboard in varous other graphical programs such as video player, image viewer and pdf viewer. You might say that to run a graphical program, the very act of switching windows requires the mouse because you'd typically have to use a mouse based graphical window manager program of some sort so that you could even lay out/draw and switch between the boxes/widnows in which graphical programs exist within. But as long as the platform supports it, the window manager could be configured to have keyboard shortcuts to handle anything the mouse can achieve, or maybe you could even replace the default moused based window manager with a keyboard based one.

    Anyways, my question to OP was coming more from his point of view, if he's already comfortably using st, why consider switching to vim, especially after multiple failed attempts? Perhaps he wasn't actually completely comfortable with st and was seeking for something else to solve that, or maybe he heard or saw something about vim that attracted him? As a vim user myself, I already knew that vim is more efficient than any other editor ever, but I'm still always curious to learn about what attracts new users to it these days when all the hype seems to be about newer or more 'contemporary' editors like atom and st, especially if I find something new that I didn't already know about vim. And so I asked him as he didn't state why specifically in the article. (And the article itself didn't mention anything about why vim was special to him either, so I couldn' really infer.)

    I asked about st specifically though because I don't know much about it, and so the more I can learn about it, the more I can hopefully confirm to myself that vim is indeed objectively faster/better than st, and hence more peacefully sleep at night. To the reading non-vim user, when I say "faster/better than", I mean a really good vim user versus an equally really good st user. If you don't enjoy using vim, or just do not 'click' in vim's general way of operating, obviously you will be slower and worse in vim than with your editor.

  2791. The Google Way of Attacking Problems 2014-12-13 04:29:45 fixermark
    > as for the actual point of the article, it seems highly inefficient to post problems and assume the right (interested) people will take them on

    The question is: Is it more or less efficient than alternatives, such as the fairly common practice of picking a software engineer out of a creatively-named-or-architected-hat and saying "You, you do it"?

    If your selection process doesn't account for interest, you're losing significant efficiency on interest mis-fit. Nobody procrastinates harder than a software engineer with an ill-fitting problem.

  2792. Ask HN: What is the most important lesson you learned this year? 2014-12-14 17:13:51 mindcrime
    Basically everything @computerjunkie said, is what I came here to say. Having my own health risks and mortality exposed when I had a heart-attack a few weeks ago[1], really drove that home. I now really realize that the whole "yes, it can happen to YOU" thing really is true. I know I can't just ignore health & fitness issues with impunity.

    The importance of eating a healthy diet, working out more, reducing stress, etc., are a lot more vivid to me now.

    On a related note however, perhaps ironically, is that I now feel a renewed sense of "There's only so much time left on the clock, so if I want to accomplish things, I have to sell out and go 101% to achieve then now". I'm still trying to figure out how to balance those notions.

    I mean, let's say I could work less and live an extra 10 years. Let's say that's the difference between, I dunno, making it to 75 vs 85. The questions I ponder now is "how rewarding will the years between 75 and 85 be?" and "how much do I care about that?", etc. I know it sounds a bit morbid, but it's a real question. I've never been all that scared of dying, but I am very afraid of being old, frail, crippled, helpless, etc.

    So there ya go... try to live like a rockstar now, flame out fast and die young, or go for the longest life you can live. How do you decide that? Fuck if I know... if I figure it out, I'll let you know.

    And on an even less related note... well, at least vis-a-vis career / tech / etc... facing mortality did emphasize another thing to me. Since you don't know how much time you get, if there are things you really want to do, do all you can to do them as soon as you can. Sure, sometimes strategy dictates waiting, and sometimes procrastinating is just easy... but they say that people on their death-beds don't regret the things they did, but rather the things they didn't do. An example from my life: I've had a few tattoo ideas I've wanted to get done for years, but keep putting it off for no real reason. Now I don't know why I get waiting. And there are plenty of similar examples. So yeah, I'd say one important lesson is "do stuff now". :-)

  2793. What Is Fatigue? 2014-12-14 17:36:49 visakanv
    I wonder how this translates to psychological fatigue when it comes to creative work?

    I remember thinking- I can't stand the crazy "work your asses off, zero days off, 24/7, successful people don't have time to sleep" rhetoric some people have, but I also can't shake the notion that I'm nowhere near as productive as I actually could be. I imagine people at the top of their fields are operating at near max optimal capacity- but I've just been so annoyed and frustrated lately by how difficult it is for me to reasonably tell whether I'm actually tired or I'm just bullshitting myself to procrastinate from my obligations/work (stuff that I actually like doing, that I actually think is important to me.)

    I have yet to have a conversation with anybody about this that I have found remotely satisfying. Maybe I'm looking for something that doesn't exist, and that I should focus entirely on the present. But I also know that I screw that up all the time... ah well. Back to work.

  2794. Focus – Steal back your productivity 2014-12-15 20:03:51 sireat
    I generally use hosts file(ie blacklist), but been experimenting with writing your own proxy scripts (ie whitelist).

    I really like the whitelist idea and proxy scripts are dead simple to write(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_auto-config).

    The problem is that even a site like Stack Overflow loads its CSS and JS libs from other non SO locations such as CDNs.

    So you end up spending a bit of time setting up each whitelisted site which of course is time spent procrastinating.

  2795. Focus – Steal back your productivity 2014-12-15 20:11:21 vshan
    I'd like to share my anecdotal experience.

    In all these years where I've tried to block Facebook, Reddit, Quora, etc... I've found that I just move to another "time-wasting" site.

    The absolute best way that I prevented procrastination was by developing some hobbies that are less addictive. Even though I am quite older than the target audience, I have a Pokemon game and a DS, which I pick up whenever I feel like not working. I play it for 15-20 minutes and I'm ready to get back to work. Before that, it was learning about some new programming language.

    The hobby needs to be gratifying and challenging to prevent addiction.

    My two cents.

  2796. Underactuated Rotor for Simple Micro Air Vehicles 2014-12-16 10:42:33 TaylorAlexander
    Thanks! Currently I'm working on delivering Flutter Wireless, which is at www.FlutterWireless.com.

    The 3D printed robots will be for some tutorials we will be launching. Other than that, I've been continually procrastinating about making a website for my personal projects, but I have a lot. If you dig through my youtube account at the original link, I have some other project videos there.

    Notable ones are: The robot I made when I was in High School: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FJu1eL_dYs&list=UUxTluifYa_...

    An app to interface with some cheap helicopter joysticks (and not shown - I could fly the heli with an app on my phone). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq2x3DVq7gs&list=UUxTluifYa_...

    Lighting a campfire with thermite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pu-R_IHirE&list=UUxTluifYa_...

    A demo sketch I made for 3D printers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEH7Ji4a3Ss&list=UUxTluifYa_...

    The time I was on G4 TechTV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2R-TlBomnQ&list=UUxTluifYa_...

    My stuff on thingiverse. http://www.thingiverse.com/tlalexander/designs

    Not currently represented online are some of the robots I have made, the Tesla Coil I made when I was in High School, and the gas powered hovercraft I made in 8th grade. :)

  2797. Ask HN: How do I get my motivation back? 2014-12-19 09:16:35 valarauca1
    In short you have to realize WoW is a drug. Now I say this as an ex-player, who had a very long complicated battle with depression and parental abuse. WoW makes it easy to escape and hide into a world where its very easy to get rewarded for what feels like fun, but is actually hours of your life.

    The game rewards you like rewarding a dog to shit outside, or do funny tricks. The rewards become spaced further out over time conditioning you to work harder for the same reward. Its very easy to stay motivated when a green bar shows you how far you are from the next reward. Its just as easy to stay motivated as you slam your face into Heroic Ragnaros for the 246th time straight, because we're getting him to P4 and well its just RNG at that point if we keep it up because its just a matter of keeping focused. Depression is bad. I've been there and for well over 6 years I attempted to hide in another world to avoid it.

    What you have to do is accept that slow action is still action. When ever I catch myself sliding back into older/bad habits I find its often good to mediate on the why you are doing that. A quote I've really fallen in love with is:

    "One can be deceived by three types of laziness: of indolence, which is the wish to procrastinate; the laziness of inferiority, which is doubting your capabilities; and the laziness that is attachment to negative actions, or putting great effort into non-virtue." - the Dalai Lama.

    Medication and Therapy can be very useful.

  2798. Haskell version of Norvig's spelling corrector 2014-12-20 03:20:01 bshimmin
    Not to make any particular point, but mainly just because I fancied a bit of procrastination this afternoon, here's a CoffeeScript version (heavily leaning on Underscore): https://gist.github.com/benshimmin/2ee78c932797faadfc89

  2799. Ask HN: How do you stay motivated to work on side projects? 2014-12-27 07:26:15 lholden
    Oh... I also find that consistency to be very important. Rather than randomly using free time... Pick a day or two of the week and block out a bit of time for the project. This gives you a reason to not just procrastinate.

  2800. Ask HN: How do you stay motivated to work on side projects? 2014-12-27 14:17:47 rachelandrew
    If you find that you lose motivation or get bored with a side project then I think you really need to ask yourself why you are doing it.

    We find the time and energy for those things that we place importance on. If the project isn't important to you then maybe it is time to move on. If it is important and this is just a temporary state - perhaps due to hitting a difficult part or a bit you don't enjoy dealing with - you need a strategy.

    Break it down into manageable chunks. Put a date on them. Make sure however that the dates are achievable, there is no better way to become demotivated than to constantly feel you are falling behind.

    If your thing hasn't shipped yet, can you get it to a release version sooner? Can you cut stuff out? Getting your project in front of other people can be a real help.

    Treat the project as a first class citizen alongside your other work. Meaning that even if you can only devote 4 hours a week to it, those 4 hours are scheduled and used. Don't push them out for other work. Plan what you will do in that time, ahead of time, so you don't start to procrastinate when you sit down.

    We turned our side project into our main source of revenue, you can read some of that in the first chapter of the book I wrote based on that story here http://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2014/03/21/chapter-1-the-...

  2801. Ask HN: How do you stay motivated to work on side projects? 2014-12-27 17:52:04 gavanwoolery
    Yes, as user "scroy" points out I am talking about Voxel Quest.

    Bits and pieces of my story are scattered around, but here is the full thing (grab a pillow):

    In around 2000-2004, I was working several jobs while attending UCSB, as a gardener, a lab monitor, and a freelance web designer. I got by working the first couple years but the last year was hard and I was disqualified from engineering. I wanted to quit school but my parents pushed me to transfer. In 2004-2006, I worked on my first big game engine while finishing my degree. I lived the majority of my time in isolation (at a school that was built over a "haunted" mental hospital of all places; I wish I was making this up: http://www.hauntedplaces.org/item/camarillo-state-mental-hos...). The initial tech demo was well received, but no crowd-funding or "early access" existed at that point, and I tried to keep the game going via donations but only got about $200 outside of family (the original people who donated were given really good rewards from my recent Kickstarter campaign though).

    My parents nudged me to get a paying job (I had been out of college for 6 months at that point), so I worked for a startup in SD called Goowy Media (funded by Mark Cuban, led by Alex Bard, and acquired by AOL - I was just an employee though). Startup hours killed any hope of finishing the project but I kept working on small games and other projects in my spare time. In a way my many failures turned out to be the perfect storm. For a lot of people, I think success kills their ambitions - they tend to get into funding other peoples projects rather than their own. My failures hardened my desire for success, while helping me hone my skills.

    Several years ago, I was working for my twin brother and his partner making mobile applications (we have both since left the company although I think he still might consult). The people were all nice but the job was time consuming and not very interesting for me. In spite of working long hours, I still tried to do what I could outside of work. My job was often hard, but occasionally calm, so I had some windows to work on projects. After a few brutal months of work, I got really desperate. My life was falling apart in almost every respect - my health was suffering (there were some weeks I worked 100 hours), my relationship with my girlfriend (now wife) was naturally suffering as well, I was depressed, I had just finished paying off a large amount of debt so my financial situation was only just recovering. I started testing the waters for other jobs (could not find any good fits), and started cold-emailing investors to pitch bad ideas (no responses of course).

    I remember the exact moment I turned my life around. It is kind of embarrassing to say, but I was looking at myself in the bathroom mirror, and I looked like hell, and I broke down into tears (I don't often cry, or express any emotion for that matter - it takes a lot to get anything out of me). I wanted to blame my situation on anyone but myself, I wanted to feel sorry for myself, and then I realized that was exactly what was wrong with my life. Who was going to change my life if not me? F__k it, I thought, I'm reprogramming my life now.

    I put in my one month notice to quit, and threw a "Hail Mary" pass to Reddit, asking for advice about what to do in my situation. To my surprise, a person from Switzerland looked over my work and offered to invest some money (he was not an investor, just had some money in savings that he was willing to loan out). I was going to Germany to meet my (at the time) girlfriend's family, and made a side trip to Switzerland to meet my investor in what felt like a clandestine James Bond meeting. I also snuck in a proposal to my wife while in Switzerland. :)

    With my job severance and new investment, I began to bootstrap my game (Voxel Quest). I worked over a year on it (doubletime), and posted here on HN a few times. In fact, HN was almost solely responsible for my success up to this point, as it was one of the few communities that seemed to get what I was working on. Each time I posted to HN, I would hit the top of the front page, and investors began to take interest. Right now I pay myself about $15/hour and have a wife/kid/dogs/car/house to pay for, so choosing to stay private was not easy. I invested my life in my work, and cashing out felt too much like giving up on realizing its full potential (or I am just really bad at making financial decisions, you choose). :) In spite of turning everyone down, several have offered more than once, so there is comfort in knowing that additional options exist if needed.

    I launched my Kickstarter at perhaps the worst time possible, when projects are failing left and right, press is refusing to cover many KS projects, and backers are more skeptical than ever. I was lucky to reach and exceed my goal, and I am extremely thankful to everyone here for making it happen (over 1/3 of donations came from here on HN).

    Right now I am just working hard, when not procrastinating as with writing this. I try to update weekly, and each update seems to bring a bit of new interest and preorders are picking up so I am still optimistic about the way things are going, even though life is not easy at this point.

    A few more tips: Never hide your work. Make everything you do public. I went 6 months between updates, which is an eternity in project time. Strive to update weekly, no matter how small the amount of work done. It can seem time consuming but you will get better at it the more you do it.

    Publicity will make you accountable for your work (or lack thereof), it will motivate you (via praise), and it will help you improve your results (via criticism).

    Share your successes, even if you are not comfortable tooting your own horn. People like to hear about success, and it breeds interest in your work.

  2802. The Bipolar Lisp Programmer 2014-12-27 19:06:01 jrapdx3
    I liked this article quite a bit, as I love to program in Lisp (well, Scheme) and I'm a clinician with a lot of experience treating bipolar disorder. That is, the real bipolar, which isn't what the author is talking about.

    The kind of behavior referred to in the article is certainly common. I've know many people who show this "crash and burn" pattern. Easily bored, distractible, procrastinators to the end. Black and white, all or none is their theme. Very good or lousy at any given task, usually performance varies randomly, that being a source of consternation for all involved. The unpredictability and inconsistency are vexing and corrosive in nearly all domains of life.

    They may be subject to moodiness, reacting strongly to criticism, and may blow up disproportionately. Such individuals may become truly depressed but that's not usual. Rather they suffer profound discouragement when things get hard and overwhelming, a state that's almost inevitable, if transient, like thunderstorms propagating flash floods of high drama and rapid dissipation.

    It's a condition that often responds to treatment, the right kinds of counseling, in some cases carefully applied medication therapies are useful. The college-age students who are flailing around struggling to gain traction often respond the best to proper guidance and approaches.

    The professor observes correctly the tremendous suffering and waste of talent that occurs. What's important is to see it for what it is and having seen it doing the things that can heal it, in the end giving no cause for pessimism at all.

  2803. Ask HN: How to use small chunks of time productively 2014-12-28 05:10:42 dgreensp
    If you're sitting down to work and your brain is telling you that you can't get anything done in 20-30 minutes ("or, at least, nothing that constitutes meaningful progress" to quote my brain), one of two things is happening. 1) Your brain is totally, 100% lying through its teeth. This happens all the time and is the basis for procrastination. 2) Your brain is tired and telling the truth -- you don't have the mental resources to focus right now. This happens to me after about 60-90 minutes of concentration, and it takes 20-30 minutes of "lightening up" to recharge. (Note that these numbers are taken in the absence of major stressors like babies and in-laws. You may also need to eat, sleep, or perform some other kind of self-care to recharge.)

    In case (1), it's fun to imagine that your brain is maliciously lying to you about the progress you'll be able to make, but it's more ignorance than malice. Get good at recognizing the real obstacles and talking yourself through them. Is there some key piece of understanding you're missing, or some design problem you couldn't solve in your head? When you have to go long periods during your day without access to your tools, you'll build up questions that you need the Internet, a computer, or pen and paper to answer. Remember what they are; don't just unconsciously make assumptions or treat these questions as unanswerable. Another mental blocker besides lack of understanding is worrying prematurely about the properties the finished product must have (it must be good, it must be well-written, it must look beautiful, it must be a complete treatment of the subject, etc.). Another blocker is stacking up tasks in your head so that one blocks another -- I don't want to do B until I've done A, but I don't have the mental energy (or other resource) to do A right now, but I should just force myself to, but I can't... These blockers will dissolve once you recognize them and look at them properly. If you feel any resistance to working on a task (whether it's a short, 20-minute task or a longer task to make progress on), immediately ask yourself why.

    It's particularly frustrating, for example, if a 20-minute task is put in the front of your queue, ahead of your "real work" that constitutes "real progress." A bug pops up, or a configuration issue with your computer, or an urgent email, or a git conflict. You thought you'd have just enough time to implement and test feature X, which is just a one-line change, and now there's no chance. There's not much to do about these things except to recognize them, and to adjust your definition of "real work" and "real progress" to account for them. If you were going to use the time to dump ideas, code, or text from your head, dump notes into a text file for a couple minutes.

    Don't get me wrong: the limits of 20-30 minute work blocks are real and not all in your head. You can go to far-off places when you have hours to immerse yourself in something, and in addition, just the knowledge that you have this time seems to unlock creative thinking. However, don't believe everything you hear about what's possible in 20-30 minute chunks either.

    I'm writing about time management generically or from the point of view of a programmer, but it depends on the nature of the task. I've never worked closely with a PM, so I don't know what sorts of tasks we're talking about. 20 minutes sounds perfect for answering an email or two that doesn't require too much writing. When I have to write a longer email or a design doc, blog post, etc., I write in my head while doing other things and then dump it out, or I dictate into a voice recorder (which is valuable for getting ideas out whether or not I later listen to the recording).

    I echo what others have said about keeping your work windows open on your computer, and keeping a log of ideas and what you're going to do next when you come back. Hope this helps.

  2804. Ask HN: I'm 18, broke, and inexperienced. What do I do? 2014-12-28 13:55:51 rab_oof
    Generic observations that may not apply:

    Survival depends on doing things with which we are uncomfortable or expending greater efforts elsewhere.

    Education is great if you teach yourself basic math, writing and so on, but education is most often a distraction to getting down to actual work that makes money. The failure of ourselves is when we let pride or ego get ahead of rational self-interest.

    There are plenty of blue-collar skilled trades that pay 100k+/year that academia-brainwashed people look down upon. Welder, electrian, plumber, carpenter, mechanic, on and on. Check out Mike Rowe's nonprofit for more... Nuclear industry rated and underwater welders make crazy money. Btw nurses and medical will always be needed and the pay is great. Want a niche technical OR specialty that doesnt always require an MD? perfusionist (heart lung machines). You would honestly be able to say you were legally sanctioned to kill people for a living without the morass of being a PMC, because you would be that person that flips the switch at EOL.

    If you have the sand, fishing and crabbing makes coin by being hard and risky. Taxi drivers also on dry land.

    Just pick something, try it out, move on if too terrible, don't waste time on analysis paralysis because it's just procrastination.

  2805. If you're using YYYY in your JVM service or %G in anything, fix it now 2014-12-30 00:58:35 K0nserv
    This affects Objective-C too as we discovered when a test "randomly" started failing today. Luckily I procrastinated some on HN and found this post.

    https://gist.github.com/k0nserv/f53084ebb6a753c4905f

  2806. Ask HN: I am doing nothing with my life 2014-12-30 05:15:39 v_ignatyev
    I disagree with @skorecky below.

    - Look for a new job that you haven't ever worked before. If you do CRUD applications, start doing mobile software or whatever else is new for you

    - Stop spending your time with your colleagues and start looking for new friends, learn from them about the world, about problems, about realworld problems and try to solve them using your mind

    - ...and yes, try to contribute to open source projects, stop procrastinating, go and fix the annoying bug in your beloved library or propose pull-request

    - ...or make something just for fun

    Try to get break. Stop and turn another way. Open your mind. Blah-blah do!

  2807. Working with queue and stack people 2014-12-30 21:10:42 bakhy
    First, I believe wanting to fix broken windows and technical debt is everyone's goal. The author mentions a couple of times that fixing technical debt is just a stacks' preference. I disagree with that. Not least because fixing technical debt can sometimes take quite a lot of time and boring, error-prone work - not quite the stuff of heroic tales - but also because I have seen many examples in my career of technical debt created by people wanting to hack something together quickly, and then never getting around to cleaning it up, leaving all sorts of surprises behind them. I think generally it's good thorough thinking that gets rid of technical debt (see, e.g., Rich Hickey's work, and his Hammock Driven Development "methodology").

    Generally, I'm sorry, but chasing the quick-fix is immature, and a sign of a desire to please. That is completely normal, and it's healthy to let off steam through a quick fix now and then. But the "stack" model here sounds to me more like what happens in my head when I procrastinate...

    IMO for a project to succeed someone will ultimately have to keep track of what is done. Do you want to be that person, or do you want someone else to do it while you get lost in your stack overflows?

  2808. How to Learn Efficiently 2014-12-31 06:42:42 uulbiy
    There is a coursera course called "Learning How to Learn"[1] by Barbara Oakley that is starting soon. I took the previous session and it was very interesting. I liked the science[2] behind each part of the course (procrastination, memory, modes of thinking etc). The weekly interviews were certainly a big plus (however they were usually long at ~40 minutes).

    It's a fun four week course with very little work and I recommend it.

    [1] https://www.coursera.org/course/learning

    [2] After each lecture there was a list of references to check out for more info.

  2809. A Magician’s Best Trick: Revealing a Basic Human Bias 2015-01-01 20:52:37 facepalm
    I haven't finished it, but not because it's boring. It's one of those books where I feel I have to start over reading more carefully after a few chapters. Unfortunately that makes it likely to be procrastinated away. I'm determined to finish it this year, though.

    Perhaps a better starting point would be the books of Dan Ariely, in terms of readability.

  2810. Dumb Ideas in Computer Security (2005) 2015-01-03 10:45:42 afarrell
    The problem is that learning how to do things is really expensive for many people. I think the fundamental problem isn't user-centered design but lopsided bifurcation in who the users are.

    For a product like a recipe/grocery app, I genuinely don't care about abstraction layers it uses below its UI. I just want my wife and I to plan our meals and do our grocery shopping in a time-efficient way. I don't want to run into situations where "it doesn't work" and I have to figure out why.

    For a product like gulp.js, vim, or google chrome's layout engine, I really do care about those abstraction because I am trying to build things with them and I expect that I'll run into situations where "it doesn't work" and I have to figure out why. So give me the conceptual tools to do so. If that means source-diving without clear documentation about how to do that spelunking, fine. I'll procrastinate on it and be unhappy, but I'll do it. So starting from that perspective, any improvement on the fixing-things experience is a blessing rather than an irrelevance.

    But some things necessarily straddle both. It would be very difficult to fund a hardware manufacturing supply chain for a phone without mass-market appeal. Yet the app ecosystem that produces much of the value of a smartphone requires some ability to do things the phone manufacturer did not anticipate, even if it within a playpen.

  2811. Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers 2015-01-05 21:33:21 zimbatm
    It might be related to procrastination.

    If you feel that the time where you're working on something that doesn't interest you is time where you could be doing something better your brain will feel mentally painful. That blocks your mental faculties and might induce you to seek for doing other activities (like being here on HN).

    One technique to rewire the brain is to do time-bounded periods of work with a reward at the end. It's a bit like a work-up. Look for pomodoro technique.

    See: https://class.coursera.org/learning-003/lecture/19

  2812. My experiment with smart drugs (2008) 2015-01-11 07:36:35 fezz
    Modafinil is fantastic if you want to super-procrastinate on steroids. Rabbit holes go on forever.

    You have to have tasks all lined up and the interwebs unplugged (selfcontrol doesn't help if you know how to disable it)

  2813. My experiment with smart drugs (2008) 2015-01-11 07:53:26 Implicated
    > You have to have tasks all lined up

    I rarely see this mentioned, but I cannot agree more. In my experience with Modafinil, if I had tasks lined up before the effects took hold, I was golden and would obliterate that to-do list/etc. But if I were left with 'nothing to do', it was just like you described...the rabbit hole just got deeper.

    So many people have had wildly different experiences with modaf (as with any drug really)...for me it's biggest positive was that context switching, mentally, became nearly 'free'. Generally my biggest hurdle in completing tasks through the day is when I finish with one task in one context and am tasked with unloading all of that information and jumping into something new...this is where I procrastinate, or generally just struggle with maintaining pace. While taking modafinil that penalty was seemingly non-existent. I was able to bounce from problem to problem, project to project with no mental penalty or friction. Quite amazing really.

    Though I generally just don't find the sensation while taking them enjoyable or even worth it in many cases...increased heart rate makes me and my hands sweat (and smell), tight jaw and general inability to just 'relax'. I bought 60 nearly two years ago and have taken maybe 10 of them. I'm also a contractor who doesn't work under any or much stress/pressure, which may have something to do with my apathy towards their positive effects.

    To each their own, I can absolutely see how this drug has and can change people's lives.

  2814. Ask HN: Besides coffee, what could help me focus when I need to work? 2015-01-14 06:10:06 GoldenMonkey
    I find the Pomodoro Technique helps me focus on one task at a time... even finishing the tasks I would rather procrastinate on. Give it a try for a week or a day. Vitamin-R is a great mac app for this.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

  2815. Bitcoin crashes over 25% in 24 hours, under $180 2015-01-14 16:56:54 marincounty
    1. Thought it was a scam. 2. looked into it and realized I was wrong. 3. Looked into building a mining rig. 4. Worrried about ROI, after energy and hardware. 5. Seems like everyone was mining. 6. Knew I competed with entities with deep pockets. 7. T.V. news started to treat bitcoins like gold quotes. 8. Started seeing bitcoins accepted here. 9. Wish I didn't procrastinate years ago. 10. Glad I didn't invest in bitcoins. 11. I wish it well though. Anything is better that credit card transactions--with their fees. It is still a great idea, and I hope this is just a market fluctuation!

  2816. Unprecedented Level of Human Harm to Sea Life Is Forecast 2015-01-16 17:03:25 johnloeber
    The best book I've read on these matters is The Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man and the Sea by Callum Roberts. It's about 400 pages long and meticulously details our effects on the marine environment (though in an entertaining and accessible manner).

    We're looking at cataclysmic changes in the oceans. It's not too late to revert course, but overfishing and pollution (acidification, in particular) have already changed our marine ecosystems, and they will continue to do so. Great diversity has been lost, while jellies and other more primitive lifeforms used to less hospitable conditions are now thriving.

    The bizarre tragedy comes, in part, from the dilution hypothesis: it's commonly accepted that the oceans are really big, so big that they can withstand our meddling. While the oceans are big, they're neither that large nor are they totally homogeneous: there are many marine ecosystems, all of which are fragile. But most of these marine ecosystems are still large enough to change slowly -- too slowly to be immediately noticed by laypersons.

    The slowness of change in the marine ecosystems makes environmentalism a politically difficult platform: good policies do not yield immediately measurable positive results, and while the threat is grave, it is creeping sufficiently slowly for action to be continuously procrastinated.

  2817. The Story of the Intel 4004 2015-01-19 03:27:59 kens
    That page is a bit too much marketing fluff for my linking. A couple other interesting pages on the 4004:

    * An oral history from the developers [1]. One interesting part is that Intel procrastinates for months on developing the chip. Faggin gets hired to work on the chip, and Shima flies in from Japan the very next day to check on progress. He's very upset to find out that nothing has happened and starts yelling at Faggin, who just got there. They eventually work together to get the chip finished.

    * Federico Faggin's website [2] with his perspective on the chip.

    [1] http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_Histo...

    [2] http://www.intel4004.com/

    And I should mention that Texas Instruments built and announced the TMX-1795 microprocessor chip before the 4004. This chip's architecture and instruction set was basically identical to the 8008 (since both were copies of the Datapoint 2200). Texas Instruments patented the TMX-1795 (which was a hugely valuable patent) and then abandoned the chip because it didn't work well.

  2818. Barrett Brown sentenced to 63 months in prison 2015-01-23 08:37:31 tptacek
    You're not wrong to read it this way. I might be a little knee-jerk on threads like this. It is very, very apparent that skepticism about the Wired/Boing Boing narrative on this case is a minority view. Also, my current programming project involves advanced stat and calculus, two things I suck at, so I'm extra procrastinate-y today.

    I guess my question is: so, we all agree that failure to prosecute CIA torturers and torture-preneurs is a travesty.

    Now what? What does that have to do with Barrett Brown?

    Is it just that we should militate for more prosecutions? I'll sign that petition. But I don't feel like that's a fringe issue; I hear that concern everywhere.

  2819. Mouse Box 2015-01-23 11:32:43 jebediah
    I am okay with the general concept(though I guess it would be a lot better to put a computer on a keyboard, or seriously, on a phone), but I think that claiming this is the future of computing is ridiculous, pretty much the only thing this seems to be good at is being able to procrastinate at work, and once people are aware that you can put a computer on a mouse, that goes away

  2820. Screw motivation, what you need is discipline 2015-01-31 21:31:31 decasteve
    Meditation has been the best practice to cultivate discipline for me. Where it reveals itself is when you start down a road of procrastination, a conversation with yourself to avoid doing something, you can just stop that internal chatter and get back to what you should be doing. "Just doing it" is the product of that meditative mind.

  2821. Screw motivation, what you need is discipline 2015-01-31 21:52:20 jokoon
    I disagree.

    Discipline is learned. You need something that structures and builds your discipline.

    You need a minimum amount of purpose that comes from outside. You can't learn discipline by yourself, it needs to be encouraged and taught.

    It's usually the role of society to put people into a position of productivity and personal progress. It's very tricky. Sometimes it just doesn't work because people just can't see how their inspiration could bring value to society, often because society is not set to recognize certain domains of work. That's a major source of stagnation.

    The author talks like individuals work alone for personal achievement. Nobody works for personal goals. Everyone works in a societal context.

    Discipline is another word for a very structured habit in a society of productivity. Procrastination is just caused by lack of insight and unbalanced processes, so it's usually a plain lack of communication, management or motivation.

    Discipline is just civilization regulating habits to create motivation out of thin air. Without a minimum amount of motivation, discipline won't happen.

  2822. Screw motivation, what you need is discipline 2015-01-31 22:22:00 jakobegger
    I'd suggest to stop thinking of yourself as someone without self-discipline. It's very hard to behave in a way if you believe it's against your nature.

    For example, I've always considered myself to be a smoker. I tried quitting dozens of times, but I always gave in because I knew I was a smoker deep inside. But at some point, I realized that there's nothing about me that makes me a smoker. And then it was easy to quit smoking.

    It's possible to change yourself. Nothing really prevents you from becoming a disciplined person. The first step is realizing you don't have to be a procrastinator (or whatever you consider yourself to be).

  2823. Screw motivation, what you need is discipline 2015-01-31 22:45:59 netcan
    Try to decrease your reliance on self discipline.

    IE, get external forces working in your favour. You could use a coach or psychologist. Commit to tasks. Make sure they check up on you. Work closely with others. Pair programming or an environment where someone is waiting for you to finish something so they can start something else. Seek environments where you can't hide procrastination. discipline thrives in public.

    Basically.. cheat.

  2824. SWEATSHOP – I can´t take any more 2015-02-03 20:38:24 perdunov
    This is probably the normal animal/human reaction: to react only when something is hurting you right now. If you take the pain away, the motivation vapors.

    This is one of the design flaws of the human mind inherited from animals that causes procrastination and lack of willpower.

  2825. Ask HN: How to manage developers who aren't very good? 2015-02-06 22:15:25 jules
    Before you can solve this issue you need to figure out why they are doing this. Here are three example possibilities:

    1. Maybe they are not in the mindset of getting to the goal, but rather they are in the mindset that work is work. Or maybe they are doing it simply because it's a habit or because it's fashionable and they heard some celebrity say you should use a VM. Then explain to them that not all work is equal, and that it's important to do work that moves you in the direction of the goal, rather than busywork that will not pay off such as setting up a VM envirnoment.

    2. Maybe they actually think that setting up a VM environment is worth it in the long term. If you don't think that is the case, explain why.

    3. Maybe they don't know how to solve the problems that they are tasked to solve, and setting up elaborate dev environments is a way to procrastinate. Then make sure that they have enough guidance so that they know what concrete bit of work they can do right now to make actual progress. Ex: if they don't know how to make progress because they do not understand the database schema, then the next step should be to familiarize themselves with the database schema. You could even task them with writing documentation for the database schema to get this started. Or perhaps they procrastinate because they don't like the work that is assigned to them.

    There could be many other reasons, but once you figure out why they are doing this, it's likely that the solution will be relatively obvious. Try to not fall into the trap of micromanaging them. If you don't understand why they are doing this you could simply instruct them not to set up a VM dev environment. That won't solve anything in the long term because they will just find something else. It's much better if they know why they should do or should not do a that, rather than simply following orders. Following orders kills motivation and orders don't generalize to new situations, but the right mindset does.

    On the other hand, in some cases the issue isn't that a developer is not doing the right kind of work, but rather that the developer is doing the right kind of work but he is simply not very good at it. This can be improved to some degree with training but you have to make a business trade off here: is this developer making a net positive contribution to the business or not. Keep in mind that a developer does not have to be super productive in order to make a positive contribution. Otherwise it's time to move him to a different role or fire him.

  2826. At some startups, Friday is so casual that it’s not even a workday 2015-02-08 01:32:27 raverbashing
    I'd say even some "procrastination" is about thinking how to do something (in the background)

    Once everything fits together you just do it.

  2827. At some startups, Friday is so casual that it’s not even a workday 2015-02-08 04:27:49 dasil003
    I'm not sure if it's due to increased self-awareness, or whether it's physically due to aging, but I know for a fact that pushing over 50 hours a week will quickly lead to lower overall productivity for me. I love what I do and I used to work insane startup-level hours, but on reflection a lot of those hours are less efficient, whether due to decreased efficiency or downright procrastination when I'm too tired to deal with a difficult problem.

    To some extent I think tech startup culture evolved this way not just because it takes a superhuman effort to build a successful company, but also because learning to be a good programmer is something that is extremely difficult if you're not at least a little obsessed with it. My tendency to work 80 hours a week at my startup is the natural evolution of my 14-year-old self wanting to spend all my time working on the computer.

    But now that I have a couple decades experience under my belt, I can sit down and focus for 8 hours that will lead to far more productivity than slogging through 16 hours. Furthermore, my subconscious is able to continue working on problems during my downtime, so stepping away, getting some exercise, cooking some healthy food, sleeping 9 hours all feed back to greater overall productivity.

  2828. At some startups, Friday is so casual that it’s not even a workday 2015-02-08 04:29:33 k-mcgrady
    True but if they are actually productive in those 32 hours it could work out the same. How many hours per day do startup guys waste playing ping pong and browsing HN? Maybe if they have the Friday off they would procrastinate less during the 32 hours and output would be the same. Personally I think a shorter work day would be more effective than a full day off as regards to productivity.

    Also, look at the number of companies that do/have done 20% time. If giving employees 20% of the week to do whatever makes them happy result in better productivity it would be fair to keep the salary the same.

  2829. FarmLogs 2015-02-11 07:52:07 lifeisstillgood
    This is interesting because there must be a small window between all this data just lying around (cf NSA) and most sectors having the data transformed and pipelined into their decision making.

    Sam Altman is right - this is the sort of thing that two software devs can pull off - but like everything the door must be closing.

    I'm tempted to make a spreadsheet of all the novel data sources I can find (ONS, satellite, travel, weather etc) and plot against SEC codes - I am pretty sure that will allow me to procrastinate long enough for the enthusiasm to wear off.

  2830. Show HN: Wrte.io – Charge for each email you get 2015-02-12 22:34:36 olla
    If you have to pay for an email anyway, would You instead call or pick some other way of direct communication? Not quite sure that replacing the indirect communication, where You can procrastinate to some extent, with direct one will solve the issues it promises.

  2831. Ask HN: How do you deal with an extensive list of pet projects? 2015-02-13 14:39:57 lovelearning
    I have wide interests, and my problem too for a long time was similar - not being able to decide what to work on, and end up not working on anything much at all. In other words, classic procrastination.

    But from past couple of months, I've improved tremendously by "time slicing"...like a CPU. Meaning, I quickly pick a small list of 5-6 interests every morning from my Evernote notes. Rest of the day, I randomly pick one from this list and work for exactly 1 hour on it. Then I pick randomly again and work on that for 1 hour.

    For me, the 1 hour time slicing takes motivation, decision and procrastination out of the picture, and replaces them with discipline. Drawing up the daily list of interests is still prone to motivation and mood, but now it's a one off decision, not something I've to do repeatedly rest of the day.

    A single time slice results in only a little progress, but cumulatively over a period of a week or month, I've managed significant progress in every one of my interests, including revenue generating ones. I'm nowhere near as frustrated as I used to be.

    It may or may not work for you, but even if it doesn't, I'd like to generalize the concept as follows: settle on a process that depends less on motivation and more on enforced discipline. Rather corny way of stating it is, motivation is only the ignition, but discipline is what keeps the engine running and takes one ahead.

  2832. Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma 2015-02-14 18:29:43 riffraff
    I'd think you have an issue with your own time management (I do too).

    One suggestion that kinda worked for me: try to set a specific time (i.e. 1 hour every day at 9AM) to do X (i.e. watch the MOOC lectures and do the exercises), put an alarm clock, setup your computer to forbid browsing facebook/hn/reddit/youtube in the time period etc.

    This way you might be able to make it a habit, which helps you avoiding the procrastinate/procrastinate/forget/ah-crap-too-late trap.

  2833. Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma 2015-02-15 16:01:02 chipsy
    If the "fun part" of learning or working on a project is analogous to the climbing of a mountain, you have to acknowledge that there are parts of learning and working that have natural plateaus - you wander in them for a long time and you don't seem to be climbing at all. There are only two ways to consistently get through those spots: by habit, or by obligation.

    By obligation is the more familiar method for a student: You were told to do your homework and study, now you have to deliver. And then you fear not fulfilling it so you get into a panic at the last minute and scramble to produce the image, if not the reality, of someone who knows what they're doing and learned what they were supposed to learn. Somehow you retain some of that knowledge and so you do become more competent, but you associate the process of getting there with the stressful experience of delivering to a deadline.

    Doing it by habit means that there is a part of your time in the day where you do some subset of "important but boring" things, entirely for yourself. Not because somebody told you to. This is the sane way to learn things and also the only one that you can sustain throughout your life.

    That is, tomorrow, instead of sitting in your comfort zone at home and watching yet another lecture or skimming yet another blog post, you go out to a coffee shop and you sit there for at least one hour to study "the doing of work." You don't dare get up until you've seen at least a tiny fraction of productivity. Maybe you learned one fact, or you figured out one part of a math problem, or you set up your development environment, or you wrote one important business email. If you accomplish it at the start of the hour, you keep going, you find one more thing to do, and then one more after that, and so on.

    This feels horrible in the homework mindset, because the goal there is to minimize effort and maximize output, to procrastinate and then rush to get the grade. Here the goal is akin to going to the gym, to practice putting in effort, to get used to the idea of everyday struggle so that you don't fear it. Here, it does not matter how little your output was, if your effort was good. And if you are frustrated with what you are trying to work on, allow yourself multiple options. You shouldn't do only bicep curls every day, and you shouldn't do the same with intellectual work.

    The homework mindset will creep in and say that this free time should be carved up, rebalanced, and associated with deadlines again, in line with whatever goals and values the parents, teachers, or institutions presently uphold, you should be progressing as fast as the course does, but that is not true. You don't know what is efficient, you don't know what is valuable, and you don't know exactly where you're going in the future. You won't progress exactly as fast as any course, you will breeze through some things and be stuck on others. You will have to try to know. Defer to your own motivations in practicing the doing of work, because sitting there dumbfounded by material you cannot bring yourself to engage with is a good way to crush your spirit and make you feel incapable. This is true even if it should lead to failure within your coursework, as that failure, in tandem with knowing that you were actually practicing and learning things each day, will indicate that you were lying to yourself about what you want and why. That is more important than simply maintaining the image of competence.

    Try make sure you are actually as healthy as possible. Maybe you are eating or drinking something that makes you unable to focus, or not enough of something else - experiment, try things. Maybe you need to get out so that when you come back, you're excited about what you're doing. There are many things to try. A well-rounded life needs to try as many of them as possible as early as possible.

  2834. The Clutter Cure's Illusory Joy 2015-02-18 08:12:45 RV86
    I've often found myself clearing clutter as the most productive way to procrastinate, telling myself that I'll do better work once I'm organized. Unfortunately, that's not usually the true outcome, so in some ways I'm fooling myself and not really addressing the cause of my demotivation. I appreciated that this article (rigorous or not) challenged me to take a harder look at my behaviors.

  2835. There are too many shiny objects and it is killing me 2015-02-19 07:41:04 kephra
    We are cursed by infinite ideas vs limited time. Applying the law of diminishing returns results in ideas having a negative value. It like going to a bank and asking for a big debt, if you even consider an idea. Its hard to get rid of an idea, once its settled in our brain. Its taking space, and chanting code me,code me, when you prefer to be in flow of a boring big $$$ customer project.

    It looks as if you are good in doing lots of small projects. Elance projects pay shitty, and you still claim you can make a living. But they are often small, very constrained, payed by hour. Thats different to coding something big for your own progress.

    At first a tip from someone who learned coding with paper tapes: Code for max 4 hours directly after getting up. Do not read any mail, no forums or news sites, before your 2nd breakfast. Relax the remaining day, after replying to mails. Try not to procrastinate to much at a computer. A computer should be your work tool, not an entertainment device. Try to get a balance outside, e.g. a dog can be a great excuse to walk around the neighborhood, and walking around is one of the best ways to focus thoughts.

    We all know the moment of the glorious vision at the evening, a small joint to get into flow, and at sunrise you suddenly realize you have written 500-1000 lines of extremely smart and perfectly working code, of a prototype of our vision. But sorry. I'm coding for nearly 40 years. This magical flow in the night shift happens once or twice a year, if lucky. Trying to force yourself into flow in the night shifts, will only lead to procrastination.

    Many of my own projects started in such a magical flow. But to execute the prototype into a product requires continuous bring coding work. This means, that after I started to code the idea, I'm taking an even bigger debt to execute it. This is sometimes difficult if big $$$ customer calls with a problem. But I can continue on my own project, once I solved his problem, and wrote my invoice.

    Its really easy to get into flow, once you got the habit, to make a coffee and perhaps a toast, and instantly start coding after wakeup. Its important not to code more then 4 hours, but to stop at noon, when you think its a good point to commit work, and to do something different. You'll code more errors, if you become tired, and nobody can sustain long coding sessions every day. Enjoy the real life outside of the computer screen.

    About development stack: Less is more. Learn to code without all those framework bloat, and also avoid over sophisticated development environments with tool chains for hyped software development methodologies. You don't learn to play guitar with lots of effects, but on an acoustic for good reason. One can add effects later, but its important that you sound great even without. I'm a bad musician. Adding gimmicks between me and the sound wont improve my music, but instead causes me to play around with those gimmicks instead of making music. I'm a coder, sure I know a lot of music theory. Gimmy a line and I can compose and arrange a song in an evening, and everybody in the band has fun, but if I try to compose a song on computer I end up with nothing but junk.

  2836. There are too many shiny objects and it is killing me 2015-02-19 07:55:51 hoodoof
    I manage to get stuff done. I certainly procrastinate about the less interesting development work but I eventually get around to it.

    The hardest thing is starting on any given task, so learning to start is what to focus on. Personally I just start work on a task by typing - seriously.

  2837. There are too many shiny objects and it is killing me 2015-02-19 07:57:47 cityzen
    What do you all think of this:

    Https://getmadprops.com

    this is a project that I started, stopped, started, stopped, started and have committed to seeing it through. Just last night I stashed a bunch of changes I was working on because, you know, they were more important than getting customers. I have to force myself to just keep shipping and iterating. Once I'm in a rut and haven't shipped in awhile, I have to do it again to get out of feature creep.

    What I have found is that the reason that people that procrastinate are able to finish client gigs is because there is someone else there. If you don't have someone else, make yourself accountable to the public. Nothing will break your bad habits faster than looking like a fool to customers and/or the public.

  2838. There are too many shiny objects and it is killing me 2015-02-19 08:48:16 techtics
    Get out of tech, at least for a while, it's a toxic industry. People treat each other like crap.

    Your lifestyle is unsustainable and you're now paying the price. Which means you don't enjoy what your doing. You still enjoy the idea though and that's why you spend all your time planning.

    Imagine if a professional soccer player suddenly didn't want to play anymore. Do you think people would go "oh, you're just procrastinating"?

  2839. There are too many shiny objects and it is killing me 2015-02-19 09:08:20 Thespian
    As others have said, ultimately what you are doing is very productive-looking procrastinating. The only way to start developing is to, well, start developing.

    You don't need a domain name until your code must make a call to a domain, and you don't have any in your pre-existing dev stable to use. At that point, and not before, register one for scratch work. Don't worry about coolness or appropriateness at launch. That comes later.

    Picking a language - pick one that works that you already know. If your goal is to make the code go, it isn't time to learn a new language. If your goal is to learn a new language, then your project is a means to that end, not the goal. If you want to MakeTheThing(tm) use tools you currently know. If you want to LearnTheLanguage(tm) making a thing is a fine way to approach it, but the Thing isn't the output.

    Learning "best practices" and designing TDD, and user stories, and all that, while valuable, ARE NOT NEEDED TO MAKE THE THING! Making the thing gets you started. When any of the actions you listed become a blocker to making the thing, then, and only then, address it.

  2840. There are too many shiny objects and it is killing me 2015-02-19 09:58:24 falcolas
    > You don't think in the whole time humans have evolved that we haven't had this kind of condition already in some form

    Of course we have. Know how we, as humans, dealt with people with mental disabilities (those who survived natural selection) in the past? A combination of "Man up", and sanitariums. We told them, "Stop being <pick a mental condition here>, or we'll throw you in a hole from which you'll never escape, and we can stop worrying about it."

    These two methods "worked" for a lot of mental conditions we just now have names, diagnoses, and cures for.

    > Or is it maybe because we are fed the idea that we _need_ to be focused

    If you think that the only problem with having ADHD is the lack of focus, you don't know what ADHD is. I recommend watching the following video to see what the true problems encountered by those with ADHD are.

    http://youtu.be/SCAGc-rkIfo

    > those who have come up with the idea that we should be medicated for this condition

    Like those who have received medication, and are suddenly able to think like everyone else is capable of? The medication is not a crutch, it's not a magical focus pill, it's not a "i can focus better because I have more energy"... it's a bridge between "can't" and "can".

    It doesn't make you focus, it makes you capable of focusing. It doesn't make you not procrastinate, it lets you actually consider the consequences which are separated from the action by a time period greater than 30 minutes. It doesn't expand your memory, it makes you capable of accessing items in your memory.

    People without ADHD don't understand that the medications don't act like speed for someone with ADHD. Let me repeat that. If you have ADHD, you're not getting the speed-like effects from these drugs.

    If I had to come up with an example people without ADHD might understand, it would be like going from the mental state of being constantly inebriated to stone-cold sober.

    > children as young as 6 who are being medicated, for goddamn no good reason but just because they cannot focus at school and take orders properly

    This is FUD. Children are not put on Ritalin or Adderal just for being hyper, or for being children. The kids who are being put on these drugs are unable to operate and complete school otherwise. They can't just "Man Up" and learn discipline; it's physically impossible. Coping mechanisms can only get you so far.

    It's estimated that 5% of people have ADHD. Let me re-phrase that: 5% of the human population has a neurological condition which prevents their brains from functioning normally, at a level which is considered detrimental to their life. Only ~4% of children are on these drugs. That means that we're not overmedicating children for ADHD, we're undermedicating them. Adults? About 1.5% are medicated. The rest suffer through the symptoms, unable to live up to their potential.

    > those who are diagnosed with ADHD/ADD are specialists

    This is a terrible, terrible lie being spread by people who want to feel special, and who don't want to admit that they actually have a disability. This denial isn't even limited to mental disorders (though due to the lack of physical symptoms, regular society tends to re-enforce the "you have an ability, not a disability" mentality).

    Let's address the "specialist" notion popularized by that Ted Talk, specifically. Do you want to know what an ADHD "specialist" would look like in a hunting society?

    They would be dead, because:

        - they couldn't think ahead to stockpile meat for the winter.
    - they didn't maintain their spear.
    - they forgot to bring water with them on the hunt.
    - they pissed off someone bigger and stronger than themselves due to an unnaturally strong emotional outburst.
    - of infections from clumsily walking down a path and scraping against rocks all the time.
    Not a very effective specialist, eh?

  2841. There are too many shiny objects and it is killing me 2015-02-19 10:03:14 empressplay
    The author's just talking about plain-old procrastination, a fear of _actually_ committing to the project (and all the big nasty stuff that it implies) by actually writing that first line of code.

    Just write the first line of code. It won't hurt. I promise =)

  2842. Oliver Sacks on learning he has terminal cancer 2015-02-19 23:31:18 Mahn
    I doubt Nobel Prize winners procrastinate on HN as much as we do. They are probably busy making things happen.

  2843. Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma 2015-02-20 05:37:40 GoldenMonkey
    Using pomodoros as well. Vitamin-R on the mac, to start the pomodoro. Have used the pomodoro method in the past, but just this year took it seriously. Using it everyday and for all tasks. It has helped me focus on the high-value tasks and especially the tasks I want to procrastinate on.

  2844. There are too many shiny objects and it is killing me 2015-02-20 17:02:35 codethief
    Let me add another book on procrastination and perfectionism to the list which is a favorite of mine:

    The Now Habit by Neil Fiore

    Although it seems the OP has settled with FOMO, I still think this can provide valuable insights.

    Another advice to reduce information overload: Close those (probably) hundreds of browser tabs & disable session restoring, block HN for most of the day and read emails only once a day.

  2845. Startup advice, briefly 2015-02-21 03:11:51 dude_abides
    Honest question: Who is the intended audience for all these startup/advice articles? Wouldn't the best founders be too busy building stuff instead of reading articles on the web. Wouldn't the majority of the audience of these articles be procrastinators (like me)? If so, wouldn't the best advice for such people be to stop procrastinating on the web, and to build stuff instead?

    PS: The advice by Sam is great. I'm questioning the medium.

  2846. The Psychology of Doing Nothing [video] 2015-02-24 08:20:58 unclesaamm
    Something indirectly touched upon is the roots of procrastination in certain types of perfectionism as well. The more you expect yourself to achieve a perfect result right off the bat, the more fear you have of starting.

  2847. Forget the ‘To-Do’ List, You Need a ‘Stop Doing’ List 2015-03-02 01:53:38 Mikho
    Nice piece. Get rid of excuses to continue to procrastinate and not get results. Also, well aligned with the Pareto principle: just do that 20% that get you results and improvement.

  2848. Yann LeCun on a MIT Tech Review article that is all hype 2015-03-02 04:43:56 pvsnp
    This is a great response and I wish more scientists held publications accountable to their reporting. MIT Tech Review, Popular Science and Mechanics are read by a lot of people -- both literate in the your discipline and not, it's worthwhile to point the more nuanced view than what a 1000 word magazine article can point out. I've personally found reporting by ArsTechnica on recent security issues a good model. Wired occasionally comes through but has similar problems like this. Nautilus has its own biases but in general is good. I don't think bad reporting in these cases is necessarily out of malice but the lack of background on reporter's side on your field. And, perhaps sheer laziness. Remember when you procrastinated on writing that long overdue paper, I'd imagine reporters aren't immune to that too ;)

    Convolutional Neural Nets are getting to a hype-level that I find pretty scary. We don't want another AI winter because people expect way too much too early without understanding the domain, only to lead to receeded interest in the field. Honest evaluation and crediting is invaluable to ensuring that.

    Also --> What if there were a "rapgenius" for paper/article reviews where these comments from trusted sources can be curated and commented on? Not sure about viability, etc.. but could be interesting.

  2849. The Outsiders – Homelessness in San Francisco 2015-03-03 04:08:45 cozzyd
    It's probably difficult for we educated, generally well-off people who procrastinate by reading Hacker News to empathize with the homeless.

    Perhaps you (I'm making assumptions here, but by you I really mean the streotypical reader of this site) know someone with drug issues or mental illness, but most likely, given the nature of the relations you're likely to have, they have a support system (health insurance that covers these things or family / friends with money) that provides access to treatment. We know people who have gotten fired or laid off, but they've been rich, connected, or skilled enough so that it can be overcome. Others are not so lucky and when those things happen, they end up on the streets. Once on the street, the potential barrier to getting off is not so easy to overcome.

    We like to think it can't be us, and for lots of us, we're lucky enough that that's true. There probably aren't too many homeless people on Hacker News to give the alternative perspective.

  2850. OpenSSL Audit 2015-03-12 21:56:28 weland
    It doesn't have custom allocator support as in "you can't have one function allocate memory and pass it for another function to use it", or as in "you can't replace the runtime's own malloc"? OpenSSL were doing the former, not the latter.

    (Edit: I'm really really curious, not necessarily trying to prove a point. I deal with low-level code in safety-critical (think medical) stuff every day, and only lack of time is what makes me procrastinate that week when I'm finally going to learn Rust)

  2851. Silicon Valley gets a taste for food 2015-03-13 02:51:18 Vraxx
    The idea of being able to eat a balanced meal without having to meticulously plan and prepare it. It's hardcore efficiency at it's finest and for a relatively good price. If I'm left to eating regular food, I tend to go out to eat more than I should because I procrastinate going to the grocery store or even preparing what I already purchased. This ends up a lot cheaper and a lot more healthy.

  2852. Why Many Smart, Low-Income Students Don't Apply to Elite Schools 2015-03-18 21:53:26 nicholasdrake
    haha good point..

    actually my friend and i are applying this summer batch of yc with an alternative to student debt financing of university... student equity.. from the student side it helps in 2 ways 1. taxes high income earners more, low income earners less (remember when you start uni you don't know for sure which group you will be in) 2. allows you to transfer future income from your middle-age when your income is higher to when you have just graduated (and income is lower)..

    debt in comparison punishes procrastination of payment with interest payments.. it would be great to get your feedback if you have teh chance.. we've posted our draft of our yc application here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224487 thanks!

  2853. Ask HN: OS X/Linux: Which helps to decrease mouse usage/increase productivity? 2015-03-19 04:43:07 Someone1234
    Seems like Parkinson's law of triviality, or maybe just pure procrastination. If this project works out, best case scenario, you've saved like a second or two? How much time have you already wasted trying to figure this out?

  2854. Antiwork – a radical shift in how we view “jobs” 2015-03-20 21:22:51 TeMPOraL
    > The default behavior of young people who have lots of free time is basically what college students do: drink and copulate haha.

    Also: network, engage in three million different hobbies, travel, volunteer, learn new skills, build stuff, do art. Beer and sex tend to get boring quickly - every stereotypical college student I knew eventually found something useful to do with his or her free time.

    > Think about the invention of the internet. Sure some people use it to learn and connect meaningful. But what do most people use it for? Cat pictures, YouTube celebrities and Facebook stalking.

    I'd say that is what people with jobs do to procrastinate/relax. Again, who do you think writes Wikipedia articles? Or creates those cat pictures? Or the programming tutorials you grew up on? Often, they are the high-schoolers and students and unemployed - people who have free time to do things that don't bring in profits.

    I used to contribute to Wikipedia and write programming tutorials and code games when I was in secondary and high school, and at the university - basically, when I didn't have to work most of the day for a living. Now I'm stuck at a shitty webdev job (believe it or not, programming jobs can also be shitty and boring as hell) and I barely have time to do anything useful or interesting for people around me or the world at large. It's soul-crushing. God help me escape this madness before I have kids.

    Frankly, I find this stereotyping of people offensive. All that drinking and sex and sitting in front of TV is what humans do because they can't really afford to do anything else. Every single human being I met has some dreams, passions and interest, but they can't follow any of them because there is not enough hours during the day. You can't, unless you have super-strong willpower, really engage in any meaningful activity if you spend 8+ hours at work every day and come home tired. So people don't.

    My best friend used to write a lot; she studied journalism and wanted to be a reporter and a writer. After university she got caught in the cycle of shitty jobs. Mind you, she's not lazy - she's actually the most hard-working and professional person I have ever met in my life. But years of working 8-10 hours a day, six days a week, on bullshit jobs under abusive bosses, made her almost unable to write a single sentence. And constantly asking herself, "will I ever write that book?".

    So in TL;DR: no, I don't think most people would use universal income to be lazy. They would use it to do meaningful things with their lives. And honestly, if some group of people really decides to spend their lives drinking wine and singing, I say let them. Because if they can and it costs us nothing, why keep everyone enslaved so that some people won't get do things we find unworthy?

  2855. Ever wondered how device drivers are reverse engineered? 2015-03-21 05:55:12 ChuckMcM
    Crazieflie 1.0 [1], when I first got it there was zero Linux support (the radio wanted to talk on a Windows box) I started porting it to Linux, got libusb going and then got stuck on both not knowing what I didn't know, and a process for discovering what was going on. Since that time I see they have updated their code for Linux support. :-) (I guess procrastination can pay off!)

    [1] http://www.bitcraze.se/crazyflie/

  2856. Learning Vim while playing a game 2015-03-23 22:30:15 MichaelGG
    The thing is, you can afford it, and you'd get great value out of it. And getting even slightly proficient with vim is a massive boost, since you can use it everywhere (I use it inside VS and Firefox). I agree it's probably just really bad marketing for him to limit access, since most people are going to have a negligible load. So from a business point, it's almost certainly wrong. The 6 month thing is only a problem if you really procrastinate. After you learn it there's no need to replay. But still, bad marketing.

    From a personal point, vim is amazing and will significantly improve your text editing life and getting these skills is worth far far more than $25. (I'd pay at least $1000 to have vim proficiency loaded into me Matrix-style.)

  2857. The Procrastination Matrix 2015-03-25 02:28:39 adwn
    I can only recommend parts 1 [0] and 2 [1] to anyone why suffers from procrastination. I'm not yet fully "cured" (and might never by), but it's become a lot better since I read these two articles.

    [0] http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastin...

    [1] http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/11/how-to-beat-procrastination.ht...

  2858. Ask HN: How do you keep track of everything? 2015-03-30 03:39:20 mellavora
    "realize that if you are procrastinating it might be because part of your brain disagrees with a decision you have made."

    Now THAT sounds like wisdom

  2859. “The colored boxes indicate which CPU core performed layout for each node” 2015-04-03 14:03:09 Manishearth
    Note that the contributors are from a period of three weeks (due to other commitments I ended up postponing/procrastinating this blog post for two weeks). But yeah, we usually get a lot of new contributors -- around 4 a week, with around ... 20% retention? (mostly guessing from observations). Still pretty nice given our size.

    I'll attribute this to a couple of things:

    We actively maintain a list of [easy bugs](https://github.com/servo/servo/labels/E-easy). This also means holding off on fixing minor things. For example, if I'm working on a feature I might notice some things which can be fixed, or have some portions of the feature that are easy to implement but can be excluded from the main pull request without losing out on much. I'll file E-Easy issues and land the basic pr, and those small changes will be something a hopeful new contributor can pick up and work on. Resisting that itch to fix all the things gets us a good crop of easy bugs. We don't have many string substitution easy bugs[1] unlike projects like Firefox, but most of the easy bugs can be worked on in an hour or two given a Servo build and basic Rust knowledge. Usually less than that.

    Additionally, we do easy bugs right. There's almost always enough information to help a newbie get started; with links to the relevant code and/or spec. Of course, there's a lot we can improve on here, but we're still ahead of the curve on this.

    We also mentor newbies -- if you leave a comment on an issue asking for help (or drop in on IRC), someone's bound to help you.

    We consciously consider newbie onboarding, too -- "will this affect newbies?" is a common issue that springs up in discussions. It helps that many of the core contributors (including me) are volunteers themselves.

    Our code generally isn't too complicated. Most of the areas which newbies flock to (eg the DOM) are well documented and we don't have much usage of advanced, confusing looking Rust features. I've seen open source code heavy with template metaprogramming and all sorts of strange macros --- whilst our code does use macros and syntax extensions, it looks pretty clean and to the most part the strangeness is innocuous (eg the annotations and other strangeness look ignorable). To be fair, this is probably highly subjective, but to me Rust code is generally quite readable, even when it uses advanced features -- it was this way when I started, too.

    Also, we have Josh[2] :) He is behind most of the mentoring system in Firefox and is in general very interested in easing the way for new contributors -- most of the stuff above probably was largely his initiative. If you want ideas on how to improve newbie onboarding on a project you're interesting, you might want to have a discussion with him (or Ms2ger) in IRC.

    [1]: I'm really fond of such bugs because they make for a very smooth transition for those trying out open source. For the first bug you do some easy thing like editing a string or deleting a comment or renaming a function, and get used to the version control system, issue tracker, and the workflow. For the second bug, try something more substantial; you can focus on the code this time without worrying about other things. [2]: http://github.com/jdm

  2860. Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older? 2015-04-08 11:09:31 saluki
    Don't look back at where you've been . . .

    There are lots of people in their 30s and 40s working on their first startup/business idea. You're ahead of them.

    Focus on where you're going.

    26 is young, just make the most of your at bats, keep on top of your procrastination and 'make it happen'.

    Don't look back, focus, go get it.

    If you'd have started at 25 (that was a year ago), 21 you were enjoying university life, 19 you were a kid still.

    26 is the perfect launching point, go get it.

  2861. The daily stand-up is an anti-pattern 2015-04-08 14:08:30 fsloth
    " I shouldn't have to babysit and micromanage what they're doing each day."

    But the standup is not about you micromanaging. The standup is about the team. It's not about having an accountability red-flag to force people into labour, it's about creating a benign cultural incentive to work. Some people actually like discussing what they've done. And if someone is having a slight episode of procrastination then knowing one needs to tell the next day gives an extra motivation to sharpen up.

    It's not about putting collars and leashes on people. It's about giving visibility to work. Often visibility without explicit punishments nor rewards is sufficient to give an extra boost to efforts. It's an automatic reminder to people on what is important, without being irritating or nagging.

  2862. Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older? 2015-04-08 16:06:50 brokenalarms
    I'm 33. I went back to school to do a CS masters after floundering and procrastinating for 10 years after my first degree (humanities), trying to be a professional musician whilst working my way through a succession of dead-end temp jobs.

    Through this one-year degree, I made it to a one-year internship, so I'll be commencing my first full-time programming job at 34. This will also be the first time in my life I haven't lived month to month, money wise.

    The fact that at the age of 26 you have savings enough to actually stop working full-time and go indie already gives you more opportunity than nearly everyone on the planet, and you are by default successful than most people will be in their life. You are normalized to the high salary of a (I presume US-based) developer and have very realistically probably already made more money than I have in 10 years.

    On an 'absolute scale of success', I have accomplished precisely nothing - no money saved, no full-time job, debts to pay. By my own metric of success, I wouldn't have changed a thing except for 'choosing myself' more often (yes, read some James Altucher :P)

    This is not supposed to be a "you don't know how lucky you are" admonishment - because, for over five years before going back to school, I thought about it, but agonized that I was 'too old', and so instead took the grand option of doing -nothing- instead.

    Procrastinating or choosing nothing is not a choice.

    Now, (almost) out the other end, I can say I was never too old. However, I was indecisive, permanently going crazy inside my mind trying to think of "what I should do next". I would, and still do, read every single thing on new technology I can find, obsessively compare and try to make the 'best choice' on what I should be spending my time doing - terrified to waste any time, and by the same token wasting the most amount of time possible.

    The hardest part for you is always to actually -choose something- (be that what technology to learn next, what course to enroll in, what to work on for the next hour or year) and actually stick at it. You -will- sometimes choose wrong. But it doesn't matter -at all- later if your choice is wrong. The most important thing is that you made a choice.

    Some philosopher said it's about "climbing down from the realm of infinite possibilities and immersing yourself in work".

    If this is all slightly OT, it's because I'm extending this metaphor basically to my current situation of choosing the next programming language to learn! And am, in fact procrastinating by writing this.

    So to try and give some practical advice on actually taming this feeling and -working-, here's some random things I've found really useful on both removing that awful feeling and also actually being more productive:

    - (think this is from James Altucher again...) Keep a notepad in front of your computer. Each day, write down three small things you will get done on the computer that day. They will invariably be too big and you will never complete one. Make them smaller and smaller until you actually do one. The sense of achievement will make you do the rest.

    - Read 'The Power of Now' - yes it's Oprah-recommended (and I usually pride myself on reading difficult books) but it actually has practical advice for resolving the anxiety you feel right now about your past felt mistakes. Just ignore it when 'energy' is mentioned - goddamit I was with that book until that page.

    - Actually withdraw forcefully from internet-based updates as much as possible - a developer in my old job told me that the more he advanced as a developer, the less he tried to withdraw from all extraneous technology, including not owning a phone, because the information overload was just too much, and overall detrimental. At the time I thought he was actually insane.

    I haven't quite gone that far, but I have taken his advice in relation to internet updates - I am now continually on the prowl for 'unsubscribe' in my emails, to try and not spend my entire time reading on my phone all day about all the things I should be learning (which reading about learning, unless it is a tutorial where I am doing practical coding, in fact does not teach me anything practical). Then just pick one thing and stick to it.

    - Use the Pomodoro technique. I'm more productive in 25 minutes when I know exactly when they'll end then I am in 5 hours when I'm sitting at the computer and 'just click those few Quora links from today's email' first....now my evening, as with most of my other evenings (when I don't employ these techniques, which I need to learn over and over - discipline is training) has gone.

    - RescueTime is also a great app for seeing where you're inadvertently wasting most time, and you'll find after blocking enough sites like Buzzfeed in your .hosts file that you actually start to run out of time wasting activities...

    I hope maybe you get something useful out of these thoughts...!

  2863. Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older? 2015-04-08 16:07:37 zamalek
    Once you reach your goals you will be in exactly the same place as those who are 25, 21 and 19. Don't confuse ambition with competitiveness: if you are strictly ambitious about your life goals then it really doesn't matter if someone else reached theirs first.

    Furthermore, in some ways you are ahead. Having a "normal" young life is a good thing. In some ways I pity young successes like Evan Spiegal: they never had the camaraderie and joy of e.g. scratching together some money with friends for some beer and steak for a BBQ. In a nutshell, success is about improving your life, not replacing it. One day you'll value the days when you had the ability to procrastinate.

  2864. Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older? 2015-04-08 16:17:38 hamstr
    I have read often that in academic settings, many people make their biggest research contributions in their mid- to late twenties. That's where you're at, you seem to know what is important to you, you are working hard; it sounds to me like you are doing all the right things. If you spend less time looking at the facades of other people's success, you'll be fine. And facades is what they are.

    As for the procrastination, an unexpected learning for me recently was the insight that I really need to start my day with a clear head, free of distractions. No email, no hackernews, no twitter. Sit down and get straight to work, get in the flow, do a few hours of really good work. Protect this time, eliminate all sources of interruption. I would guess I produce 2/3 of my work output in the first 1/3 of my work day, which makes me feel happy and relaxed for the rest of the day. Recommended reading: "Daily Rituals, how Artists Work", by Mason Curry.

    Finally, don't forget that you are only young once. Party, do crazy and stupid things, that's your privilege. You can always work more (and get rich/famous) later in life. You'll just replace youthful energy with experience.

  2865. Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older? 2015-04-08 16:52:22 walterbell
    > I can't help but feel that if I had started in earnest at 25, at 21, at 19 — then maybe the list of accomplishments at the end of my life will be longer.

    This theoretical regret about a progress bar to presumed "answers" assumes that the "question" was not changed by your life experience.

    > Mentally, I've resigned to the fact that I've procrastinated away a decade of valuable time, and it just endlessly haunts me.

    It's only procrastination if you fail to trust your own choices and find the inevitable lessons therein.

    A haunting thought: what if your subconscious was seeking something while "procrastinating"? What if you already found it?

  2866. Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older? 2015-04-08 17:21:23 yourad_io
    Do this[1] to get you to love learning again and deal with procrastination/time management/life-juggling. You'll know some of this stuff already. Finish it anyway. Best value for time of anything educational that I have done - bar none, hands down, etc.

    Take one of these[2] when comparing youself to other people. If you had spent time to brand yourself, you'd probably look at least twice as good as "hot-shot young dev with handful of fancy projects". Public image and developer prowess aren't necessarily related.[3]

    If, like many devs, your procrastination issues were related to.. hm.. illicit substances-well, you know the answer to that: "Pan metron ariston"[4] ~= "moderation is everything".

    > Mentally, I've resigned to the fact that I've procrastinated away a decade of valuable time, and it just endlessly haunts me.

    It hardly sounds like you've done that. So you didn't reach your max. potential in this "procrastination decade". Guess what: nobody does.

    Don't let shit haunt you. The past is immutable. Change your present and future.

    [1] https://class.coursera.org/learning-003/

    [2] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Chill+Pill I sure as f- need them.

    [3] If you gave yourself the mini-project: "Let's make this X bad dev look good", you'd probably succeed for most X. If you care about your public perception, make that your mini project and you'll find that when you're done, your image will be A+++ - as you're not a bad dev.

    [4] http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/642841-pan-metron-ariston-ev...

  2867. Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older? 2015-04-08 17:25:15 PaulRobinson
    I "started in earnest" at the age of 11. Now I'm 36 and have CTO in my job title (but I'm very hands on - still a small firm, headcount < 20), and I still feel behind sometimes.

    When I talk to younger people about what it is to be a professional programmer, I ask them "Do you like learning? Are you prepared to learn something new every day? Are you prepared to do a job where your task is to quickly learn and apply that learning constantly?"

    That is what a programmer is. We all learn from each other. From the stackoverflow copy/paste crowd to the most senior computer scientists you have ever heard of. Some of them have original thoughts, original applications, but mostly we're just this big crowd learning off each other to get things we enjoy doing or are paid to do (and ideally both), done.

    Procrastination is your subconscious saying "I really don't want to do this". You either listen to it, or you start telling your subconscious why you do. It's OK to move onto another project. Maybe no projects appeal to you right now. Maybe you need to talk to somebody about anxiety and depression, as you have some of the symptoms.

  2868. Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older? 2015-04-08 20:04:17 visakanv
    OP– I'm about your age, and I haven't completely solved this problem for myself either, but I've thought about it really hard for a really long time. Let me address your issues / statements / concerns one by one.

    > I find it very hard to sit down and work on a project without an external motivator, and on many nights I end up vegging out in front of the TV or aimlessly clicking around on the internet.

    This is a classic environment type problem. If you're committed to creating great work, then you have to carve out time for yourself. This means having a specific routine. Talk to people who train in sports and they'll tell you– they don't rely on any particular sort of motivation (external or internal). Rather, they have a routine where everyday at 6am they lace up their shoes and go for their run, like it or not. Read Stephen Pressfield's The War Of Art– he talks about Going Pro. You don't wait for motivation. You do the work every day. Sometimes inspiration will come, sometimes it won't.

    > Every day, I read an article by some hot-shot young dev who has a handful of fancy projects behind his belt

    These folks are exceptions. They're exeptionally good and they're exceptionally lucky. You'd be better off not reading any articles at all.

    > It's a constant, irrepressible gnawing in my chest.

    I experience this intermittently. IMHO, I experience it when I haven't been doing work. The solution is literally to sit down and do work. The gnawing is a reminder that you are working, not doing.

    > even though I still end up on HN half the time

    Turn off the Internet?

    > I have so many great ideas, and knowing that the main obstacle between them and me is only myself keeps me in an endless state of panic

    This, together with your vegging out / aimless clicking, suggests to me that you're framing the problem too broadly.

    The main obstacle between you and your goals might be you, but it also might be, you know. One quant of work, followed by another, and another. Baby steps, man. Do one thing at a time.

    > I've resigned to the fact that I've procrastinated away a decade of valuable time, and it just endlessly haunts me

    This is the venomous, compounding problem about obsessing about sunk costs. Listen– life isn't a linear thing. Some of these folks younger than you will get into car accidents and die. Others will get distracted, end up in horrible marriages, all sorts of nasty things will happen. Life doesn't progress nearly as linearly as you think.

    What you need to do is really sit down and go, "Yes. I have burnt a decade. I have some unknown amount of time in front of me. I have today." What are you going to do with today? Why do you want to spend today agonizing about yesterday?

  2869. Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older? 2015-04-08 21:21:39 eludwig
    If you are convinced that you are doing what you want to be doing, then you need to respectfully disregard the inner voices that are impeding your ability to work in the present effectively.

    In the creative world, these voices are sometimes referred to as "witches." Everyone has this. They are not always about procrastination and failing either. People can also get insane "visions of grandeur" voices too! You may have thoughts about being the greatest programmer that has ever lived or the best writer ever. That type of thing. These thoughts are the flotsam and jetsam of the creative process. Icky foam. (Okay, no more ocean metaphors)

    The mistake is listening to them. They are not helpful and are just impediments to working in the present. Think of them as intrusive guests that will leave if they are ignored. Let them rise and fall without worrying too much about it. Worrying about them can start a vicious cycle that is also an impediment.

    The only place that work happens is today, now. This is the same for everyone. Even the people that you admire have to work in the present.

  2870. Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older? 2015-04-08 22:03:40 wpietri
    > If you're depressed or socially anxious, you wouldn't just accept these as the way you are, would you?

    Have you considered that you might have an anxiety problem?

    You mention being crippled by fear. You mention a constant gnawing. You mention a daily rehearsal of a major anxiety, your always feeling behind, frequently feeling exhausted and terrified, an endless state of panic, and being endlessly haunted. That is a whole lot of anxiety, and there are other kinds of anxiety disorder besides social anxiety.

    My tip for you: find a therapist you like and go regularly. You've got two problems here: you are trapped in a behavioral loop, struggling for context. And, being young, you don't have enough life experience to see as many patterns as somebody older, especially somebody who spends all day talking with people. Regularly seeing a good therapist will help with both of those. They can also help you consider whether your level of anxiety is unusual, and what your options are.

    I should add that when I was your age, I was too arrogant to do that. I was sure that by dint of raw smarts I would figure it out on my own. Which was both true and dumb: reinventing psychology from scratch would in some sense be an achievement, but like most reinventing of the wheel, it's not an achievement that anybody cares about, not even me.

    Anyhow, I have worked out an anxiety-related checklist over time. Now when I notice anxious feelings, the things I wonder:

    * Am I getting enough exercise? 30-60 mins cardio 3-4x week is about right for me.

    * Am I carrying a lot of stress in my body? Yoga, massage, and hot tubs are helpful.

    * Are there environmental factors? E.g., noisy environment, messy living space.

    * What am I eating? My mood is most stable on foods with low glycemic index, worst with junk food.

    * Am I getting enough sleep? I do best with ~7.5 hours on a very regular schedule.

    * What's my drug intake? More than 100mg caffeine or 2 drinks alcohol and my mood will be less stable the next day.

    * Am I taking my vitamins? This could be placebo, but I take a B-100, a sublingual B12, and some fish oil. My doctor recommended them for reducing the effects of stress.

    For me, my procrastination is directly driven by feelings of anxiety. The more chill I am, the more I get done.

  2871. Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older? 2015-04-08 22:29:15 sixQuarks
    I've been a life-long procrastinator. There is no cure, but it can get better. These are the best articles you can read to help break the cycle:

    Why Procrastinators Procrastinate http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastin...

    How to Beat Procrastination http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/11/how-to-beat-procrastination.ht...

  2872. Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older? 2015-04-08 23:00:07 balabaster
    This sounds very much like me. I beat it by finding a routine that works for me, a routine that helped me become more disciplined... and it took a while to beat, so don't expect immediate results. Also, while this worked for me, it may not work for you, everyone [despite those telling you that you're not a unique snowflake] is different and different things work for each of us so take what is helpful from my routine and ignore the rest, YMMV.

    First step: Finding your zone. This is a matter of conditioning and conditioning doesn't come easily. Find something that puts you in a zone of focus. It doesn't matter what the focus is on, it doesn't matter what that zone is - the key is finding focus and maintaining it for longer and longer periods until you can easily maintain focus for a number of hours at a time [I'm told there are drugs that do this very effectively, but I personally try to avoid drugs wherever possible]. Whatever it is should be something that doesn't allow you to lose your focus or give up, even when the going gets tough and every instinct in you is telling you to throw in the towel.

    For me it was cycling - totally unrelated to programming. It was better for me than being in a gym because if I decide to stop pedaling, I stop going anywhere. In a gym, this means just getting off the bike and I'm no further behind. If you're 10 miles from home and stop pedaling, you're 10 miles from home and the only way back home is to get back on your bike and start pedaling again. Sitting on the side of the road procrastinating isn't going to help, nor is it going to be in any way enticing to sit there. After 40 miles, you could be exhausted and realizing you still have a 5 mile climb ahead of you before you can put your bike down; there's no way around it, you just have to get on and do it.

    I've set up a playlist on my phone of music that runs around 130-140 bpm [that's approximately the speed of club music that makes you wanna dance] and will run without looping for the duration of my ride. I listen to the same playlist every ride. You might get sick of it, but you listen anyway. After a few weeks of agony and wanting to throw in the towel but doing it anyway you start to find peace in the pain and it becomes a meditation, you don't even hear the music consciously any more but the beat drives you forward, you find the zone and it's just you, the pain and the road and before you know it the circuit is over. For me this process took a number of weeks, but now, if I put that playlist on, even if I'm not on my bike, my brain snaps into that zone. It's been conditioned to focus when that playlist comes on, just like Pavlov's dog salivating when the bell rings. [This requires ongoing maintenance]

    Step 2: Remove necessary distractions. When I say necessary, I mean unavoidable things that will need doing and will break your focus when they are required to be done because you didn't take the preemptive strike of killing them off first. Things like important phone calls to your accountant or the bank. If you can't focus while you have a messy desk, clean your desk, get your coffee, eat your breakfast, do all of these unavoidable things first.

    Step 3: Understand the problem intimately, ensure that you can recite it inside outside, upside down and backwards. You don't want to have to keep going back to ensure you understand the problem, this will break your focus. If you need to pester someone to help you understand the problem, pester them until you have fully digested every nuance of what it is you're trying to achieve.

    Step 4: Understand the solution to that problem intimately. Ensure that you understand every single step that will take you from where are right now to where you need to be. Any pieces you don't understand, go back and reread step 4. If you keep having to come back and figure stuff out, this will break your focus. Again, pester whoever you need to in order to completely understand the path to the solution.

    Steps 3 and 4 are my biggest triggers for procrastination. If I don't understand the problem or the solution to that problem well enough, I can't maintain focus. It might take me days to get down to it if I let myself skip either of these steps - so I don't.

    Step 5: Everything else can wait: No Facebook, no Hacker News, no Blinkfeed, no Quora, no email, no phone calls, no text messages, no whatever else it is you like to waste time with. Put them all aside and have the discipline to stay away from them until you're finished this step. Now, do whatever it was from Step 1 that puts you into your focused zone. Get on with completing the steps you've laid out in Step 4.

    Step 6: You're done, go reward yourself with all those other distractions that you put aside to complete Step 5. Congratulations.

  2873. Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older? 2015-04-08 23:00:23 StudlyCaps
    I feel your pain. I'm quite a bit older than you are. Programming is my second career and I'm competing with people who have been doing it their whole lives.

    I must say, it sounds like you're being VERY hard on yourself. Having a CS degree degree from a top 10 school and enough money in the bank to freelance for a few years puts you in a really good position.

    Stop constantly comparing yourself to others. Set some realistic goals for yourself. Those goals should be based on what will make you happy, not what will make you feel like you measure up to others.

    When was the last time you took a vacation? You may be a bit burned out. This will definitely cause you to procrastinate. Take some time off to refresh and recharge your battery.

    Also, do you suffer from depression or anxiety? If so you may want to consider doing some therapy. Do you have a social life? Do you do fun things on a regular basis? If not, start making time to improve the quality of your life. I suspect that most of your problems are not career problems but side effects of general unhappiness. When you find happiness it will solve the other problems.

    One last piece of advice. Going "indie" is not for everyone. I have a feeling it's not for you. You may find that you will flourish in a staff job that you truly love.

    Best of luck friend!

  2874. Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older? 2015-04-08 23:14:40 o_syn
    One of my observations is that people procrastinate because it is entropically favorable, not necessarily because they want to procrastinate or because procrastination is fun. The Internet does not help with its vast potential for incessant context switching.

    The obvious solution to this is to reduce entropy, and slow things down. Stay without the internet and television for a week, since these are the primary ways in which you procrastinate, think of it as rehab therapy. Eliminate all sources of deviations, and try to systematically lengthen your attention span. I would suggest meditating every day for an hour[1].

    Secondly, stop reading the news. It's a complete waste of time. The set of all thought sequences you can have between time A and time B should be small. Watching the news, or reading HN greatly increases the number of irrelevant thoughts you can have. A perfect Bayesian with a utility function like "maximize knowledge gained" would not read the news at all. It is always a good idea to ponder about what a perfect Bayesian with your chosen utility function would do.

    It's true that the only thing stopping yourself is you. And it's also true that you can do amazing things if you spend long enough on any particular thing[2]. I would suggest making an Excel sheet with the time spent doing productive work per day, and optimize for that.

    I went from averaging around 30 minutes a week when I started measuring my productivity (I'm a college freshman .. so I'm free the entire day) to around 4 hours in the last week.

    ---

    [1] Music I find helpful for meditation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPni755-Krg

    [2] Einstein spent an entire decade on General Relativity. Andrew Wiles spent 7 years trying to prove Fermat's Last Theorem. Persistence is the most important trait anyone can have.

  2875. How Google Hires 2015-04-09 00:05:57 freehunter
    No, but you'd come up with a story to go along with it. You didn't just do your job building a website for a client, but rather you had a client with a pressing need for a custom site and they were on a tight deadline. Normally your team wouldn't work contracts like this, but you thought it would be a good challenge and a way to test your skills. You had to work late nights for a few days, but you managed to get the site done in time and on budget. Sounds pretty nice, it's good that you were selfless and spent some of your personal time to help the client on such a tricky project.

    What actually happened was you just sat there browsing reddit until the deadline had almost arrived, then worked like crazy trying to get the site finished. Normally your team wouldn't work contracts like that (which means normally your team would do their job properly). And it was a challenge and a test of your skills, because normally you don't do jack squat at work. In fact, the reason you're looking for a new job is because if you don't quit your current employer will fire you.

    Now you have a great story to tell an interviewer about how you completely fail to do your job properly. But by dressing up the words a little bit and using some creative euphemisms, you can make it sound like you went above and beyond. And it's not really a lie, because you did go above and beyond... eventually. You just didn't have to do that if you had worked properly. All you have to do is leave out the fact that you're a massive slacker.

    So you get the job because you told an awesome story of how devoted you are, and all you had to do was leave out one single fact (that the deadline was only tight because you procrastinated). Meanwhile your really awesome coworker tells every single fact 100% true and you get the job instead of him, because your story sounds better.

  2876. Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older? 2015-04-09 01:06:01 ZeroFries
    Ask yourself why you must be so productive and ambitious in the first place. Your self worth is clearly tied into that list of accomplishments; why is that so? Maybe try writing down a list of reasons why you believe accomplishment is the greatest measure of your own worth, and see if they make logical sense to you when you think deeply about them.

    At the same time, ask yourself why you procrastinate. Come up with a list of reasons for that as well. Probably a strong reason is that you're afraid of failure (since you need successful accomplishments so badly to feel self worth). Only when the anxiety of not finishing anything outweighs the anxiety of failing something do you not procrastinate. This is what happens when your primary motivator is anxiety.

    Thirdly, ask yourself why in particular minimizing (age/accomplishments) is so important to you. If you live an average lifespan, you still have 2/3 of your life left to accomplish what you want. If you started from scratch now, you could still make major contributions to most fields in under 10 years time. If you're worried about declining brain health with age, do things which minimize the decline (avoiding excessive anxiety is probably a good place to start).

    Consider that most people regret not spending enough time with friends and family, not fully appreciating life, and not communicating how they really feel, when they die. They don't regret not working more.

  2877. Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older? 2015-04-09 02:04:07 helpfulanon
    Created a throwaway to say this since I don't want to give away my medical history..

    Basically I struggled with these problems for most of my 20's. Then a year ago I started going into therapy with a psychologist, got tested for ADHD and was diagnosed. Meds changed everything when it came to procrastination. It used to be the cause of so much anguish in my life and today it's almost a non-issue.

    Therapy really helped me decouple from the narcissism that had warped me into a compulsive fixation with benchmarking myself against other people. Humbling yourself is important. Spending time on non-code hobbies, with family, away from work and tech industry noise is important.

    Not everyone can or should be running a software product, and that's ok. Not everyone is successful in their career at age 26. When your life is surrounded by these skewed values, all this survivor bias, it seems like not being on the frontpage of Product Hunt is a mark of failure. If you head out of the tech bubble, go somewhere with friends or family that have no association with this world, you'll realize that this value system isn't normal.

    Also, keep in mind that the people who do run successful projects are often unhappy. Running a product is a lot of work and can be extremely stressful and exhausting. Success is a double-edged sword.

    Edit: replaced a rant about wanting to be a successful entrepreneur. This guy just wants to be a good coder, I missed that.

  2878. Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older? 2015-04-09 02:06:08 makebelieve
    it doesn't matter where you start, it matters what you do now. there is NOTHING you can do about the past. zero. it is impossible to change the past. You can do things today. find the sweet spot of bliss. where what you do is fun, and you are interested in doing for it's own sake, and where it is valued by other people.

    talent management and business success are different problems. talent management is about pursuing what gives you juice. business is about connecting your labor to other people, in a one to many type network so your labor can be remunerative. both tasks require continuously figuring out how to do a better job.

    You will stop procrastinating when you believe and when you spontaneously feel what you are doing is more important, and more fun, than your distractions. procrastination is evidence of competing values, competing interests. you'll have more success by orthogonally including these competing values in your labors than by trying to shut them out and criticizing yourself because what you think you should be interested in is different than what you are interested in. you can align your values and desires towards your goals, but only so much. you will be much more successful if you align your efforts towards your values and interests. As you want business success and have a curious mind (hence the distractions) you have to thread your own curious solution.

  2879. Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older? 2015-04-09 04:09:16 emergencevector
    > I'm a 26 y.o. software dev working on going indie...Every morning, I take tally of my age.

    26 is a fantastic age. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise! I would literally part with my right testicle if I could be 26 again, knowing what I know now. The chances are very, very good that you are more attractive, intelligent, and energetic than you realize. Most 20-somethings don't have the life experience to put these things in proper perspective. Just as sure that you're not as good a driver as you think, you've got a lot more going for you than you realize.

    > Whenever I encounter a technical article, I immediately and compulsively investigate the author's age.

    There are so many ways of being awesome, just like there are so many ways of making money. You don't have to be what other people are.

    > Mentally, I've resigned to the fact that I've procrastinated away a decade of valuable time, and it just endlessly haunts me.

    That doesn't exist, except in people's minds, especially yours. Just do something now.

    > But I can't help but feel that if I had started in earnest at 25, at 21, at 19

    Late 40's here. I know how you feel. Take it from me: You have no business feeling like that!

  2880. Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older? 2015-04-09 13:00:05 queryly
    No one procrastinates on things they enjoy doing. You may not have found your niche yet, keep looking. People grow up learning competing with each other all the time as it is theme of life. You would have to unlearn that and enjoy life.

  2881. Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older? 2015-04-09 20:40:27 jeletonskelly
    I'm definitely not going to advocate that someone not try to better themselves. If you feel like you want to try to overcome some part of your personality that you're not comfortable with then that's a positive thing. I do, however, think that after multiple failed attempts at overcoming that trait, it's best to reevaluate your perspective on it. Sometimes it's best to admit that something is just a part of who you are and that it is, in fact, a flaw. Of course, we are all flawed in some ways, but it's how we learn to live with those admissions that will determine your self-esteem. Sometimes, even, what we think are flaws from one point of view are actually advantages when viewed from another. For example, procrastination is generally seen as a flaw or a "bad thing", but if you learn to take advantage of that by fully thinking out the problem you're actually trying to solve when you finally DO start working, you might might find that you create brilliant, innovative solutions to difficult things. Solutions that the non-procrastinator didn't think of because he was too fast to the keyboard.

  2882. Ask HN: What are the books that changed the perspective of your life? 2015-04-10 03:05:58 pariya
    "The War of Art" by Steven Pressfield (good read if you want to learn how to quit procrastinating!)

    "The Greatest Salesman on Earth" by Og Mandino

    "The Zahir" by Paolo Coelho is about challenging tradition, highly recommend.

    "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie

    When I was in high school- "The Alchemist" by Paolo Coelho

  2883. Ask HN: How do you deal with professional jealousy and getting older? 2015-04-10 06:10:16 noobermin
    I appreciate your reply. I think one of the reasons I feel that it isn't an innate trait for me at least is that I didn't procrastinate as much as I do now until I started college. Perhaps I always had this tendency, but its intensity is something I hope to temper. It isn't until recent months that I've decided to do something about it, so hopefully, I'm not due for surrender yet.

    I had a rather romantic and gifted English teacher in my first year of college who claimed that procrastination is a part of the creative process, likening it hatching an egg, she claimed that procrastinating helped mature ideas before you put pen to paper, similar to the idea to use procrastination time to fully develop a solution to a problem, as you said. Yes, there is a correlation of my hearing of her doctrine and my increased procrastination, but I can't blame her for it.

  2884. Ask HN: How to get into a good university 2015-04-11 23:07:46 jervisfm
    Hi,

    It's good that you're starting to think about your applications early. Applying to college is a lot of work and one way you can help yourself is by starting early. Do not procrastinate on this. Starting early, gives you more time to prepare and ensure that you have the strongest possible application.

    In my experience, Top schools look at your application holistically as a package so there isn't just a single particular thing that will guarantee admission. For example, it is possible to for a candidate with perfect SATs to fail to get into Harvard. That's not to say SATs/test scores are not important - a high SAT score does, all things being equal, improve you chances. But rather, it is to show you that it alone is not sufficient.

    So how do you get in ? You make sure each aspect of your application is as strong as possible. This includes things like your SATs test scores, letters of recommendation, application essay and the like. For SATs, one way to get high scores is to just take many practice exams. This is hard work (the exam is 3hrs+) but most of the question there follow a certain style and after doing it a few times you will naturally get good at answering those questions.

    On recommendation letters, my suggestion is to get letters from people who know you really well and can speak candidly and accurately on your current intellect as well as your potential for college-studies. The contents of the letter matter much more than who writes it. For example, you say you lead your high school computer club. I'd imagine that you have had a lot of interactions with the computer instructors at your school in that capacity and so he/she is really familiar with you and your skills at an intimate level. Such a recommender is more likely to write a strong letter since they've seen and know your work first hand.

    One strategy that may help you determine if a recommender is a good fit is to ask them: Can you write me a strong recommendation letter ? Most would be up front if that's not the case and politely decline if they cannot write you such a letter. So if you can get strong recommendation letter from someone at Google/NASA, go for it. Otherwise, I'd get one from people who know you well.

    The other part of this is your application essay. Do spend time crafting that. Unlike most of the pieces of the application, this is one part where you have total control and you should use this to your advantage. Most top schools give you freedom as to what you can write about, so put some real thought as to what you'd like to focus on. Suggested topics to touch on include, why are you passionate about CS and how did that happen. It's a good idea to have a close-friend or instructor to review your essay. It helps to get a second pair of eyes give you feedback. Make sure though that your voice and personality still shines through in your essay after incorporating any feedback and making adjustments.

    I hope some of this is helpful.

    Good luck!

  2885. Distraction is a kind of obesity of the mind 2015-04-13 18:34:36 netcan
    I think that may be more or less inevitable. We don't even have a good physiological understanding of obesity. We know some things. Weight gain is determined by caloric intake. Maybe the right way to think of it is caloric intake is necessary for weigh gain. Bringing in psychology, neurology/neurochemistry… puff. There is fascinating science going on, but we're currently far from a working understanding.

    But, we have other tools. Many of them are unscientific. We call them pseudo science or whatnot. That may not be incorrect, but it is probably missing something. Is AA pseudoscience? It's a social structure and method for alcohol addiction. We have all sorts of scientific knowledge, but not a science based improvement on AA.

    It's increasingly seems like there are similarities between substance addiction, activity (video games, adrenaline sports, sex, procrastination, social media..) addiction and other "pathologies." The science does not contradict this. In fact, the contrary is very likely to be true. I've heard various interesting sounding theories that might be rendered as

    "Addiction is something that has hijacked the learning process in your brain." IE, your brain responds and adapts to small doses of frustration or satisfaction when you learn to walk, solve math or ride a Harley Davidson. That adaption is learning. Addiction is that kind of learned behavior.

    Yet, taking that theoretical level understanding of super-complicated processes in a super-complicated environment and using it in a non-pseudoscientific way is… we're not there yet. When we get there, we can throw out old wives tales. Until then, lets just agree that not everything is science. Some things are a working theory that approximates reality or utilizes some of our other human faculties to create a working solution to current projects.

    https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=addiction+learning+dopa...

  2886. A Math Problem from Singapore Goes Viral 2015-04-15 03:18:35 cousin_it
    I realize you were trying for a reductio ad absudum, but actually I kinda like your idea, because it suggests a wide range of other promising ideas. Imagine a software company whose programmers were chosen for being immune to procrastination. They would run circles around competitors!

  2887. Show HN: I'm a 14 year-old dev who has programmed an artificial intelligence bot 2015-04-16 13:50:27 DigitalSea
    This is all the motivation that I needed to stop procrastinating. When I was 14 I was riding my BMX, leeching off my parents and playing Smoke On The Water on my guitar (on one string) repeatedly driving my parents nuts. Congratulations on this, looks and works great. Impressive job and keep it up, you're going to make a great dev by the time you enter the workforce.

  2888. Ask HN: What are the most uplifting comments you've read on HN? 2015-04-18 09:40:42 oxplot
    grandalf's comment on procrastination:

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9285481

  2889. Ask HN: What advice would you give to your younger self? 2015-04-19 01:17:04 mmmm
    People often talk down on sex, I've noticed. Why is that so? Is it because people can use sex as an excuse to procrastinate?

  2890. Ask HN: When do you know your startup has failed? 2015-04-19 23:33:17 andersthue
    I ran a business (before it was called a startup:) for way too many years ungil I finally (depressed and broken down) sold it for a "penny" just to get out of it.

    These days I am building a new product (again), calling myself a self funded startup.

    The difference is that these days I look forward to mondays.

    Back in the old days i dreaded mondays.

    If you would rather procrastinate or get drunk than work, it might be a good time to leave and call it dead!

    PS. Those i sold the business to got quite successfull after I left, so it was probably for the better!

  2891. Is It Finally Game Over for Ethanol? 2015-04-20 21:44:31 fulafel
    EV CO2 footprints are in the same ballpark as gas cars. It's just environmental procrastination, there's nothing in sight to make two cars per household sustainable. (Or even one for that matter.) Giving subsidies to nuclear plants wouldn't drastically change the picture.

  2892. Has the First Person to Achieve Immortality Already Been Born? 2015-04-22 04:35:40 jshevek
    I'm not trying to be argumentative, I'm just trying to understand. I can't relate to this. I might 'feel bored' when I have something I feel I must do, but which I don't want to do. And then I may procrastinate, by turning to the internet, only to find this even more dissatisfying.

    But if I have some free time with truly no demands, I need only commit myself to something fun and interesting - even something as simple as reading a novel.

    Wait... maybe that's the key. Maybe we try to use the internet to alleviate boredom because it doesn't take any commitment, and maybe it fails to satisfy for that same reason. But what if you are willing to put a little more effort or investment into your distractions? Find a good movie, turn down the lights and really pay attention? Or approach the internet with a sense of purpose....?

  2893. 3,000 floppy disk archive (1982–1994) 2015-04-22 08:31:06 WalterGR
    Within the past few days, someone commented with a link to "Floppy Disks: It's Too Late" (2011) from Jason Scott's blog.

    Here's an excerpt:

       It’s over. You waited too long. You procrastinated or
   made excuses or otherwise didn’t think about it or care.
   You didn’t do anything and it’s too late now. ...

   If you still have boxes of floppies sitting in your
   attic or basement or grandparents’ place or wherever
   else, I’m telling you the days of it being a semi-
   dependable storehouse are over. It’s been too long, too
   much, and you’ve asked too much of what the floppies
   were ever designed to do. 

   http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3191
    That's for 5 1/4" disks.

    The situation sounds more hopeful for 3 1/2" disks - but if you still have some, now is the time to get that data off.

  2894. Ask HN: Those who quit their jobs to travel the world, how did it go? 2015-04-26 07:55:55 notahacker
    The worst mistake, arguably, was getting the job back on my return 22 months later (I stumbled across an ad at a temptingly higher salary, and it arguably did make the adjustment to reality a little easier) If I did it all again, I'd ensure I made a more radical break from the past on my return.

    I didn't work whilst I was away, though I did read and write an awful lot more, and an awful lot more selectively. I can believe the people that find the myriad attractions of exotic destinations a less toxic distraction than constant invitations to party or the urge to procrastinate that comes from being stuck in your comfort zone, but I enjoyed the experience more for being completely guilt-free about not achieving anything in particular in a given day or week. And some of my favourite destinations had really crappy internet connections.

    Budgeting was easy, even on my sub <$10k year, but then again I've never had expensive taste. A down-side to this is feeling slightly grumpy on your return when realising a single spirit measure costs more than a meal and a much better day or night out in dozens of other places you've visited...

  2895. Review: Asus ZenBook UX305 2015-04-26 15:57:43 satai
    The review is pretty realistic.

    I use UX305 with Arch as my "procrastinate, err code, in coffeeshop" machine and it is a great notebook for the money. The keyboard with no backlight is main issue (for me). And the sound sucks.

  2896. Docker without Docker 2015-04-27 01:39:35 chimeracoder
    > this is the best resource I've come across that explains what happens internally in an easy to grok manner.

    Thanks! I really appreciate that.

    > I'm sorry if I jumped the gun before the blogpost was ready. :)

    Nah, it's cool - if anything it creates even more social pressure not to procrastinate writing it!

  2897. Why can’t we read anymore? 2015-04-27 05:52:50 Red_Tarsius
    > Last year, I read four books.

    Since January I read +-25 books. It's not necessarily a good thing. Every book, no matter how short, is a commitment. It requires time and effort you could spend in other, more productive things. As a matter of fact, reading is how I procrastinate.

    The road to mediocrity is paved with good books: I've been reading quite a lot on entrepreneurship... let's say 300 hours worth of reading. I could have spent that time by testing ideas and hustling, but I lacked confidence. It was always "1 more book... and then I'll start doing it".

  2898. Why can’t we read anymore? 2015-04-28 03:55:18 tby
    Since I've started to meditate a few months ago, I really read a lot more than before.. It seems to lessen my need to procrastinate and feelings of "fear of missing out".

  2899. Take Nothing, Leave Nothing: On being banned from the world’s most remote island 2015-04-28 07:16:31 benbreen
    Related - an article I wrote about the settlement of Tristan da Cunha and the history of micronations last year. [1] There are also some fascinating clips of the island on Youtube (including the odd, 19th century sounding variant of British English spoken there) if anyone is looking for interesting procrastination material. [2]

    [1] http://theappendix.net/issues/2014/7/the-king-of-the-islands...

    [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKRvtk-GI0g

  2900. Ask HN: Reddit vs. HN 2015-04-28 22:19:59 vinay427
    I'm an avid Redditor that is migrating to HN. When I experience Reddit withdrawal (it's a thing!) I realize that in my experience HN is a much more intellectual community. By that, I mean that the general HN community seems more driven to teach and learn about all kinds of topics. Reddit has its fair share of that (with more diversity due to a larger user base) but intermingled with a slew of cat memes, etc. that really contribute nothing to my life. People in some demographics may use it to procrastinate doing work, but I am working on finding more productive ways to do so. Certain subreddits such as /r/personalfinance can be useful for life advice, however, and it seems that many more AMAs are done on Reddit than anywhere else.

  2901. Grooveshark Shuts Down 2015-05-01 09:18:59 kozed
    I've always noticed random songs disappearing from my collection but procrastinated doing anything about it. I wrote a script two weeks ago to download my entire collection to avoid potentially losing some really great songs. Talk about good timing. I always knew grooveshark would be temporary and possibly unreliable but I did not expect an unannounced closure with no ability to extract our collection metadata.

  2902. Why Do We Play Video Games That Feel Like Work? 2015-05-06 22:18:01 visakanv
    > never underestimate the number of people who have nothing to do and need an outlet

    The interesting thing is that people always have an endless amount of things to do.

    The problem is that we're usually really VAGUE about what we need to do. And vague todos don't get done a little bit less, or a little bit slower– they don't get done at all! This is pretty counterintuitive.

    I have a bookshelf of unread books, and an endless list of work, but it's easier to play a game (or reply to a HN comment!) because the task at hand is much more straightforward. Type, hit reply, get the dopamine.

    With the books, or with work, I have to pick something, decide what I want to do, decisions, decisions, decisions. Great video games lay out the decisions for you in a very clear "jump this gap", "pick up that weapon", "shoot that guy" sorta way.

    Real life is messier, and so we procrastinate more. The feedback is less immediate and clear (unless we deliberately design it to be so.)

  2903. What are your pain points? 2015-05-12 03:29:49 mod
    I have a poor sleep schedule I've been trying hard to fix, to no avail.

    I procrastinate to the extreme of often doing nothing for an entire work day (I'm a contractor and I just don't bill it!)--but because I won't let myself do the things I truly want, I end up on HN or similar for a large part of my day and accomplish nothing at work and much less than I could in other endeavors.

    I'm interested in learning how to repair engines but it's hard to find approachable material online when I have a problem. Typically you end up reading tons of forums and deciphering lingo. (I know very little in the first place)

    I have too many half-built projects.

    My posture is suffering from sitting in a chair all day. That chair is a recliner (I work at home). I think I'm also experiencing poor circulation in my legs, perhaps from the recliner or the laptop sitting on my legs (it's a large, ~8lb laptop). I want to get back to the gym but my aforementioned terrible sleep schedule really gets in the way of that--just an excuse, perhaps.

    Cricket just switched their cellular service to GSM from CDMA after AT&T bought them. Now I have a $600 brick, as none of the other CDMA services will take cricket phones for reasons they won't disclose to me.

    I can't find enough time for all of my hobbies.

    A business started with family members has caused strain and conflict, and the issues are going largely unresolved, with one person seemingly reaping the entirety of the benefit.

    I could go on, if I thought harder!

  2904. Ask HN: How do you use Reddit daily? 2015-05-15 21:17:01 jrvarela56
    Removed most of my subs and subscribed only to subs related to current learning. Reddit usage has gone down noticeably and when I procrastinate, I'm browsing subjects I need to learn about.

  2905. Ask HN: Always late to the office, is this OK? 2015-05-16 08:27:30 yellowapple
    > Are there many programming jobs with more time flexibility that would fit me better? Is running late OK in the industry? Or should I be trying to fix this ~6 year behavior of running late? Has anyone dealt with similar issues?

    Yes.

    Yes, there are programming jobs that aren't nearly as strict on getting to one's desk at a specific time. This tends to be more the case with small businesses and startups (and big businesses that started off as stereotypical "startups" - i.e. the "unicorns" of lore) because of the proliferation of an attitude that how much (or little) time spent at one's desk is irrelevant so long as the employee in question gets his/her work done.

    Yes, running late is OK in moderation, depending on the circumstance. Running late to a meeting is generally a bad idea (especially if the meeting is non-routine), but a lot of programming positions in particular aren't exactly strict about getting to one's desk on time. However...

    Yes, you should be trying to fix this. Regardless of whether or not you're expected to arrive at work before a specific time, punctuality reflects well upon you, and will give folks who interact with you (not just employers, but also friends, spouses, and other peers) an impression that you value their time.

    Yes, I've dealt with (and still deal with) similar issues, since I have the same tendency.

    A trick I learned from my dad (who - according to my mom, at least - shares my tendency to procrastinate) is to internalize that "if you're not 15 minutes early, you're late". Try to be 15 minutes early to everything; if you had adopted this philosophy today, for example, you would've arrived at work at 8:51 - plenty of time to leave your things at your desk (proving that you are, in fact, at work), grab some coffee from the break room, and even read an HN article or two. If you can't get into the habit, then turn off the "sync clock with internet server" functionality of all your networked devices (phone, computer, etc.), roll all your clocks forward by 15 minutes, and then still try to aim for being 15 minutes early to everything according to your own clocks.

    As briefly mentioned, this trick has tangible benefits beyond brain-hackery. If you're walking or biking to work (or some other engagement), it gives you some time to catch your breath. If you're driving, it gives you more time to make sure that you got all your things out of the car. In any case (as mentioned above) it might give you time to grab some coffee or a bagel or something from the break room before starting your shift, or smalltalk with the cute guy or girl three desks over from yours, or - at the very least - get an early start on the transition from not working to working (which tends to take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour; this is one of the reasons why pretty much anyone who isn't in a management position absolutely despises meetings, since the interruption causes an abrupt transition from "working" to "not working" (whereas for supervisors, the meeting itself is a transition from "not working" to "working", since their job is to manage their subordinates)).

  2906. Engineers of addiction 2015-05-17 03:27:33 nmrm2
    A little bit like the anti-procrastination feature on hn.

  2907. Please share your knowledge 2015-05-19 03:56:09 rmxt
    Why does anyone comment on the stories posted on HN? Why do we have leisure activities? I don't think that anyone is commenting on HN in lieu of learning, spending time with family or friends, or pursuing a career. (Though many may be procrastinating at work!) I think the request was a less a demand, and more a polite suggestion for more content of this nature. No one will banish you from HN if you don't participate, but the site and its users might reap the mutual benefit if you do.

    Also, I think there is something to be said about the whole "learning as you teach" mentality. Often times I find myself explaining something (which I've done a hundred times) to someone (who has never done it before) and I catch myself saying things that I had not paused to reflect on before; or, I find myself finding even better ways to do things as I explain them to someone else. Those are the sorts of benefits that might be in store for yourself, without any consideration to mutualistic benefits.

  2908. Who Wants to Be a Thousandaire? 2015-05-20 10:00:42 barbs
    Damninteresting.com is a truly underrated website. I bought their book a few years ago, which was a collation of nearly all their articles up to the time of print. They're listed in the book alphabetically, but every article was fascinating and well-written, regardless of topic. I highly recommend it if you have time and/or need a reason to procrastinate :).

  2909. Does your estimation include procrastination time? 2015-05-24 16:20:35 andersthue
    Is anybody normal? Would you like to be normal? How do you define normal?

    When you ask if you are normal, you at the same time define "not normal" and put yourself in that box, what about rejecting the concept of normal and work on accepting who you are?

    On the other hand I understand and recognize what you describe, sounds like what I used to do and what I have seen in many.

    Try this: Divide your project into timeblocks of half a day's work (not in hours but in a size you can realistic reach either before midday or from midday until end og working day)

    Then take a piece of paper and make a grid with the five weekdays and two cell's per day and write one of the timeblock you defined above in each cell.

    Then show someone this paper and hang it somewhere visible, this is your accountability.

    Then in each timeblock, after reaching your task, mark it complete and procrastinate until the next timeblock begins :)

    This helped me.

    Edit: then only sell timeblocks not hours - that way you get paid for doing tasks not doing hours.

  2910. Why do people waste so much time at work? 2015-05-26 22:57:43 Lawtonfogle
    There is laziness and there is procrastination. Leaving that soda bottle on the floor is procrastinating picking it up; I'll still have to do it later. Having a small box to fill with soda bottles that I dump once every few weeks is laziness. Not making my bed when I'll have guest over or I need to make it before going to bed is procrastination. Not making it because there is no reason for it to be made before I get back into it is laziness (of course there are suprise visitors and such, but that is just cases where hueristical optimizations are imperfect).

  2911. Web vs. native: let’s concede defeat 2015-05-27 03:26:15 mike_hearn
    If native won, then why didn't "native" desktop software win? Everything on desktop has moved to SAAS and on the web.

    That's a common belief but isn't correct, of course. Otherwise ChromeOS would have crushed the competition and it's hardly made a dent.

    Many, many people use and heavily rely on native desktop apps every day. Usually for getting real work done once they tire of procrastinating on hacker news/facebook/etc :-)

    Just consider the importance of MS Office to the global economy!

    This is despite the fact that the shepards of the native desktop app platforms all screwed up big time and dropped the ball in major ways allowing the totally unsuitable yet somehow still good HTML platform to take over:

    • MS/Apple/etc STILL have never shipped non-terrible software update mechanisms. Only Google managed to get this right and their online update engine was basically just for them.

    • No discovery or sandboxing mechanisms worth a damn.

    • Heavy reliance on languages like C++ that many developers can't handle (whereas web was fully built around scripting languages)

    • The only people who cared about doing cross-platform desktop apps were Sun and Trolltech, and they sunk into the swamp of pretending to be the real OS-specific widget toolkits. Web apps collectively said "fuck that shit" and we saw a glorious explosion of styles with every web app branding its own widgets differently. Users, it turned out, wanted attractive apps rather than native-looking apps and so the web won on this count even though the HTML widget toolkit is a joke.

    • Speaking of widget toolkits, the web is so primitive that it forced developers to abandon UI design paradigms that were actually rather user unfriendly, but commonly used because the platforms made it so easy. Prime offender: tree widgets. Hardly ever used these days as they have terrible usability. HTML has no such widget. Also: context menus. Users never find things in them. HTML simply doesn't let you customise the context menu at all.

    So the combination of uber-simple programming languages, a cross platform UI story that ignored the massive must-look-native timesink, clean/invisible online updates, etc ....... almost by accident it ended up being compelling.

    Now compare to mobile, where native apps are doing a lot better. Android is Java based so no problem with C++ being unapproachable. Objective-C kind of sucks but is still easier than C++ in many ways, plus iOS is big enough that developers just have to suck it up. There's built in sandboxing and app updates have been a part of the platform right from day one. The widget toolkits are way more modern and result in simpler/more intuitive UIs than classical desktop toolkits, so dysfunctional design patterns like nested trees with tiny icons don't crop up. The toolkits almost force simple, intuitive designs. And because mobile is (a) very new and (b) very restricted, writing the app twice with two different user interfaces isn't necessarily a killer problem, whereas for gigantic mature desktop apps with a 20 year feature set like Photoshop/Office it's just really expensive to do that. So the not-quite-native issue is less prominent.

  2912. The Next Feature Fallacy 2015-06-02 01:34:57 billyhoffman
    I've seen this fallacy used in startups by technical (co)founders to justify procrastinating various other, "less interesting" parts of the business that are vitally important. I've done it myself more times than I'd like to admit.

    It is very easy to say "I need to add/improve feature X, fix bug Y, or refactor Z" when what you really need to do is outbound sales activity, balance your books, or write blog content. You may already not enjoy those activities because they are some combination of hard, not fun, and something you don't really understand. Couple that with some engineering task of perceived equal importance, that you do know how to make progress on, and you can almost convince yourself its really not procrastination.

    The best solution I have seen is to track progress on a macro level, so that product advancement is put on par with the other critical activities of the business. Having someone kick your ass when other areas slip is very helpful.

  2913. How Tesla Will Change Your Life 2015-06-03 23:53:06 adwn
    > This was a really good read, although it did come off as a bit 'over positive' towards Elon & Tesla.

    Well, Elon Musk is a very polarizing figure (for good and for bad reasons). I believe that he truly wants to save Earth and humanity, and that his ultimate motives are altruistic to the point of fanatism. Tim's article doesn't deal with the way he treats subordinates or his other character flaws, although I'm not sure whether the article would have been the right place for this criticism. What negative aspects of Elon and Tesla did you miss?

    > Thanks for introducing me to waitbutwhy.com I like the concept but I've not seen it before.

    Tim Urban is an incredibly insightful writer, and I'm really glad I found this website. His series on procrastination [1] helped my productivity immensely.

    [1] starting here: http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastin...

  2914. No, you're not 'running late', you're rude and selfish 2015-06-04 23:20:03 mapt
    Unless the problem is not with an unusual preparation regime, but with a cognitive / personality defect. Hyperbolic discounting, moment to moment procrastination in task-switching, and difficulty managing time estimates and proceeding through a preparation process is a trait associated with adult Attention Deficit Disorder. The subject can feel all the guilt and fear in the world about wasting other people's time and looking like an imbecile, without it necessarily adding up to a durably effective scheduling regime. They're constantly checking the clock, and telling themselves "Well, I made it last time, I can spend another 2 minutes in the shower / under the covers / eating breakfast", and establishing a reliable habitual routine that follows a set pace is very difficult for them. It gets especially bad when this trait touches their sleeping habits, leading very often to sleep disorders, in the form of a psychogenic non-24 syndrome from putting off bedtime until they're ready to drop.

    I find it fairly likely that adult ADD traits, sometimes summarized as 'attentional indiscipline', are linked to modern multitasking (or Internet / gaming addiction, if you like) in the same way nearsightedness is linked to childhood literacy.

    *Childhood ADHD seems to be a broader category, extended beyond these classic traits into any reason a child might not enthusiastically embrace the American K-12 educational system

  2915. Hunter S. Thompson on finding your purpose 2015-06-06 02:35:40 benihana
    Let’s assume that you think you have a choice of eight paths to follow (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let’s assume that you can’t see any real purpose in any of the eight. THEN — and here is the essence of all I’ve said — you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH.

    But a man who procrastinates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.

    That right HST quote always seems to materialize right when I need it.

  2916. GitUp makes Git painless 2015-06-09 01:58:11 copsarebastards
    I tried npm shrinkwrap, but that only procrastinates on the problem: now instead of having to unravel a mess of dependencies on installation, you have to unravel a mess of dependencies whenever you want to upgrade a package. But now instead of having to solve a dependency problem that a bunch of other people have head to solve, you've created your own unique dependency problem. Not to mention that this completely bloats your installations.

    npm shrinkwrap isn't a solution, it's a temporary hack and it makes things worse in the long run. Maybe you're only working on new projects, but I work on things that will have to be maintained.

  2917. Ask HN: What project are you currently working on? – June 2015-06-12 04:41:39 andersthue
    Just launched and signed on the first two customers (and a few early birds still running free) on http://timeblock.com

    It is a new working methodology that helps Makers beat procrastination, get more time in flow and have time for creating quality code while helping their Managers get a better overview and more sleep.

    We are shooting for public launch after the summer holidays, currently the methodology is freely available if you sign up to our launch list. It's a three day email course.

  2918. Second-order logic explained in plain English 2015-06-12 18:19:25 richmarr
    Maybe I'm being picky, but I interpreted the title to mean "explained in [less that 75 pages of] plain English".

    Attention span... draining... strength... procrastination fading... closing... tab

  2919. Discovering Two Screens Aren’t Better Than One (2014) 2015-06-13 23:57:30 scotty79
    I don't use second screen much but from time to time I keep some stuff there (most often remote or virtual desktops) and when I procrastinate I do in on main screen anyways.

  2920. Show HN: Readlang – Learn a language while you surf the web 2015-06-15 15:32:19 steveridout
    Turning English websites into a Spanish learning experience is a neat idea, because as you say it fits into peoples current habits. It's definitely worth exploring but currently Readlang's focus is learning from real native texts. I'm trying not to lose focus and to Do One Thing Really Well (TM).

    I agree that procrastination is a huge problem. I'd prefer try to tackle this by introducing more opportunities for learners to encounter Spanish texts, one way to do this would be to create a browser homepage with recommended Spanish websites, texts, videos, and practice exercises.

    > It's just a guess, but I think a lot of people would benefit if this step gets streamlined. It's already cool that it doesn't require restarting the browser, and making it even more seamless would be awesome. A user has only to click on the install button on the Chrome extensions pages and that's it. No further intervention.

    It's already very simple to install the Chrome extension, and once installed I think it's correct that it requires a click to activate on a webpage since it does take resources and slow down the page, so I wouldn't want it working on every web-page.

    For the bookmarklet - I completely agree that it isn't intuitive, the experience on mobile browsers is particularly horrible, but web-developers have limited control over this without better support from the browsers.

  2921. Stripe Is the New PayPal 2015-06-19 01:22:05 task_queue
    As a someone looking for a payment processor, I now know that the only way we'd be lucky enough to receive support is if we wrote a Hacker News thread that made it to the front page.

    It's weird to find out this way, as I was procrastinating on HN instead of researching.

  2922. Just Wear Headphones 2015-06-22 21:30:31 darylteo
    The "being watched" feeling is the big one for me. I don't mind wearing headphones because I love listening to music and I don't listen to it that loudly, but the sensation of feeling someone's eyes on you (to catch you on the split second you've refreshed reddit or facebook or something) is incredibly profound on the time it takes to zone into zen mode.

    Anecdotally funnily enough, the opposite seems to happen for me when I am pair programming: each person keeps the other in focus, but obviously this only works when both people have the same objective. Not really related to "open office" issue, but thought it was relevant.

    Or maybe I'm just a filthy procrastinator...

  2923. Clean Thesis – A clean, simple, and elegant LaTeX style for thesis documents 2015-06-23 22:49:26 ajarmst
    Many institutions, including mine, require a very specific style. Many even provide templates. Irritatingly, mine only provided a Word template, so I had to spend a day or two creating a LaTeX style. (Procrastination bonus: I was "working on my thesis" without actually working on my thesis). The mere fact that the provided style uses color would disqualify it as a thesis in many institutions. Also, it's somewhat distasteful that the linked site uses significantly more words on how I can donate for this derivative work than it spends on convincing me to use it.

  2924. Ask HN: Does anybody use a bug tracker for their personal lives? 2015-06-27 02:48:44 danaw
    There seems to be a common theme of people using some form of task management for home but the systems not being very effective. I've experimented a lot myself and have a few thoughts on the matter that might help someone.

    The most essential factor is buy-in and commitment: both buy-in with those that you live with (wife, roommates, etc) and, perhaps more importantly, buy-in with yourself. You'll need to really commit to any system for it to be effective.

    A successful general productivity strategy is in learning the signs of tasks that will never get done versus ones that will.

    The key attribute of a task that seem to sit in the todo list forever is when a task is actually a project in disguise. Many times we have something like "Plan vacation", "Build deck" or "File taxes" in our todo list which are all projects rather than tasks. When you notice this, put the project on your list of projects and then define the next immediate task that you can do to make progress on this project. For example, for "Plan vacation" a task might be "Schedule dates for trip" or for "Build deck" a task might be "Make measurements of deck". Focus on the most minimal next step to push the project forward. This forces you to think of the project in stages that are all independently easy to reason about and schedule.

    The current incarnation of my at home todo list is as follows:

    4'x3' metal board (galvanized Steel from hardware store) and magnetic whiteboard squares (find them on Amazon as sheets and cut up to size) representing tasks. These adhere very well and are reusable (less in the landfill).

    I break my board into 4 kanban board style columns that should sound familiar to most: icebox, backlog, today and done.

    Icebox holds items I'd like to do but don't have immediate plans on. Often things are a bit vague at that stage or they are projects waiting to be turned into tasks.

    Backlog has tasks that I'm committing to do for the current sprint (one week long, from Monday to Monday). I don't allow any new items into backlog unless truly critical until the next sprint. Each sprint I sit down and prioritize my goals for the week and look at my icebox. I try and choose a combination of things I am excited about and things I'm not excited about. I take any tasks that are vague and break them down into something I can do within 30m-1hr. If the task is too vague/big I know I probably won't do it.

    Once my backlog is filled for the sprint, I plan what I'm doing each day of the sprint in the morning. I take into account work priorities, meetings, etc and put items I'm committing to do today into the list.

    I attempt to work in a pomodoro style with 25m working and a 5m break. I make sure to take a real break, usually some quick meditation or exercise/stretching. The key is to step away and clear your mind. This prevents getting stuck in a rabbit hole with a given task.

    I record a tick on each card for every pomodoro I do against it. As I resolve items I move them into done. If I move things into done that have a lot of ticks on them (eg they were big tasks) I see it as a sign that I didn't plan sufficiently and need to break things up more effectively in the future.

    At the end of the sprint I recap on what I've done and not done and make any mental notes of things to change. Perhaps most importantly I go through the list and celebrate all that got done. This is effective in having a healthy perspective on the progress I've made.

    This system has been very effective in making real progress on things I typically procrastinate on including home repair, side projects and chores. This system has been so effective I actually do it for personal and work items and mix the two together throughout the day (I work from home so this is easy for me to do).

    The key to making any system like this work is to commit to enforcing the process in yourself and to be constantly aware of when you're slipping and make adjustments. Also, it's important to see any such process as a living, breathing thing that will always need changes and tweaks to be optimally effective.

    One last bit that you could throw in the mix is to plan to release one thing every sprint to the world. I've been focused on launching one of my side projects each week and so far I've actually launched things that have been on my wish list for months.

  2925. Ask HN: What's something I can do right now to increase my productivity? 2015-07-02 21:12:54 dquadraat
    Stop procrastinating right now!

  2926. Ask HN: Share your best personal productivity tips and tricks 2015-07-03 20:02:44 tawan
    Given a set of tasks T, that have to be done, and the tasks are interdependent.

    Sort T by difficulty to complete. Complete one task after the other starting with the hardest.

    This approach goes against the often spread advice that you should start with the easiest tasks, which are probably fast to complete, in order to get quickly a feeling of accomplishment which keeps you motivated. I think this approach is wrong and here is why:

    IMO our brains always weigh risk multiplied with investment against reward, and as long as the reward outweighs (risk * investment), we are motivated: Risk meaning here, that you invest time and effort but eventually you miss the deadline and are not paid the full reward. The more time we let pass, without completing anything, then the risk of not getting the rewards becomes bigger and eventually it is not worth our effort anymore, and our brain finds more rewarding things to do (procrastinates). So why should we start with the hard tasks first?

    Because, given that we start with the easy ones first, we reduce the available time to complete the hard tasks, and by the time that we start with the hard ones, the risk of failing becomes too big in order to be still motivated. In contrary, when we start with the hard ones, of course it takes longer to finish them, and the time left for the easy ones is less, but our brain can easily estimate the risk of easy tasks, and it will find that it's quite possible to get the final rewards, because we already finished the hard ones.

    The realisation changed my life. I completed my CS master studies within 15 months.

  2927. Ask HN: Share your best personal productivity tips and tricks 2015-07-03 20:03:15 charlieirish
    "Opportunity looks a lot like hard work"

    Whilst I don't love this quote, it represents a problem that I see often: people are asking for tools and techniques to achieve better productivity when often, it's about discipline. I wrote more about how discipline and why it's important here[0], with a particular story about how my father's time in the British Army taught me a few things.

    However, there are certainly a few strategies that we can all use to combat our irrational behaviour and get things done rather that procrastinate (on hacker news all day!):

    Make Time

    Stop saying you don't have time. It's up to you to make time. If it's important enough, you can do it. Read more at 'Make Time for Your Side Project' [2].

    Timeboxing

    This is a simple technique (similar to using a pomodoro timer) that defines a start point and a fixed time for completing a task. Often starting is the key to finishing.

    Mise-en-Place

    Prepare for success by getting the environment right and ready. Make it easy for you to jump in to a piece of work without any 'set up' time. Give yourself the chance to succeed by removing any potential distractions.

    Celebrate Small Victories

    Allow yourself a pat on the back. Completing small tasks can give you enough of an adrenaline rush to start the next task. Then you're on a roll!

    Stop Aiming Too High

    This is something I suffer from all the time. I see so much great work out there that I'm constantly embarrassed to launch. This 'fear of the launch'[3] can be dealt with. It's about overcoming your anxieties to produce something 'epic' by purposefully launching something below your comfort threshold. True success is often journey paved with small, iterative launches.

    For more, you might want to read the previous discussion on Good and Bad Procrastination (2005)[1]

    [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7864959

    [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7864525

    [2] http://www.startupclarity.com/blog/make-time-side-project/

    [3] http://www.startupclarity.com/blog/fear-of-the-launch/

  2928. Ask HN: Share your best personal productivity tips and tricks 2015-07-04 00:18:16 baobaba
    1. The most valuable productivity hack I ever learned: facing an overwhelming task, write down all the tiniest steps the task consists of (even if the step is as simple as opening an IDE). Then, do the first tiny step. This goes a long way towards fighting resistance/procrastination. I do this with Trello cards (easy to add checklists to cards).

    2. If you want to get a project done, keep your mind in the context of that project at all costs. Simple trick: in the evening, close other windows on your computer except the ones related to the project you want to get done: an IDE, a TODO list, related research. It will be much easier in the morning to kick things off.

    3. If a project / work causes a lot of resistance and procrastination, ask yourself if you absolutely must be doing it. Challenge assumptions.

  2929. Ask HN: Share your best personal productivity tips and tricks 2015-07-04 00:24:19 jordsmi
    Number 1 is a huge. The biggest thing with procrastination is actually starting on the task. Usually it's something I want to do, but just can't get myself to do it for various reasons. If I just do something as simple as saying I am going to write one line of code, I usually get sucked into the project.

  2930. Why won’t she get off Minecraft? 2015-07-05 03:23:42 steve-howard
    It's a much older demographic, but Kerbal Space Program is educational in a similarly sneaky way. First you build some rockets and they don't go very far, then you build some better ones, and at a certain point you wind up learning about orbital mechanics and rocketry equations. It really changed the way I think about space, while procrastinating!

    I haven't made mods for it yet, but there are people that go down that rabbit hole too. Quite a bargain for the $30 I paid.

  2931. Finish your stuff 2015-07-07 04:56:28 danvoell
    A couple times today, I found myself in the middle of something and came back to HN to procrastinate. I saw the Finish Your Stuff headline and left to finish what I was doing. I need to have a little banner on top of my computer that says "finish your stuff"

  2932. The abolition of work 2015-07-07 16:12:45 paulsutter
    Rather than feel likes slaves, maybe they'll be on Robotnews discussing todo list applications and exchanging tips on how to overcome procrastination.

  2933. Impulsive Rich Kid, Impulsive Poor Kid 2015-07-12 03:13:16 bravo_alpha
    I started seeing a CBT therapist this year to be more productive at work (I was also a big procrastinator). It was very effective

  2934. The Electric Car 2015-07-14 08:20:18 fryguy
    People mention this frequently, but they never mention how often they procrastinate on stopping by the gas station when it's time to fill up. And the additional anxiety associated with not knowing if you pushed it too far and aren't going to make it to the gas station. Or the times you're later than you wanted because you forgot you needed to get gas. I've never had this problem since getting my Tesla since it's always charged. I've spent maybe 2 hours charging at a supercharger in the ~9000 miles so far. I would have easily spent a similar amount of total time driving to gas stations and filling up in my previous car, since ~5 minutes times ~9000 / ~350 is about 2 hours. And when you're sitting at a supercharger you can do things like eat or read your kindle. And if you needed to stop to eat anyways, it doesn't really take any additional time.

  2935. Ask HN: How do I become a Software Developer? 2015-07-14 09:57:27 _zero
    Thanks for the insightful comment. I feel that a dose of realism is always helpful, especially when it comes to something as important as a career.

    You're right that I don't know much about development and that I might not like it.

    I grew up on the internet, from the days of AOL chatrooms during the 90s to various other websites and message boards. I learned how to repair computers as a teenager because of the internet and my interest computers. Now I can function as an (entry level) I.T. Technician. I focused a lot on maintaining hardware, software and Operating Systems, but never looked into creating software until pretty recently.

    But what really got me interested was what Edward Snowden did. Because of his sacrifice I started to get interested in cryptography and open source software. I moved away from Windows to Debian just to experiment, and it turns out that Debian is actually pretty cool.

    I believe in the utility of the internet and computers. To me, it just feels like the right step to take and even though I may regret my decision in the future, I'll still give it a shot and try to accomplish something. Besides, it'll be nice to challenge myself with a new hobby :)

    I'll check out the book and course recommendations. I'm probably using math as an excuse to continue procrastinating because I'm afraid of failure, so I won't let that deter me. And I'll definitely consider going back to school once I start working again.

  2936. Ask HN: Help with Perfectionism 2015-07-14 21:06:12 andersthue
    I strongly believe that "perfectionism" is the most deadly way of procrastinate.

    The cure is two sided, first you must work with acceptance of your inner resistance/monkey mind - books like the war of art, the dip and do the work can help you here.

    Secondly you must work on shipping your product/code/content often and full of errors, this will help you accept that not perfect is okay - my biggest inspiration for this is Seth Godin's blog.

    I can also reccomend the letting go book from http://zenhabits.net/lg

  2937. Ask HN: Do you get impatient when learning new things? 2015-07-14 22:25:12 herghost
    I used to be exactly like that. As a consequence I never really picked up any in-depth knowledge through school because hitting the basics was usually enough to "get the grade" and there was precious little "reward" (of whatever form) for pushing it further.

    When I was 18 a tutor - who I didn't really know well - said to me in passing, and seemingly pretty randomly, "Your problem is that you want to run before you can walk with everything."

    I had an epiphany over that and slowed down my "gets" for small, insignificant objectives and spent the time trying to really understand things.

    From that point on I actually learned how to program properly rather than just doing enough to get by, for example.

    As I've gotten older I've learned that my chasing the "gets" was a self-imposed restriction because there was always a small but sufficient reward for the accumulating of praise, etc. I've taught myself to very stringently prioritise (recent book suggestion: Procrastinate on Purpose) and categorise the things I "have to" do and instead of doing a hundred things that don't really matter (but they were easy and I get a "thanks") I work out which things I "have to" do will actually add value and make a difference, even if achieving them will take much more effort.

    As my career has developed I've moved into being a specialist and now find myself coming back out into being a generalist but the "real" grounding in my skills sets me apart from "career generalists" and "credential whores" that my industry is plagued with nowadays.

    EDIT: thinking about it, this "get" behaviour started when I was in junior school. I used to read encyclopaedias for facts and tell people. My parents used to praise me for what I knew, and my friends jokingly called me an "information magnet". I liked my cursory knowledge of "everything" and I guess I became addicted to it.

  2938. Work for a remote culture 2015-07-15 23:29:12 Beached
    You HAVE to have a very heavy heavy heavy hand in hiring. Hiring good is by far the best thing you can do, you could hiring the most brilliant coder in the world, but if he is a poor communicator and procrastinator, your SOL.

    For remote work, I look for hiring a personable motivated people, who are good at staying up on communication first, I can teach Tech, I don't want to teach someone to communicate or to stay on task. (This means they keep me informed by choice, not when I ask)

    Also, as the guy above me said, let them fail and dont over work them. Micro management is something that everyone has issues with, especially if your a new-ish manager, and especially if you are managing a remote team, and if you pile 45-50 hours of work on them in a 50 hour work week, they will become disinterested, and just show up put in the hours and leave without any regards to quality to deadlines.

  2939. How I optimised my life to make my job redundant 2015-07-17 21:24:23 pmx
    Task switching absolutely kills my productivity but I think that may be down to procrastination. I procrastinate more than I would like and once I've gotten myself going I need to keep momentum. If something kills that momentum - like switching tasks, I'll quickly find myself checking my email or looking on Reddit, PH, or HN again.

  2940. Ask HN: How do I stay motivated to learn? 2015-07-19 11:56:48 rory096
    >If you want to quit smoking

    Just poison your whole pack! But seriously, for those who don't want to deal with fixing their lack of discipline right now, I highly recommend SelfControl and its counterparts on other platforms. Block the procrastination-inducing parts of the internet like reddit and HN, keep all the important parts it's impossible to learn without, like StackOverflow.

    (Restrict it for less and less each day, and maybe you'll find yourself weaning yourself off like cigarettes. I haven't made it that far yet.)

  2941. Ask HN: How did you deal with depression? 2015-07-22 07:10:15 jarnix
    If you know that you are depressed and can talk about it, that's a good step and you should be glad to be aware of this.

    It's difficult to quit playing games and procrastinate even when someone's not depressed...

    Meeting new people and finding a project seems a like good thing, at least it worked for me. You should also try and going out for like walking, biking, or whatever.

    And you should avoid medicine, alcohol or drugs.

  2942. Ask HN: How did you deal with depression? 2015-07-22 14:20:33 throwdep
    If your procrastination is causing or deepening your depression, consider this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Now-Habit-Overcoming-Procrastinati... It helped me understand and break the procrastination cycle.

  2943. Ask HN: How did you deal with depression? 2015-07-25 01:45:37 djokkataja
    Seconded--actually I highly recommend The Feeling Good Handbook by the same author (David Burns). I've found it very helpful for dealing with procrastination as well.

  2944. Ask HN: How's your drinking problem? 2015-07-25 23:03:30 gaelow
    Beware of the long post ahead:

    Mine is a very common and uninteresting story. It is not even a cautionary tale, but I'll write it anyway to remind myself of the choices that I made and why I made them, because I think it will help me and because maybe it will help somebody else.

    I used to drink when I partied with my friends, mostly on weekends and vacations. I kept it like this for almost 12 years.

    5 years ago I started living with my girlfriend and drinking frequently with her and when we met our relatives; then I started to drink alone from time to time when my girlfriend was not around; then I started to get drunk every night because it helped me unwind, numb myself, forget about all my problems, release stress and fall asleep after 11-12 straight hours in front of the screen trying to meet deadlines. I had perfectly adjusted the amount of alcohol that wouldn't get me hung over or impact my performance the next day at work so I wouldn't get in trouble, and wouldn't drink a drop less nor a drop more. I even managed to stuck to that amount most weekends in order to avoid building up tolerance, and because I hated wasting my free time suffering from hang overs. I went like this for more than a year. Then I broke up with my 5-year girlfriend after a few months of maintaining a long distance relationship and realizing our life goals were not compatible any more.

    I decided to stop drinking because I knew without her I'd soon find myself overdoing it (even more). I thought it wasn't going to be an easy choice to maintain, feeling depressed most of the time and still feeling at the lowest point of my life so far with not much hope of it getting much better; but, surprisingly, feeling bad about myself has been very helpful: I got drunk with about half a bottle of wine 5 times in the last 3 months (I am a little guy), only 3 of those alone, and that was all the drinking I have done since.

    I do not believe in a higher power, self labeling yourself an alcoholic and get a chronic disease diagnose from anything other than a doctor, a specialized one, with enough data to produce an informed diagnostic. I don't think I can talk or think myself out of alcoholism; only action and persistence can help. I find motivation in all the things I love to do and in all the people I love and I love spending my time with. I even find motivation in my dull work because I have plenty of room and opportunity to improve and get better conditions.

    I respect the 12 step program and its effectiveness as a generic solution for a significant number of people dealing with addiction. It is probably the best there is right now, but it doesn't work for everyone, not even the majority of people. I think I have a basic understanding on how addiction works and how it works differently on different kinds of people. I knew that I was in a very dangerous track of self destruction and I decided not to let the situation escalate any more when I was still in control. It took no effort at all, just the proper motivation and realizing I was only going to find misery and self hatred at the end of that road. I know I may find myself in the same situation again, and that I might not be able to get out so easily next time, if there is one. I do enjoy drinking, and I enjoy drinking alone to take the edge off; but right now I feel pretty confident about my self-discipline, and there are enough safe ways to find the comfort and relaxation I need that work for me. Healthy and non dangerous ways that make me feel better about myself instead of the opposite. I do believe in moderation and a reasonable amount of self control, and I am committed to drink even less than what I am drinking now. Like I wrote, mine is a very common story that I hope will have a common ending too, but a good one: "And he kept the drinking social and moderated, and never again used it as a crouch". Or, perhaps: "And he stopped drinking, and nobody batted an eye".

    TL;DR: The drinking is not the problem, is the addiction you need to avoid. Even if you are not an addict or are in the first stages towards heavy addiction, drinking is easily replaceable with many things that can improve your life and how you feel about yourself. Do not procrastinate that decision. It is not tomorrow. It is not after the next drink, or this one. It is now. Keeping the drinking social and with moderation or not doing it at all, combined with a slight effort to find healthier enjoyable activities to occupy yourself with is a very good thing to do for yourself and to give as a present to your future self for enduring the consequences of all the mistakes you are going to keep making.

    And that's my story, at least up to this point. I haven't talked to anybody about it, I know it is a drag to read or hear people talking about boring stuff like this. But still, it feels good to let it out in the open.

  2945. Ask HN: What skills would you invest in learning? 2015-07-27 21:10:45 traverseda
    I appreciate the skills the Center For Applied rationality instilled in me most every day.

    >Ever made a mistake? Missed an opportunity? Of course; but what’s interesting is how cognitive scientists have found even highly educated and successful people to make predictable errors in judgement, and just knowing about these experiments often isn’t enough to prevent these mistakes. It actually takes practice to form new mental habits. At our workshops, you can learn about newly discovered failure patterns in human decision-making, and begin training to overcome them…

    Think of it as martial arts for rationality. You know about things like the sunk cost fallacy, but they do workshops to make sure you recognize it when it's happening to you.

    A great bunch of very skilled people. The personal advice helped me get over some hangups about procrastination.

    I think it's a great foundation to help learn other skills, and asses what information will be valuable to you.

  2946. Why Docker Is Not Yet Succeeding Widely in Production 2015-07-29 00:46:14 juliangregorian
    If this is what it takes to get procrastinators onto a real logging stack I'm not sure I see it as a problem.

  2947. Ask HN: Do developers have a version of writer's block 2015-07-30 18:52:31 seren
    Not necessarily a block, but I tend to procrastinate by "yak shaving" when I have something boring to do.

    If you are really blocked in front of your editor, it is likely you are opening your editor too early, or trying to solve something too big. Go back to the drawing board or user and split the task in smaller chunks.

  2948. Linus Torvalds did not commit this 2015-08-05 04:16:15 brokentone
    ...then procrastinated for 6 hours. Or is that just me?

  2949. Ask HN: How are some people exceptionally productive? 2015-08-06 03:53:24 ismail
    I am not like any of the people you described but here is what is working for me:

    1. Make a list of things weekly that need to get done

    2. Daily pull from weekly into your list for the next day

    3. Be careful how you word your task list. Focus on process over outcome. This is a little hack to avoud procrastination. Example: spend an hour refactoring (process) x vs refactor x and fix failing tests (outcome)

    4. Figure out the #2-3 critical items.

    5. Timebox/pomodoro

    6. Sleep, wake up early & eat your frogs in the morning

    When i do all of this i am able to get a whole lot more done.

    Also grab the book a mind for number. There are some interesting insights in productivity.

    I have tried GTD etc but have found that for me this process works.

  2950. Ask HN: Does anyone read posts below the first 10 on the homepage of HN? 2015-08-07 07:02:47 omginternets
    I definitely read the front page more often, but when I'm procrastinating, I can easily make it to page 5.

  2951. The pressure to achieve academically is a crime against learning 2015-08-12 18:20:17 pragone
    Gotta disagree wholeheartedly with you there. If I have one big exam at the end, I will procrastinate and likely end up doing poorly. Instead, in my medical school, we are quizzed at least once a week - this week alone I have 2 quizzes and 2 tests. I failed yesterday's quiz, as I knew I would since was at a wedding on the weekend. But I will know the material for the test on Friday, and now I know what kind of questions to expect.

    Weekly testing lets me figure out how I'm progressing, whether or not my study habits are working, and also provides a significant amount of opportunities to do well - that quiz I failed yesterday really does not in anyway hinder me from acing the course.

  2952. A Crash Course in the Neuroscience of Human Motivation (2011) 2015-08-16 02:17:26 rndn
    I like the thought that Wikipedia the result of massive collaborative procrastination.

  2953. Oliver Sacks: Sabbath 2015-08-16 04:27:23 mdasen
    I've been shomer shabbat (observant of the sabbath) in the past and am still involved in Jewish communities full of observant people, even though I am clearly less observant.

    When I first became shomer shabbat, the first thing I noticed was the peace. The best way to describe it is like the piece you have after the die is cast. If something isn't right, there's nothing you can do about it and there's no sense in worrying about it. The decisions have been made, the work has been done, and whatever will come will come. I'm sure that some of it is the relief to be done with the preparation for shabbat (which can involve a bit of a hurried last-minute pace leading up to it), but I think there's something real about feeling like there's nothing you can do about things.

    I remember other students in college asking me if it felt like a disadvantage to studies. In fact, it felt like the opposite. Before being shomer shabbat, I would procrastinate (not overly so or in a damaging way, but procrastinate a bit nonetheless) and that procrastination would lead to worry. I should be doing work now. The procrastination and worry would combine to zapping my energy when I would get around to work. Being shomer shabbat meant that there was no need to worry. The die was cast and there was nothing I could do. There's no reason to fret over something you can't change. Motzei (after) shabbat, I'd feel refreshed having not used (wasted) my mental energy worrying, obsessing, etc. over things I needed a break from anyway.

    It also creates a great atmosphere of socialization - like in the time before technology. You walk to meet up with people around you, you eat meals with people, you talk in parks, etc. Without such socialization, shabbat would drag on. But the other people make it a positive, communal experience.

    There's also something special about artificially limiting groups. In the modern world, we often flock to those who have the same ideological bent, same hobbies, same professions, and same income levels. While sabbath-observant Jews hardly qualifies as a cross-section of society, there's something special that happens when you need to rely on people who have different politics, different hobbies, etc. for a decent amount of your social life and free time. When a group is small enough (and perceived by those in the group as necessary), one has to be kinder with one's words and a little more flexible to make the group dynamic work in a stable way. It's certainly no ideal society or anything like that, but while a lot of modern society promotes mobility (the ability to take "take my ball elsewhere" if one wants something different), that's less of the case here. At least where I live. If I were writing from New York, I'm sure there's plenty more ability to take one's ball elsewhere and fracture communities over comparatively small things due to the high proportion of sabbath-observant Jews within walking distance.

    It's also an interesting article to think about on the same day that the NYTimes has published its article on Amazon's working conditions. One of the ideas behind shabbat is that work is never done. You could work every hour of your life and never realize an end-goal because life has no end-goal. A few weeks back at work, the topic of Soylent came up. One coworker noted that many at their school saw it as important because they could save so much time that they could put to work. Another coworker critisized that notion arguing that life wasn't about work and that meals offer time to rest and socialize. The Amazon article had emphasized the drive to create which kept workers going through what could be daunting demands on themselves. I love creating. It's why I'm an engineer. But the creation is never done. I've never looked at something and concluded that it's just done. Is working such long hours merely chasing a "done" state that we won't ever catch? Maybe our schooling has programmed us with artificial "done" states with each semester and graduation just to set us up for a lack of them in the real world.

    Like the end of a semester or graduation, shabbat provides an artificial "done" state. Even if your paper or exam isn't what you want it to be, it's done when the course is over and there's nothing you can do about it. Even if your work isn't completed to the state you want by sundown friday evening, there's nothing you can do about it. It's done.

    In a world where we can plan so much and there are very few limitations on our use of labor, it's an interesting way to live. In antiquity, the lack of cheap, artificial light could limit work hours of the day; seasons would limit farming. The lack of easy vehicles to transmit and grow wealth into the future, the lack of easy mobility, the lack of distractions like television to avoid other people, etc. all make antiquity very different from modernity. In some ways, it makes shabbat feel alien to the modern world. You're not allowed to plan for anything after shabbat while it's shabbat. You live within the day. You live where you are and with those around you since you can't go far without a vehicle (which includes bicycles for most). You must find different ways of passing the time (reading, communal meals, outdoor activities). I'm not arguing that it's an ideal way to live, but it's certainly interesting.

    I'm not sure I have any sort of conclusion, but I keep thinking back to something that happened the summer after my senior year of college. I was wandering around campus because it was shabbat afternoon and a walk seemed like a good distraction. I ran into one of my professors who was more of a socialist/atheist Jew who asked if I would help him carry things. This was acceptable given that there was an eruv (you can watch Wyatt Cenac's piece from the Daily Show if you want more information on what an eruv is). He hadn't known that I was shomer shabbat and it came up in conversation while moving things. He apologised for asking me to move things on shabbat, but all I could think about was how this was what shabbat felt like to me. I hadn't planned on helping him move things. It just happened. If I hadn't happened to run into him, it wouldn't have happened. It was this little island of time where something happened by coincidence that had nothing to do with anything that came before it or anything that would come after it. It was whatever came my way during the day.

    And it was good and restful and meaningful.

  2954. Modafinil for cognitive neuroenhancement: a systematic review 2015-08-22 22:13:49 jacques_chester
    I've had a similar experience using ritalin. If I have a clear task, I will feel a pressing need to execute that task.

    If I don't have a clear task, I will procrastinate even harder.

  2955. Ask HN: Staying focused on your project 2015-08-26 03:52:33 cpro
    There are two techniques/strategies I have used to become more productive. Both strategies revolve around the idea of not becoming distracted.

    1. Stop "planning" everything and start "doing" things. I believe planning is a great way to procrastinate because you convince yourself you are being productive when you are not. Instead, I try to minimize my planning and keep things moving.

    I stopped using planning tools such as Trello or other Kanban systems because they are so heavy and in the browser it makes it easy to get distracted and surf the web but also, those tools suck you in and you soon start 'planning' a lot of details instead of actually doing work.

    I replaced my task manager with a simple command line tool I made myself (https://goo.gl/YF6Wsk). I am not sure if it would help anyone else but I use it every day. The premise of the tool is simple, minimize the time I spend outside of my editor. If I have to log tasks I do it and jump right back in my editor.

    2. The Pomodoro Technique has helped me "get in the zone" because the technique makes you focus right off the bat.

  2956. Lock freedom without garbage collection in Rust 2015-08-28 06:24:16 bsder
    Someone procrastinated a lot. :)

  2957. Lock freedom without garbage collection in Rust 2015-08-28 09:55:06 bsder
    I was mostly joking ... but procrastination is sometimes valuable in and unto itself.

    The typesetting is quite remarkable. If you're going to procrastinate, this is sure a good way to do it.

  2958. What is ADD? 2015-08-31 13:29:14 wmt
    Don't self-diagnose yourself too quickly, as none the features are not unique to ADD. Reading through the list of symptoms at http://www.helpguide.org/articles/add-adhd/adult-adhd-attent... I can more or less find myself from almost every symptom listed. I hyperfocus on programming and games, I easily forget conversations and deadlines, I constantly misplace and lose my things, my desk is cluttered, I can zone out during a conversation, I can blurt out things without thinking too much, I procrastinate very easily (I'm browsing HN right now instead working!), etc.

    However, I don't have ADD. Despite the fact I share many features with people suffering from ADD, it doesn't take that much effort for me to focus in things I'm not exited about. I can do tasks I find boring for a long time if I really want to, and I can even consciously hyperfocus on almost any task that needs focus.

  2959. Ask HN: What should I do? 2015-08-31 21:50:43 kohanz
    TLDR: Having kids will develop skills (time management) that will help you achieve your other career goals, in the long run

    I don't have specific advice, but can perhaps offer some hope to give you a long-term view on this.

    Our first child is now 17 months old. I know everyone says that children will change your life, but you don't realize now how much and it is the magnitude of change that you can't fully prepare yourself for. It is difficult, wonderful, exhausting, and the best thing you'll ever do all-in-one.

    Undoubtedly, you will find yourself with less free time. Especially early on. What I found, however, is that my natural adaptation to this was to become more efficient, so that I still had some time to hack or spend on me. Less procrastination and better time management. I'm not perfect, by any means, but I'm a lot better than I was as a non-parent. I believe that with (if I am so lucky) more kids, I will become even more efficient.

    This efficiency buys me some time. However, I am hopeful that when the kids are older and a bit more self-sufficient, this efficiency will really start paying off. This is a very long-term view. I'm talking about a decade from now. However that will also be entering the prime of your career. I also think that parents of older children are laughing at me as they read this (and probably rightly so).

  2960. Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and Succeed Long-Term 2015-09-01 18:38:17 meesterdude
    This is all well and good, except when you procrastinate over things you want to do. It also throws discipline into the wind in favor of just procrastinating.

    It's true, some things you can put off, and nothing bad happens. Other things, you put off, you lose your job or your house. Ideally you can separate the two, but maybe not.

    Sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do, or don't feel like doing. And that's life. Rarely do things get better by procrastinating about them, though more often they get worse.

  2961. Why I Just Asked My Students to Put Their Laptops Away (2014) 2015-09-01 18:49:06 philliphaydon
    > People often start multi-tasking because they believe it will help them get more done. Those gains never materialize; instead, efficiency is degraded. However, it provides emotional gratification as a side-effect. (Multi-tasking moves the pleasure of procrastination inside the period of work.)

    Omg. This paragraph. Is my life.

  2962. Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and Succeed Long-Term 2015-09-01 19:56:44 meesterdude
    As someone who battles procrastination and other avoidant behavior, I was under the impression I was.

  2963. Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and Succeed Long-Term 2015-09-01 20:47:55 zamalek
    Maybe I'll procrastinate tomorrow.

  2964. Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and Succeed Long-Term 2015-09-01 20:49:38 rdudek
    All this reading is why I procrastinate in the first place! It's like trying to find a solution to a problem that does not exist.

  2965. Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and Succeed Long-Term 2015-09-01 21:15:52 aethertap
    I'm a big procrastinator, but I finally found a way to get around it. Instead of thinking about the big tasks, I just allot myself a fixed amount of time that I'll be doing something, work on it steadily during that time, and quit at the end regardless of the state it's in. For some reason, it really makes it easier to face big important projects if I just say "I'm going to spend 8 hours putting up siding today, then I'm done" as opposed to "I need to get that siding put up..." I've used that trick to get tons of stuff done around my house as well as to write a book (which hasn't been published yet because I've been putting it off, so I guess there's still room for improvement).

  2966. Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and Succeed Long-Term 2015-09-01 21:34:10 vinceguidry
    What I have found is that the subconscious will resist taking action on something perceived to be important until it's worked out an appropriate approach. As a result one can avoid doing things like planning and preparing and simply query the subconscious as to whether you're ready to work on something.

    Yes has me start on it and either complete it or hit a snag. If it's a snag, then I'll analyze it briefly and then go back to procrastinating until the subconscious has worked out another approach.

    No is perceived this as a feeling of "Nope." I've attuned myself to this feeling and have learned to listen carefully to it. Many, many times, especially with work tasks the reason for doing that particular task will have evaporated by the time I'm ready to do it.

    Other times I find I needed to clear my mind before the subconscious can present to me the right way to go about it. So I'll read articles so as to purge my mind of the attachment (in the Buddhist sense) I'm feeling to the task.

    Sometimes it takes days / weeks / months for this attachment to clear up. I have a task I've been wanting to do sit in my reminders for 2 months now. It will stay until I'm either comfortable removing it or actually doing it.

  2967. Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and Succeed Long-Term 2015-09-01 21:47:16 hodwik
    I've been using this system for years.

    I'm pretty sure that deep-down I learned programming to distract myself from writing a novel I intended to write. Now I'm learning electronics to distract myself from programming. Imagine all that we could accomplish if we only procrastinated more!

  2968. Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and Succeed Long-Term 2015-09-01 22:08:05 arielm
    I like that the article is about hacking your bad habits, but at the end of the day procrastination is exactly that - a bad habit. It isn't who I am, and so I think the best way to fight it is to replace it with a better habit...

  2969. Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and Succeed Long-Term 2015-09-01 22:18:03 sctb
    PG on procrastination: http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

  2970. Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and Succeed Long-Term 2015-09-01 23:04:30 toomeyism
    You've essentially listed all the tasks that have been/are currently on my mental to-do list. I'm procrastinating by reading about procrastinating. On the plus side- I've now registered for and posted my first HN comment after lurking for the better part of two months. See: PROGRESS!

  2971. Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and Succeed Long-Term 2015-09-01 23:16:14 blatherard
    A simple todo list system that I love, and that is built on the idea of structured procrastination, is Mark Forster's "Final Version Perfected" system. It is described here: http://markforster.squarespace.com/blog/2015/5/21/the-final-...

  2972. Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and Succeed Long-Term 2015-09-01 23:20:54 Retra
    I feel like you might be ignoring the possible benefits of "waiting for inspiration" on some things. Usually, when I'm procrastinating, I'm just waiting for a time when I would enjoy the work. Without that, I often don't enjoy it.

    Oftentimes I'll get out of bed with an unbearable drive to accomplish a single task that I've been putting off. And when this happens, I usually feel that I am more creative, dedicated, and much faster working. When you put that together, if you are trying to maximize work speed and creativity (ignoring deadlines), this kind of procrastination is optimal.

    But ignoring deadlines to maximize speed and creativity is basically a way of maximizing personal fulfillment in the work. It certainly isn't maximizing any external factors.

  2973. Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and Succeed Long-Term 2015-09-02 05:34:07 unabst
    I used to procrastinate on Quora and now I do it on HN. It has done wonders for my writing, my awareness, and my education. As a side effect, I now have far better plans for the projects on my todo list that I haven't been able to do because of all this procrastinating. But if it's making me smarter, I have just justified further not being able to help myself not be able to help myself.

    For those who procrastinate at the gym enjoy the side effects of being fit and healthy. It's when it's work that we start experiencing sacrifice. There is only joy in procrastination. The author of this essay procrastinates by writing brilliants essays.

    I did read somewhere that efficient workers sleep a lot and work a lot less. Those who have experience being their most efficient selves work towards that state of mind by sleeping and being lazy. And when they work, they get shit done. At the end of the day, it may very well be a tortoise vs hare race, where those that keep working slowly but surely catch the hares that only work sporadically. But for the same amount of work, the hare gets a life.

  2974. Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and Succeed Long-Term 2015-09-02 05:58:04 blazespin
    Agreed procrastination is just your brain telling you are not ready to start or that something may happen which makes the work not relevant. Procrastinating is always a very good idea. The trick is picking the right alternative tasks that are either higher value or will help you get ready. I find meditation works great. Just envisioning myself doing the task. It will often reveal the key parts my subconscious is worried about.

  2975. To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved 2015-09-02 07:49:36 hashberry
    I am a remote worker and suffer from chronic procrastination. "Understanding emotions" is an oversimplified solution because many are addicted to procrastination. It's like asking an alcoholic to understand the emotions of why he drinks. I have procrastinated as a student and my entire career and have always gotten away with it. I've been rewarded with praise of my great work, higher paying positions, and bonuses. I find myself enjoying waiting until the last minute and then using stress to help me succeed. It is a vicious cycle. I want to stop procrastinating but at the same time I like doing it.

  2976. To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved 2015-09-02 07:52:56 Kluny
    Ok, here's an idea for a procrastination preventer. It's like the ones you've seen already, which you add to your browser, and then they kick you off reddit after 15 minutes or whatever, or blog problem domains entirely.

    Instead of that, a popup that asks "what are you supposed to be working on right now?" with a short text input. You type an answer, and carry on procrastinating. Then after 15 minutes, it pops up again and says "Remember, you were working on this: ... Is there a URL where you can find information to help you with it?" Then an input field for a URL where you can put your project domain, or the wikipedia article you need, whatever. After another 15 minutes, "Hey, it's time to start working on x. Go here to get started."

    Thoughts?

  2977. To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved 2015-09-02 08:00:09 hosh
    Yep. That's been my experience with procrastination too. I didn't get any headway with it until I started addressing the underlying emotions. It could be anything: anger, fear, shame, guilt, and at the bottom of it is existential anxiety.

  2978. Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and Succeed Long-Term 2015-09-02 08:05:23 FLengyel
    Structured procrastination appears analogous to the second-price auction, in which the winner of an auction pays the second-highest bid. This strategy leads the bidders to bid the true value of the auctioned item. One proof of this assertion can be found in the solution to an exercise in Game Theory Evolving: A Problem-Centered Introduction to Modeling Strategic Interaction (Second Edition), by Herbert Gintis.

    It appears that structured procrastination is a two-player game that pits the present self against the time-inconsistent hyperbolically discounted future self. The success of this strategy depends on accurately ranking more important things to do. Presumably the rank of the second-most important thing accurately reflects its hyperbolically discounted value far enough in the future to avoid time inconsistency. An assumption seems to be that most important or interesting thing to do now is generally important or interesting for the wrong reason. Also, if the thing I happen to be doing isn't that important, the thing I should be doing can't be that much more important either.

  2979. To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved 2015-09-02 09:13:59 brc
    I think we have a lot in common.

    The thing I sometimes wish for most is a 'hard reset'. When I was a lot younger I achieved this just by changing everything - cities, jobs, possessions, relationships. The resultant clear space was intoxicating as there was no 'cruft' of incomplete tasks nagging away at the edges of ether consciousness. As you get older this is virtually impossible or at least very difficult because of the people we share life with. Writing down endless lists can help to declutter the mind and allow focus - this is the core of the GTD strategy. However the things are still not done.

    I also have been given rewards for procrastinated tasks, and some of my best work has been done last minute. Yet I recognise that perhaps that work would have been even better with more preparation.

    So I'm currently without a great strategy, still getting work done but perhaps failing in other areas where other non-work goals are not necessarily being completed. I think decluttering (physical and mental) is the key but this in itself takes serious effort and can involve anguish (throwing things out and abandoning goals and tasks takes commitment)

  2980. To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved 2015-09-02 09:21:11 PopeOfNope
    addicted to procrastination.

    Close. We're addicted to all manner of other things that give us that instant dopamine hit. When you ask somebody what do they do when they procrastinate, they rarely say they do something productive[0]. Instead, it's an activity that's designed to trigger that instant high: browsing the web, playing video games, eating, smoking.

    My reward system is completely divorced from reality. I get rewards all the time for doing absolutely nothing. It's supposed to be, you do some work, you get a reward. You go fishing, dinner is your reward. You build a treehouse, the satisfaction of a job well done is your reward. But what do you do when you can get 100x the reward just clicking through hacker news?

    I'm currently working on resetting my dopamine threshold by limiting my web browsing to 1 hour a day and meditating more. I'll be honest, it's not going well so far.

    [0]: some do, but they don't consider their procrastination as a problem.

  2981. To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved 2015-09-02 09:34:41 naveen99
    I thought I was having procrastination issues. Turns out I was in heart failure from an atrial septal defect. Get a cardiopulmonary stress test, check your thyroid, blood sugar. Make sure it's not a treatable physical issue too. Hacker types (intj, intp) don't procrastinate.

  2982. To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved 2015-09-02 09:50:46 kenesom1
    People procrastinate because work is painful. Naturally people want to avoid pain.

    To stop procrastinating:

    - Stop doing things that are painful. Do other things instead.

    - Improve your pain tolerance by becoming stronger, better rested, etc.

    (Disclaimer: haven't read the article yet.)

  2983. To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved 2015-09-02 11:38:42 chillacy
    > Hacker types (intj, intp) don't procrastinate

    Not necessarily: https://www.reddit.com/r/INTP/comments/29ui2d/why_are_intps_...

  2984. To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved 2015-09-02 12:13:41 mikekchar
    Breaks in pomodoro have always been bad for me too. I've been doing something else recently which is working well: 5 minute pomodoros. The idea is to start something and after 5 minute write down what you accomplished in that 5 minutes (just a quick sentence), then carrying on. I find that it gives me an awareness of what I am doing and allows me to insert decision points -- i.e., should I continue, is this productive, should I change strategy, should I get help, etc. The one extra question is: should I take a break. Very often I find that the quality of my work goes downhill without my realizing it. The short timer brings my attention back.

    However, it does not help with my procrastination (hence posting this message...)

  2985. To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved 2015-09-02 13:49:14 erikb
    Well, if you have read the article then you should know yourself already that this might not work. Instead maybe a better way would be to approach your emotional state, make it real, with a pop-up when the plugin sees you are procrastinating. Instead of asking "what should you do right now" better ask "How do you feel right now? Why don't you work?" and then lets you enter an answer, to create a diary for you about your emotional state, with stats of how much you procrastinated that day.

  2986. To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved 2015-09-02 15:02:43 eldude
    Procrastination is a rational emotional response that the outcome will probably not be worth the effort. Essentially, our body shuts down to conserve energy (resting) until we get to a point (waiting) where we feel a successful outcome is more likely.

    This is especially evident in relationships when we put off "difficult conversations." It's not that we don't want to have the conversation (typically we rationally accept the "need" to have it). It's that we fear it probably will not go well. So we procrastinate until the odds are in our favor, either because the effort to achieve the desired outcome has decreased (waiting), or because our total available effort has increased (resting). This is a rational response and strategy toward achieving goals.

    The problem of course becomes when the outcome is not something directly within our control, such that there is potentially no amount of energy or time that will make success possible. In these cases, we must "make your own fate" as many say. Or, to put it another way, one must gain leverage over the outcome by changing one's relationship to it.

    Thus, the best way to overcome procrastination is to focus on setting outcomes you have control over (e.g., studying for a test vs getting an A), which creates a positive feedback loop since your goals are regularly achieved and thus rationally worthy of additional future effort.

    This is also a circuitous way of defining momentum and it's importance stemming from a default to action.

    In psychology, it's been shown empirically to be better to praise children for their efforts and actions than praising with identifying language (e.g., "that was a smart thing you did" instead of "you're so smart"). As stated above, this sets a rational positive feedback loop in favor of "smart" actions over behavior, which may include inaction, that successfully perpetuate a "smart" identity.

  2987. To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved 2015-09-02 15:21:16 blueflow
    It only works when i procrastinate using the Computer, which is sadly not always the case.

  2988. To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved 2015-09-02 15:42:52 geezard
    I think this article is much better at explaining procrastination: http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastin...

  2989. To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved 2015-09-02 16:27:40 nstart
    That's a problem though isn't it? (Serial procrastinator here). When you've got non deadline based tasks (clean up your table), and personal goals (release that side project), the mantra of two deadlines really kicks you in the butt. Since there's only an imagined deadline, it's too easy for us to push it aside and say "I'll do it soon... Not now though"

  2990. To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved 2015-09-02 17:16:30 serg33v
    I have few tricks how to stop procrastinating: 1 - work with partner or colleague. That's why pair programming is so efficient 2 - I daily create Eisenhower matrix for all important task for tomorrow and always tried to fill urgent and important task very careful. If there are too many urgent and important, something is wrong with you or your tasks

  2991. To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved 2015-09-02 17:33:42 dasboth
    I'm trying the whole "surf less, meditate more" thing but I find motivation to meditate quite low on "good" days. When I feel like crap for having procrastinated, sure, give me some of that meditation, but on a day where I feel fine, I easily persuade myself I don't need it.

    One thing I've tried to do is do household chores when I feel the procrastination urge. It's still procrastination but at least it's a bit more useful than playing video games.

  2992. To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved 2015-09-02 18:16:29 jblow
    I agree! But the first step in a good decision is a clear understanding of the situation, and it is a barrier to understanding to just blanket-decide that procrastination is completely bad without even considering otherwise.

  2993. To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved 2015-09-02 19:34:12 Tenobrus
    So... what's the alternative? Depression is another common behavior pattern/mode that "must have evolved for a reason". And sure, there might be a benefit to depression that is yet unnoticed. But since based on the current information it's so bad, treating it anyway makes sense. It's pretty implausible to somehow verify there are no benefits from procrastination, and it clearly causes problems for people (from their own and other's perspectives). That seems like something to attempt to solve. It's not like every single mental/biological feature must be beneficial somehow, that's not actually how evolution works. It might be, we can't "prove" otherwise, but we kind of have to work with what we have until there's a complete map of human neural structures or something.

  2994. To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved 2015-09-02 20:01:34 Htsthbjig
    I was a big procrastinator in the past. But I was lucky in that one of the things I procrastinated with was learning psychology !.

    As I learned more and more psychology it became obvious how to win over it. I created a mastermind with other entrepreneurs and it helped enormously First, everybody has this "problem". Second, you help other people and you help yourself.

    Now I can make amazing things in very small amounts of time, and spend a lot of time reading-writting things that interest me, or stay with my family.

    Basically what happens is that the human beings are flexible enough to do things no animal could do. But it comes at a price, no natural things require immense amounts of effort to do, even if trivial.

    For example, most men could spend all day long hunting or fishing without problem, even if it is hard, rich people do that when they are free to do whatever they can. But plowing the earth or writing a book or programming are totally different.

    When you do non natural things, odds are your body responds badly. For example, programming all day means you don't exercise your inertial system. If you sit all day, your lymphatic system suffers a lot. There are hundreds of things like this. You don't see any of this, you only know that you try to work and your body says NO!! You try to force it, but the situation worsens and your body will tell you NO WAY even stronger.

    My cofounder died in his twenties by cancer trying to work harder. He forced himself so much into work that he got weaker and weaker before getting cancer. No sleep, no exercise, bad food. We know today that eating well, exercise and sleep is essential for your immune system.

    Anyone that offers you an easy solution, he is BS. It requires effort and time to learn how to control yourself, but it is probably the best investment you could do in your entire life.

    Probably the best practical book on the issue is "the Now Habit". I prefer the audiobook. Wake up Productive from Eben Pagan is great too.

  2995. To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved 2015-09-02 20:54:07 mattmanser
    Why would this be ADHD? I suffer from the same problem and yet when I'm doing something I like I can concentrate intently for hours if not days. I've worked 60 hour weeks for months when I'm invested.

    But when it's stuff I don't enjoy or I'm a bit down, it's a totally different ball game.

    I also tend to not be concerned about dates far in the future because I secretly believe I can pull a rabbit out of the hat whenever I want and get the 1 month task done in a day, I'm that fucking good. Of course, I'm not.

    ADHD is not something to be flippantly tossed around on not being able to do stuff until a deadline, that's just classic procrastination. I know you didn't mean to sound flippant, but you are being flippant and also I don't think it's a good idea to start conflating ADHD with procrastination.

  2996. To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved 2015-09-02 21:54:36 zha
    Say you have a 10 days job, and you can only start it when you have just 2 days left. What will you be doing the first 8 days? Why don't you do some other productive thing during the first 8 days?

    I guess, if you are like me, the problem is in your head and you are thinking about it all the time - until you achieve the clarity on what exactly to do OR you are forced to start since the time is fast running out. You may be browsing HN, but, the problem solving is happening in your brain as a background thread. ie., some amount of procrastination is required for some of us. But, it is debatable how much of this is necessary.

  2997. To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved 2015-09-02 22:01:53 frogpelt
    Certain types of work are not as affected by procrastination.

    Repetitive factory workers probably don't procrastinate near as much because once they learn the job, the decision-making aspect goes way down. Plus, they'll get fired.

  2998. To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved 2015-09-02 22:28:54 spdustin
    I don't believe it was flippant, and as I said, didn't intend it to be. As someone with AD/HD, and who's studied it intently for many years trying to better understand how it may affect my autistic son (who is also showing signs of AD/HD) I can safely say that the kind of procrastination he describes is exactly the kind of procrastination that manifests in someone with AD/HD. Having that kind of insight lets me help my son learn coping strategies before it's too late to make those kinds of changes to his brain in any meaningful way.

    Frankly, the description you have given is very similar to AD/HD, especially the "I'm that fucking good" part. Yes, I know you weren't bragging, but that sense of infallibility and the letdown that invariably follows when your abilities don't manifest ... I'm guessing it sours you to the project you're working on? Can't seem to direct yourself back to it to care again like you did when you were focused on it the first time? Anxious to find something else that's more interesting where you can prove what a rockstar you are? That rush when you pull that rabbit out of the hat, feels good, doesn't it? Dopamine is great, when you do something that creates enough of it that your brain feels rewarded. For many, it doesn't take much. For many people with AD/HD, the last minute YOLO cramming/programming/building/working session is what it takes to feel like we're doing anything worthwhile.

  2999. To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved 2015-09-03 00:45:16 dasboth
    I haven't found that to be necessarily true. Sometimes I procrastinate over things that I actually WANT to do. More generally I'd say I procrastinate over doing things that don't reward me in the short term. For example if I want to practice a difficult piano piece, the short term result is it sounds awful because I haven't mastered it yet, so I avoid starting even though the long term reward is that I have an impressive piece in my repertoire, which will be fun to play from then on (and I would no longer avoid playing it!). It's an irrational process and I'm still trying to figure it out.

  3000. FuckAdBlock 2015-09-03 05:40:13 Geekette
    Eh, long live ad blocking! Its great being able to view clean, distraction-free webpages and I just move on if a site refuses to load otherwise. Since a lot of content I view online falls under entertainment, the worst case scenario is that such a page cuts my procrastination/break time short, which obviously isn't a bad thing.

    Plus, ads are not the only way to make money online. So, if it isn't working for a company, then it's time to change the business model.

  3001. P values are not as reliable as many scientists assume (2014) 2015-09-03 16:57:00 marvy
    Ok, so the pretty result is mostly arbitrary. Fair enough. Re: false negatives... you seem to be living in a world of bell curves, or at least a mostly continuous world. I can easily make (very contrived) experiments where false negatives just don't happen. For instance: I have two coins. One is a perfectly fair coin. The other is a two-headed coin. You see me flip one of them. The null hypothesis is that I flipped the fair coin. A false negative means deciding the coin is fair but it's really not. This will never happen, because you will only decide that if it lands tails, and then it must be fair. (If I only flip it once, the false positive rate is something like 1/3, not 0.) But this is probably much too contrived for your taste, and maybe even for mine. But it's almost 5am, and I must go to sleep now, or else it will get bright soon, and I never will. I now appreciate the value of the 20min procrastination setting.

  3002. To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved 2015-09-04 01:54:20 hosh
    @kinlyd glad that helps.

    In my experience, the feelings that arise leading up to the practice time were exactly the feelings that arise leading to procrastination. One day, I found myself putzing around, avoiding the cushion, and knew that the practice has already started.

    What worked for me were a number of small things:

    (1) Dedicating a space for practice. When I first started, I dropped a cushion right next to my bed so I would trip over it when I woke up and trip over it when I slept. Formally dedicating a space, even if it is a small corner, helps a lot when you are first trying to establish a discipline.

    (2) Dedicating a time. When I first started out, I was a night owl. I still am; but a lot of the night owl thing comes from -- you guessed it -- procrastinating on sleep. So I formally dedicated the time right before bed for practice; that, no matter how late, how tired, how fuzzy I was, I was going to sit before I crawled into bed. (A year or two in, I naturally shifted to a morning practice; by then, I feel off if I didn't practice something each day).

    (3) Gamification worked well for me, though beware going to the extreme. Eventually, one of the things you start stripping away from your mind is responding to the reward/punishment triggers. I used a streak calendar. I took page from Kickstarter. I knew that I have a tendency to go overboard in excitement and then try to do as much the next day, fail, feel ashamed/guilty about failing, and the dropping off from the practice. So I would have three levels of practice:

    The nominal practice time. In the beginning that was 5 minutes. I might not be able to do 10, or 20, but how hard it is to do "just" 5 minutes right before bed?

    Stretch goals: if I went further, I'd consider it a stretch goal. Completely optional. In other words, the next day, the practice goal still resets to my nominal goal. If it happens I reach that stretch goal, then that's ok, but it's ok if I didn't. (If you practice correctly, you would know that there are a lot of things that arises from waiting to achieve stretch goals -- anxiety, shame, guilt, etc. the usual suspects).

    Token effort: over time (months), I started ratcheting up my nominal practice to longer and longer lengths of time. I tend to do it when I'm regularly hitting stretch goals effortlessly. However, I left room to be lazy. I allowed myself a "token effort", the absolute minimum I can do. It's set around 5 minutes. (These days, "token effort" has more to do with the quality of my mindfulness rather than length of time). I knew early on that, just like stretch goals, some days ... my mind is tricking me into persuading me into skipping for the day, and I counter with "well, why not just do a token effort". Then when I do it, end up going past the token effort and it turns into a regular sit length.

    (4) Other side of gamification -- social cues. (Ever read a book called "The Talent Code"? If Malcolm Gladwell popularized the notion of "10,000" hours of practice, "The Talent Code" speaks about how to get there). In the Buddhist tradition, this would be the sangha, that is, fellow like-minded people also on this journey, although they might not be traveling the same path. Opensit.com is a great example. You log your time there and people help each other stay with the sit, as well as comment on when difficulties start arising.

    If you seriously want to establish a practice, my suggestion is to start at the basic: just getting yourself on the cushion consistently every day. Focus on the process, not the results. No one will ever give you a gold star for attaining enlightenment (seriously, no one will give you a gold star for attaining enlightenment). There are interesting states you can reach in meditation, but if you cling to those states and you're not aware that you are clinging to those states, you're not really practicing impeccably, are you? (You could also cling to the process, turn it into an empty ritual, but for most people, the issue usually lies in getting started).

    Hope that helps.

  3003. Ask HN: Is RSS still worth the time? 2015-09-11 15:38:31 e19293001
    Although I use RSS everyday and every hour, I hate RSS because it is the reason why I am my procrastinating.

  3004. On Putting Things Off 2015-09-12 02:46:04 toothbrush
    “It seems to me that Hughes wanted to be a writer more than he wanted to write; the difference isn’t always obvious, even to the person doing the wanting, and talent, which you feel ought to be a clue, may be a red herring.”

    Wow, that sounds like me and research!

    “Some see procrastination as a rational preference: the procrastinator has chosen immediate over deferred gratification, pleasure over work. But generally the failure to work goes along with a failure of appetites: a lot of the time I’m chained to my desk as a ghost is chained to the spot they haunt. It doesn’t even have the glamour of writer’s block.”

    So much this—instead of working hard during the day then doing something fun in the evening, one procrastinates all day doing half-fun things (like reading low-brow internet news sources, ahem), then spends the evening wallowing in self-flagellating guilt, and angst, since the deadline slowly comes ever closer! How to break the cycle? The next time i write a paper, my time management will be better, i promise! The next review will be in on time, really! Who is being deluded? The habit must change. That sounds like the self-flagellation phase, cue the coda!

  3005. On Putting Things Off 2015-09-12 03:45:13 visakanv
    I'm very passionate about the problem of procrastination, having suffered terribly from it all my life. For some people it's a relatively minor thing, but for others it's debilitating– ruining educations, careers, relationships.

    What has been blowing my mind lately– and I'm always doing all the reading and experimentation I can about this– is how much of this is PHYSICAL. Hanks talks about headaches and stomach disorders– for me, it's always been anxiety and loss of appetite. Which leads to low/volatile blood sugar, which leads to mental fogginess, inaction, and worsens the cycle of procrastination.

    If I could go back in time to my teenage days and change one thing, it wouldn't be scheduling, prioritization, visualization, environment-management, monotasking, and breaking down tasks into little chunks. (Though all of those things are very helpful.)

    It would be to eat a hearty breakfast every morning. I'm thoroughly convinced on hindsight that it makes the biggest difference. You need a clear mind to do all of the hard, messy work of dealing with reality, and to have a clear mind you need to eat, hydrate, sleep and exercise.

  3006. Warming up to Go 2015-09-13 01:22:03 Veedrac
    > Realistically, this is a programmer problem that no language can solve.

    > The solution is to train new [language X] programmers

    There is high demand for software that blocks "procrastination" websites, because people struggle to focus when the whole internet's around. I know someone who's hidden their computer charger in order to stay focused. I've read a surprising number of blogs about aiding writer's block with minimalist text editors. I even know someone who needs to offload finances to another party lest they spent it too quickly themselves.

    You can tell people they just need training, but if the whole standard library screams "abstraction!", people are going to abstract. A language like Go is the minimalist text editor of the programming world. Sure, some people will scream they need their MS Word macros and floating panes (and it's even more true in CS), but these tools are an effective treatment of the symptom nonetheless.

    > Generics aren't exactly optional in Rust.

    Sure, but this doesn't change the trade-off. One should use Rust where the problems it solves best broadly match with the problems you're dealing with. And, IMHO, Rust is an exceptionally high complexity language for small projects.

  3007. The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself 2015-09-24 04:32:01 existencebox
    I'm the exact opposite. I used to slack a LOT more, and have cut down on it heavily since my school days. Back then I would regularly last night assignments and pull multiple all nighters to do it, because I _knew I could_. As long as I subconsciously knew "I can get this down in the delta between now->due date" I would put it off, even if that delta involved not sleeping/eating/etc, and "Forgiving myself" only made it worse since I'd just keep doing it.

    It was when I got into industry, and instead was posed with the equation of "If I didn't rush, I would have done better work, and more effectively used the time of the people paying me", which had enough external variables that the need to change became pressing. I used (and still use) the feelings of guilt at wasting my bosses time, the feelings of falling behind in my skill/learnings, and dominatingly (as I get older) the feeling of "There just isn't enough time in the day" to force myself off of procrastination every time I notice myself doing it too much.

    Take this with the context that I've never been one for positive reinforcement. Seeing my own flaws and failings drives me far more than getting a pat on the back. I think you hit the nail on the head re: rationality, as that I don't think I _could_ forgive myself even if I tried, I wouldn't really internalize believing it in a way that would impact my behavior.

    (And aptly, I've now procrastinated enough in writing this, and need to be back to reading docs :) )

  3008. The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself 2015-09-24 04:42:10 zamalek
    Also, if you're not usually the procrastination type but find yourself in a procrastination hole: take leave. When you're hungry you eat, when you're thirsty you drink; unusual tendencies to procrastinate are simply another signal that your body is sending you.

    It's always good to take time off when you have earned it, you'll come back twice the hard worker than you were before.

  3009. The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself 2015-09-24 04:44:22 doppelganger27
    "Forgiving yourself" may not be the best advice for all procrastinators, but I think the idea is that when many people procrastinate, it causes them extra stress when the decision comes back to bite them. A part of that stress is simply because they have less time to do what they need, but another component is that they are kicking themselves for being stupid in the past. Forgiving yourself lets you remove the stress from the latter part, and thus would reduce the total amount.

  3010. The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself 2015-09-24 04:53:08 pkrumins
    I recently realized that the cure for procrastination is to be on a mission. I'm on a mission to build my company, Browserling, to be an amazing company. As funny as it sounds I just don't have time to procrastinate.

  3011. The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself 2015-09-24 05:29:41 Xcelerate
    As someone who procrastinates, I've yet to come across a true "cure" for the habit. "Forgive yourself" is such a vague and abstract mantra that I don't even know how to actualize the advice.

    I think the worst explanation for procrastination I've come across is that it's caused by not truly enjoying the activity that is being procrastinated upon. But if that were really the case, then the remainder of my life would be spent sitting in a chair reading useless articles online.

    Other questionable explanations I've stumbled across include: being unable to bond empathetically with your future self, that the procrastinator's brain has a [insert neurotransmitter of choice] deficit, that fear of failure keeps one from starting, that too much is tackled at once, and so on.

    When I try to recall what has given me the greatest sense of fulfillment in life, everything I can think of is something I worked really hard to achieve. That which contents me momentarily does not seem to coincide with that which provides overall life contentment. I don't necessarily seek happiness — I would rather have demanding work that positively impacts the world over some job that allows me to surf online all day.

    What's funny is that I procrastinate only with regard to intellectual activities — not physical ones. Getting myself to exercise is no trouble at all. But prodding myself to finish a VPTree implementation... that's much more difficult. My hypothesis is that I procrastinate on those things that I was naturally good at during childhood. Academically, I was decently above average (well, at least up until college), so I never had to study. I always completed homework at the last second before it was due, and I crammed most of my test studying into the night before the exam and then promptly forgot the material as soon as I walked out of the classroom (as I'm sure many of you have noticed, this "strategy" doesn't work nearly as well in college, and it fails dramatically in grad school).

    On the other hand, when it came to sports, it was pretty much a guarantee that (at least initially) I would naturally be the worst out of everyone participating. I was determined to improve though, so I developed training schedules and religiously followed them until I got the results I wanted. I think that habit has stuck with me, and I still have no trouble starting an exercise regimen.

  3012. The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself 2015-09-24 06:12:01 tpeo
    >I think the worst explanation for procrastination I've come across is that it's caused by not truly enjoying the activity that is being procrastinated upon.

    I actually believe in this, though it's a somewhat far-fetched conjecture. There is some talk in psychology about "will power" being a scarce resource, though professionals are unsure why. But maybe human brains aren't made for keeping a thought for long. The need to procrastinate then would be like a homeostatic response from the brain saying "these neurons have been firing for too long, shut them off". But whereas diligent people leave for a cup of coffee and some fresh air, the procrastinator keeps the idea at the back of his head and goes check HN.

    As for "forgiving youself", it could be something as little as acknowledging that I did indeed spend 40 minutes wikidiving by my own will, and not because of a little demon residing in my head. Low belief in free-will and self-efficacy spoil one's mood.

  3013. The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself 2015-09-24 06:18:43 gexla
    Procrastination. Get it done or get out of the way and someone else will get it done. If you look back and nobody else did it, congrats, it wasn't worth doing anyways (validation for your procrastination.)

    There is no cure for procrastination.

    However, I have a similar method to the article for dealing with "blocking" issues such as feeling overwhelmed or just don't want to pick up the phone to take an ass chewing. Sometimes you just have to let go. You screwed up. Live up to the mistake and move on rather than continue to let it eat you up and cause problems for everyone else involved. Be honest, work out a way to move forward and pass the torch to someone else if you have to.

  3014. The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself 2015-09-24 06:51:22 mojuba
    I will procrastinate... later.

  3015. The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself 2015-09-24 07:00:42 EC1
    I forgive myself by embracing the mundane tasks. Haven't procrastinated since. Work isn't work, they're just building blocks that when I get done, I feel good.

  3016. The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself 2015-09-24 07:00:49 bjeanes
    I'm positive that it is different for everybody but I feel like I'm honing in on what causes procrastination in myself. After some recent periods of intentional self-discovery, I'm forming the conclusion that perfectionism is the death of my productivity. The common theme with things I procrastinate with is anything where the end is uncertain or I don't have full confidence in my direction. Maybe that's the "fear of failure" you allude to as there is certainly some overlap but I think that's just one notch on the axis for me.

    Even though, at an intellectual level, I know that taking any step is better than no step, I freeze up over-analysing whether it's the right step, and fatigue myself. The natural reaction is to procrastinate by taking my attention away from the stress causing decision, even though the stress is totally sourced internally.

    But, like I said, it's probably different for a lot of people.

  3017. The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself 2015-09-24 07:37:54 burger_moon
    Procrastinators will just procrastinate signing up.

  3018. The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself 2015-09-24 08:14:04 eranation
    Correlation does not imply causation? Maybe I didn't read the research right, but what if people who have the ability to change themselves and stop / decrease procrastinating, because the mere fact that they managed to stopped procrastinating (e.g. stopped a negative behavior in their mind, and got good results out of it), they were able to forgive themselves for past procrastinations?

    E.g. if someone was addicted to drugs, and managed to go clean, they are more likely to forgive themselves (and others to forgive them) than those who just keep taking drugs, right?. Any 5 years old will tell you that if the bully started becoming nice, it will be easier to forgive them than if they stayed a bully. forgiving oneself is not that different than forgiving others, and if you correct your ways, it's easier to forgive yourself, just as much as it is easier for others to forgive you. no? what am I missing?

  3019. The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself 2015-09-24 09:37:31 pla3rhat3r
    The irony is not lost on me that I'm reading this while I procrastinate on doing something I've needed to get to for some time. I forgive me.

  3020. The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself 2015-09-24 10:08:17 Jimmy
    I've been a heavy procrastinator all my life, way back to elementary school (23 now). I've given up thinking that there is one simple intelligible cause of it, or that I will ever fully be "cured". It will likely be a constant struggle that I always have to deal with. The thing that comes closest to a cure is that I know I can win that struggle; things just take a little more self-control for me than for most people, that's all.

    And I need to get the fuck off the internet. It's simultaneously the best and worst thing to ever happen in my life. I procrastinated before the internet, but there's no doubt that the internet is the main driver of my procrastination right now.

  3021. The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself 2015-09-24 10:24:35 nkozyra
    The best - and worst - thing I've done had cured my procrastination issues. It's essentially a personal moon shot system wherein I describe my perfect 5 years, 1 year, month, week and day. Like a pace car doppelganger. No human could do what I set out to do, but I work at it tirelessly. My productivity is gobs better than it was, I get more done on time than any other time in my life.

    The 'bad' part is it still feels like perpetual failure. Even if I do 10x more in a day than I did 5 years ago, I only did 40% of my perfect day. I never feel satisfied. It's depressing.

    So if you're willing to sacrifice mental health for productivity, try my system. Maybe it will work better for you. Maybe it's worthwhile in the short term.

  3022. The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself 2015-09-24 11:54:23 jules
    Those help but the thing that helps me most is to actively engage my rational brain instead of autopilot brain. Try to make it a habit to trigger your rational brain when your autopilot brain is making the decision to procrastinate, and then analyze the situation. OK, I have a choice between browsing news sites and working on the VPTree. What are the pros and cons of each choice? Could I delay browsing news sites by 10 minutes and look into that VPTree first?

  3023. The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself 2015-09-24 14:41:49 grantcox
    You may need to externalize the responsibility, to have someone else "make" the decision.

    For myself I've found someone who is above me in our org, even though they aren't particularly technical. I can take them these problems, they'll hear me explain why I think X is a good direction, or why it's better than Y (even though I'm uncertain of the outcome). They will ask sensible questions (costs, risks etc) and approve the direction, eg "then I want you to pursue option X, and come back to me when you hit unexpected circumstances".

    This person can be anyone that you feel some ultimate responsibility towards - in a one-person startup perhaps it's your significant other, as you owe it to them to be efficient and effective (and not wasting time procrastinating).

  3024. The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself 2015-09-24 14:51:48 dasboth
    I tend to procrastinate on things that are only really important to me like side projects, job hunting etc. When someone else is expecting me to do something, I will just do it. I worked on a side project that my wife asked me for and did it in one sitting.

    My "fix" has been to create external pressure somehow. Want to learn something? Sign up to a course that has hard deadlines. Want to build something? Tell someone about it and offer to show them a draft by a certain date. It seems to work for me.

  3025. The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself 2015-09-24 14:59:51 visarga
    What about mixing things you like with things you don't like? For example, you have to build a web app. So you start implementing a little framework (things you like) and then use it to finish the project. That way it takes more time but you enjoy it. I found out over the years, taking into account all my good, mediocre and bad results, that I did my best work when I enjoyed it, as silly as it sounds. It doesn't matter that I waste 50% of the time if I get the job done and enjoy it. The alternative is to do it even slower and disgusted.

    I think procrastination is a kind of anxiety. We enjoy the creative parts and fear the complexities of debugging that monster when it's 99% done. We need to switch back to enjoyment to get in the flow. That means doing things you like, instead of things you should do, but we can be smart and try to combine the two things.

    Another example: I had to work on an old script that was really ugly and messy. I took a day to refactor the old codebase, clean it up, just so I don't see it as a scary monster any more. Then I was much more likely to work on it.

  3026. The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself 2015-09-24 17:35:58 bcarlyle
    I'm a clinical psychologists who work with ADHD patients and others who procrastinate.

    Many believe their self-worth is tied to personal accomplishments.

    This trips you up because procrastination creates a negative feedback loop where the lack of action creates anxiety that increases inaction.

    If you can't follow the mantra that you should "forgive yourself" because it feels to corny it might be easier to think:

    The most effective thing for me to do right now is to forgive myself because the time I spend beating myself up is energy wasted.

    This might be less elegant then just simply forgiving yourself but it might work.

  3027. The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself 2015-09-24 18:39:37 quietplatypus
    What you said resonates with a lot of Nietzsche's thought, a core theme of which was it is better to experience the overcoming, the removal of an obstacle under your own power, than to have the obstacle removed for you. Nietzsche's take: the former makes you a master, the latter, a slave. I agree: that this is a universal human desire, and I'd rather be moving under my own power than having to take from others for everything I do.

    Solving procrastination has become a sort of my own personal overcoming. Self-motivation is one of the core problems of life that everyone has to solve, I feel. Forgiving myself is just one of the tactics in my arsenal.

    For me, I see the ideal of me doing anything I set my mind to, easily, without loss of energy or "motivation" (in fact transcending these concepts), and that is so tantalizing, and I am so naturally not good at that, it becomes a great target of Overcoming for me, and has an effect of having a constant but large reduction in procrastination.

  3028. Years You Have Left to Live, Probably 2015-09-25 02:26:58 pm24601
    I use curves like this as an anti-procrastination method.

    "Hey, you have only 200 more months to live. Don't waste a month doing something stupid."

  3029. Bell inequality violation finally done right 2015-09-25 13:58:21 ryandamm
    So, in a nutshell, the phrase 'It is only determined when one party looks at it' is the definition of non-locality.

    If the two parties are separated by a significant distance, that implies that one viewer (Alice?) determines what the other viewer (Bob) sees the moment she looks at the coin. But of course, our notion of who 'looks' first is a function of relativity; there are reference frames where Bob looks first.

    The fact that they always correspond suggest that either A) the result was predetermined (hidden variable, i.e. local reality) or B) the two particles 'communicate' faster than light. (Note that, because the 'communication' can't actually convey information, it doesn't technically violate relativity, just, you know, that last shred of common sense you hoped applied to physics.

    I'd write more -- didn't get to that meta-post, because I recently turned on the 'no procrastinate' flag on HN... and though it's made me way more productive I'm not sure if it's made me happier. C'est la whatever.

  3030. The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself 2015-09-26 01:28:30 alex_hirner
    You don't agree with the explanation. I think it's totally fine to come up with an individual explanation anyway. So lets refine the prescription from a vantage point where everyone seems to agree: procrastinating and lacking passion for a given task correlate.

    Given that, I found a very simple method to do away with being unproductive while still getting a decent dose of procrastinating. Simply, I started to enrich any activity that tops the to-do list with an element I enjoy about pondering/procrastinating. For me it works repeatedly. I'll give you three examples.

    1) On doing the tax-filing. Instead of plunging right into, I thought of people I'd like to contact anyway and make a cross-section of who just recently did that or sports an expertise in that. In my case it was my brother (we usually don't connect too often). Besides enjoying talking about side-topics, I learnt tax rules new to me. Namely, some step-functions where different social security fees apply. Very worthwhile!

    2) Physical workout. I'd have a better body and probably mind as well, if I could stick to a rigorous schedule. Now, I like to engulf myself in curiosities from time to time as well. Easy fix: moving the workout session to Venice Beach. Jogging there, some calisthenics plus absorbing new (mostly human) attractions in one sweep!

    3) Getting "work" done. I needed to implement this iteration of an ML algorithm. There was no particular deadline. However, knowing that starting soon would yield a better outcome irrespective of any other factor, I decided to procrastinate by researching on sources I would like to read anyhow. That became hackernews quite recently. So instead of randomly reading posts (like this one, lol), I put in keywords of ML into the search box and sort by date. Et' voila.

    Conclusion: find out what is it that fancies you about your urge to procrastinate at this exact moment and then draw a link to what you should do. It works.

    Oh and here is example 4) I should now follow-up with a dozen of new acquaintances and prepare to meet them for dinner tonight. But I'm on HN right now. So I decided to take the insight from this discussion and use it as a topic for tonight's dinner. Be gentle, be curious and be interesting to people that matter!

  3031. The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself 2015-10-01 08:09:19 jasonjackson
    "My hypothesis is that I procrastinate on those things that I was naturally good at during childhood" Yup exactly, because there's an intense emotional connection to those activities, so we avoid them sometimes since they produce feelings of vulnerability.

  3032. Users Have Been Betrayed in the Final TPP Deal 2015-10-06 06:40:39 TeMPOraL
    > My experience with Reddit has been that, like most other places on the Internet, it's a mixed bag.

    That I will agree. It's a very mixed bag, the worst subreddits are utter crap, but the best ones are pretty much the best source of knowledge on the Internet. You have to find the ones you like, but fortunately it isn't hard :).

    Personally, I still prefer HN as my primary procrastination target. On Reddit I usually hang out only on /r/KerbalSpaceProgram. However, I turn to Reddit whenever I need to research particular interests. Almost always there exists a high-quality subreddit for the topic I want to explore. I'm usually less interested in the on-going discussion then, and more in the accumulated knowledge.

    For example, I actually went (successfully) on a diet with Reddit. When researching ways to lose weight I ended up browsing dieting subreddits, and eventually ended up on /r/keto. The ongoing discussion is, as you may suspect, mostly photos of people trying to lose weight mixed with topics covering minutiae of the ketogenic diet. The sidebar, however, is a trove of knowledge and experience that community has collected over the years. It linked me directly to books, research, experiences and best tips that helped me set up and execute my plan.

  3033. The enigma behind America's 20-year lobster boom 2015-10-08 08:54:40 dsfyu404ed
    This is a great article, now if only someone would make an in depth comparison to the situation in Massachusetts where they procrastinated when enacting catch limitations while fishing themselves into oblivion and now want the state to help them out...

  3034. ADHD Is Different for Women (2013) 2015-10-13 21:11:23 bru_
    This makes a lot of sense. Every day, at 4am, I would spring out of my bed and begin screaming as I jumped up and down on my parents bed to wake them up, sometimes literally opening their eyelids for them, kept screaming, made myself captain crunch and began watching my daily episode of dragon ball z while eating capn crunch and acting out kung fu moves on the furniture.

    My sister on the other hand is pretty quiet and just sometimes procrastinates too much and doesn't clean her apartment.

  3035. Ask HN: Any advice for a programmer who has hit rock bottom? 2015-10-18 23:54:24 desp_programmer
    This, exactly! I have problem sleeping early at night. Thoughts and anxiety prevent me from sleeping. I don't have insomnia, I feel very sleepy, but very afraid and restless.

    Also, I get overwhelmed by any task at hand. It starts getting procrastinated. Fear creeps in. Confidence takes a hit.

  3036. Biotech CEO claims she is the first to undergo gene therapy to reverse aging 2015-10-19 11:50:35 TeMPOraL
    (declare (disclaimer (anecdotes follow)))

    True. For many people issue lies, I feel, not with changing things, but with knowing what to change and how. Most people - myself included - have pretty streamlined diet: they know what they like, where to buy ingredients for that cheap and how to prepare them. Even starting on a stable, maintainable diet requires you to think through what exactly to change, what new components are needed, where to source them and how to alter your preparation routines. You want to do it in such a way as not to deprive yourself of important nutrients, or else your body will say "fuck it" and force you to break the diet (or if you're particularly strong willed, you'll feel like crap all the time). If you do this, it's easy to keep on diet, but you have to do a big investment up front. I've personally done this once; procrastinated months on it, but after I sit down and made the necessary time investment, my weight reacted to changes pretty much instantly.

    But I can see how most people simply don't have time for diet. It's kind of like being poor - you could get a lot more for the same amount of money if you have enough capital available to do bulk purchases. But if you're living paycheck-to-paycheck, you don't have enough money to buy cheap.

    Also that's why some people are willing to pay for someone else to figure it out for them. I personally know someone struggling with weight for almost two decades, for whom the solution for instant weight loss was to pay someone else to micromanage their food - she got a list of allowed choices and amounts for all meals a given week and - what I think was a key trick - a protein powder alternative to use if she didn't like a particular meal. It had pretty much no taste, but it was a line of retreat that let you skip something you don't like without breaking the diet.

  3037. Sabotage 2015-10-21 12:01:20 TeMPOraL
    +5 Insightful.

    I know I personally like to keep the opinion people have that I am overworked, whether I actually work hard or procrastinate - it's just a really convenient social shield, not only against failure but also against random requests from people. When people notice you have too much free time, for some reason they feel obliged to start inventing things for you to do.

    I think it's an alternative to just saying "no". Some people are assertive and can simply refuse a request. Personally, I find assertiveness very cognitively taxing, not to mention socially, so maintaining a bubble of "he's constantly working on something" impression helps. It's probably not the most ethical approach, but it's a coping strategy.

    As for self-deprecation of your work, I know I've been guilty of this at times to cover for stress and lack of motivation. It would be true that the particular piece of work is not the best thing I can do (and I can always point to examples of a better work), but fortunately people immediately assume (without me having to suggest anything) that's because of being tired, or new, or something, and not because I am having trouble finding the motivation to pursue a task at 100% of effectiveness. This buys me necessary time to sort my motivations out and hopefully regain the energy to do a better work next time.

  3038. Yahoo Talent Exodus Accelerates as Marissa Mayer’s Turnaround Flounders 2015-10-22 03:27:03 aetherson
    Firing people is emotionally taxing. That's honestly probably 85% of the reason why shitty employees can keep their jobs. Managers hate firing people and most will procrastinate endlessly if that option is available.

  3039. Life with My Robot Secretary 2015-10-28 02:17:19 toothbrush
    Small nitpick, but i would lose the first GIF which has about 6 emails scrolling by in quick succession. I'm not a speed-reader, so even managing to make out the grey summaries at the top took me like 6+ iterations. That's pretty frustrating, and i only stuck at it because i'm procrastinating and should actually be doing the dishes, because i should actually be changing a light bulb, because i should actually be rinsing my yak, because i should actually be writing my thesis manuscript. In that order.

    EDIT: or at least slow it down, because of course the point it's trying to make is cool and/or worth it and/or noble.

  3040. More parents, students saying 'no' to homework 2015-10-29 05:14:03 civilian
    I'm with you. I'm 28 now, working as a software engineer, and I'm loving my life. I roll into work at 10:30 and yesterday I got a raise without having to ask or negotiate for it. I have the time and money to pursue hobbies, but I also genuinely enjoy my coworkers.

    But high school was _rough_ for me. My grades weren't especially good, but I did a lot of AP classes. I constantly had the anxiety of homework looming over me. Looking back, I realized that I got into the state where I'd be behind on a lot of things, and once I had 5 different things on my plate it'd be really hard to prioritize them and I'd just stress myself out trying to balance them.

    I'd like to have children someday, but I know that there's a chance they're going to inherit my style of thinking. (My dad is the same as me-- he also graduated college just barely, also procrastinated too much in high school.) I'd really like to find some alternate form of school that still challenges my kids, but does so in a way that doesn't explode their stress levels.

  3041. GTA V – Graphics Study 2015-11-03 05:53:29 strayptr
    Mmhm. As with everything, it's a balance. It's important to understand that reading is one of the most effective forms of procrastination that has ever been invented. It's also the prism through which your entire future passes, but everyone already knows that.

    For example, Carmack was able to "invent" BSP because he was (as far as I've heard) an avid reader of medical journals. Specifically, journals and papers about the graphics techniques they used at the time. The field of medicine turns out to be very lucrative for an ambitious graphics programmer, because they're often at the frontiers of what's currently possible. So apparently BSP was used in accelerating medical renderings, and Carmack was able to see their potential for realtime graphics. The only reason he was able to do that was by reading pretty much every possible thing.

    None of that will help you unless you force yourself to do and not read, though.

  3042. Static Website Generators Are the Next Big Thing 2015-11-03 23:46:58 nstart
    I'm currently building my own static site CMS. Basically. Word press like interface (at some point). Spits out a static site. My blog http://adnanissadeen.com runs on it. I'm building the CMS over at https://github.com/spartakode/static-cms . Been inactive for a while because I'm just a horrible procrastinator. I'll be finishing up (read: making it usable by public) end of this year hopefully. Will try and offer a hosted service a little later.

  3043. Show HN: Toc Messenger – A distributed messaging app that syncs 2015-11-04 04:01:28 lewisl9029
    Hi HN,

    Toc is a project I've been working on for more than a year now. I'd love to hear what you guys think about it. =)

    Toc is a proof-of-concept distributed messaging app designed from the ground up to support user data synchronization for use across multiple devices. It uses Telehash for its messaging stack, and is built on top of an Om-inspired architecture oriented around a central app state tree, that gets encrypted using a custom encryption layer for persistence locally, and then synchronized seamlessly between devices using remoteStorage.

    Originally, Toc started as our group's fourth year Computer Engineering design project at the University of Waterloo. After we graduated in May, I wanted to polish it up a bit before releasing, but evidently went a bit overboard and ended up working on it for another six months (albeit with a healthy dose of procrastination sprinkled throughout that period).

    There's a more thorough technical overview and project history on the GitHub page if you're interested in more details: https://github.com/lewisl9029/toc

    Toc is only a proof-of-concept, and has a list of awful issues that makes it rather unsuitable for long term general use. However, I'm hoping that by releasing Toc, we can bring more attention to the awesome technologies for building great decentralized applications that Toc uses, and inspire more developers to take another serious look at building distributed apps, as I hope we have demonstrated with Toc that a decentralized app can in fact have great UX if you design your apps with UX in mind from the start.

    With that said, I am now officially looking for work. If you have any openings for a ClojureScript frontend project, or a React project that makes heavy use of functional techniques and immutable data, I'd love to hear about it. You can reach me through the email on my GitHub profile[1], HN profile[2] or through my Toc account[3]. ;) (disclaimer: that last option might not be completely reliable)

    [1] https://github.com/lewisl9029

    [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=lewisl9029

    [3] http://toc.im/?inviteid=9b0d50b86dd596aa8c7a94bd116c2ed4a24f...

  3044. Why I Quit Ordering from Uber-For-Food Startups 2015-11-08 21:26:24 TeMPOraL
    I tried Joylent (a version of Soylent made in EU) for few weeks and I too "missed the feeling of eating" a little, but I recognized it as just a habit. The same kind of habit browsing HN is, with similar procrastination values.

  3045. How do you fight procrastination? 2015-11-13 07:09:50 theklr
    Been currently using brain.fm to help focus. Allso looking for new work might be time if you're corporate. Also mediation/exercise can help alleviate this. Finally breaking big goals to tinier tangible goals can make something that usually you would procrastinate on more digestible.

  3046. Study: Staying off Facebook can make you happier 2015-11-13 12:47:36 prawn
    Maybe a bit. We procrastinate and are motivated by karma here, but I don't feel like HN is an engine finely tuned to keep us addicted and returning. I don't get notifications on replies or when there are new stories. In fact, there are specific settings to help people take breaks from HN.

  3047. How to minimize procrastination 2015-11-14 04:56:41 lyondhill
    By reading the article and the comments I procrastinated finishing a project for 30 minutes. What do i win?

  3048. How to minimize procrastination 2015-11-14 05:00:01 zomg
    i procrastinate so much, i read the first section then clicked the "save to pocket" icon from the chrome toolbar. i'll get to reading it. eventually...

  3049. How to minimize procrastination 2015-11-14 05:26:29 dikaiosune
    1. Go to HN to procrastinate.

    2. Find article on how to not procrastinate.

    3. Ack.

  3050. How to minimize procrastination 2015-11-14 05:28:48 sotojuan
    Or the classic

    1. Want to stop procrastinating and get stuff done

    2. Spend hours reading "how to get stuff done" blog posts

  3051. How to minimize procrastination 2015-11-14 05:49:54 kmnc
    What do you do when procrastination becomes more serious and develops into life avoidance? (You procrastinate on everything, regardless of how you frame a task, regardless of the difficulty of it). In the extreme case procrastination isn't a obstacle to task competition but a learned habit of avoidance. It becomes an addiction in the same way that gambling, drugs, etc do. How do you beat an addiction whose very nature stops you from taking steps to beat it? Is it possible to quit procrastination cold turkey? If I want to stop smoking one way is to just stop and deal with it. If I want to stop procrastination do I have to be doing something productive 24/7? How do I attain the discipline for that?

  3052. How to minimize procrastination 2015-11-14 06:30:04 dazc
    > "External pressures help..."

    They can but not always. I've used this tactic often, placing myself in difficult situations sometimes forces me to act when nothing else will.

    One time I was out of work, all I had to do was make a few phone calls but I didn't. I kept putting it off until tomorrow; then tomorrow turned into next week, next month and so on...

    To cut a long story short I stopped paying the rent thinking hassle from my landlord would force me into action. As luck turned out he had his own problems and collecting the rent wasn't a priority for him.

    2 years later I was in a very embarrassing situation, as was he. It worked out OK that time but it shouldn't have.

    If you suffer from procrastination FFS just accept you're acting out of fear and confront it. The longer you leave things the worse they get.

  3053. How to minimize procrastination 2015-11-14 06:36:05 alfapla
    If you procrastinate a lot, it usually means that you really want to do something different with your life. Go find out what it is, rather than submitting yourself to all sorts of masochist self-discipline schemes.

  3054. How to minimize procrastination 2015-11-14 06:39:08 dasboth
    Fair enough, my advice and experience relate to things that aren't of such consequence as what not paying rent could cause.

    "Just confront it" is something you have to figure out yourself as a procrastinator. You can read all the advice in the world, but you have to actually come to the realisation yourself that your only option is to "do things". Once you've done one thing you have a reference point to look back to.

  3055. How to minimize procrastination 2015-11-14 06:47:43 a3voices
    The way I solved my procrastination problems is that I do at least one thing per day towards my goal. More often than not, this puts me in a mental state that leads me to doing many things. I find that simply starting a task is the most difficult step.

  3056. How to minimize procrastination 2015-11-14 07:21:42 Hates_
    Of course, but there are things that can't be avoided like seeing your doctor about that pain you've been feeling/paying bills/finding a job/finishing that task your boss asked you to do/doing house work etc. Procrastinating can appear in various different areas of life, not just in those related to following your dreams and passions.

  3057. How to minimize procrastination 2015-11-14 07:44:06 luminiferous
    It's a weird feeling, procrastinating on work by reading an article about how to stop procrastinating.

  3058. How to minimize procrastination 2015-11-14 09:32:37 jules
    There are many techniques that work. The one thing that does not work is relying on willpower. The two main ones that work for me are:

    1) Make the path of least resistance the right one. Do a task together with others. Make it just a little bit harder to fall into procrastination. Split up the task into a five minute task and the rest, and do the five minute task. Once you get started it's often easy to continue.

    2) Engage in conscious rational thinking. The main problem with procrastination is that you do it unconsciously. Try to form a mental habit where you evaluate what to do rationally. When you detect that you are going to procrastinate stop yourself and think on it for a minute. Is it really necessary to browse reddit, or can you bring yourself to do this five minute task and then browse reddit? Stop yourself and think that through and convince yourself, really convince yourself on an emotional level, that doing the 5 minute task first is what you want to do, not just what you feel you must do.

  3059. How to minimize procrastination 2015-11-14 13:56:49 pkrumins
    Being on a mission minimizes procrastination. I'm on a mission to build my company Browserling to be a fantastic business. That leaves no time to procrastinate.

  3060. How to minimize procrastination 2015-11-14 16:17:55 hal9000xp
    I'm trying to eliminate procrastination in my life. In the last three years, I had my ups and downs. I think that recently, I have positive progress. Here is some things/ideas/observations which helped me recently:

    1. Core idea is that procrastination is unaware avoidance behaviour.

    For example, I have great motivation to learn all algorithms in CLRS book. But at some point I got stuck on some proof, I tried to re-read it but got frustrated by some statement in the proof. On the next morning, I could watch Team Coco in Youtube and eat Pringles instead of attack that proof. Yes, I still love CLRS, but right now, I would like to watch Team Coco. And here is perfect example of my procrastination episode.

    Core idea here is to realize that you entered unaware avoidance behaviour. And not just force yourself reading CLRS because next time your avoidance behaviour become even stronger. But you have to be brutally honest with yourself. Then, you can turn off any music, sit down, and enjoy total silence by doing 5-10 minutes of mindfulness meditation. After that, it's much easier to become more comfortable with your frustration on that proof in CLRS and start attacking it again.

    2. I noticed strong link between quality of sleep and procrastination. Better your sleep, less chances for procrastination episodes. After many years of wrong sleep schedule (2 am - 11 am), I started follow very strict sleep schedule (9:30 pm - 6 am), after two months of such schedule, I noticed substantial positive progress in my daily productivity.

    3. No caffeine, no red-bull, no coca-cola, no concentrated tea anymore. Instead of fixing my sleep schedule and doing physical exercises, I consumed coffee and red-bulls. It gave me fake feeling of alertness. But in fact, I was just dizzy and my focus ability was completely evaporated.

    Now, I don't even eat a chocolate. There is nothing better than good healthy sleep and being productive by 8 AM (i.e. 2 hours after I woke up everyday).

    4. No music while your reading and coding anymore. I listened music all the time for years. Even when I really tired of music, I couldn't code in total silence.

    Mindfulness meditation helped me to see beauty of silence and white noise (especially coming from nature outside of my window like slight sound of trees because of small wind).

    I couldn't say I become perfect. But I substantially decreased procrastination in my life.

    I hope these advices could help somebody to overcome procrastination.

    P.S. By the way, note that I didn't use statement "fight procrastination". If you try to fight it, you make your procrastination stronger next time. You have to be honest with yourself and being aware about your weaknesses!

  3061. How to minimize procrastination 2015-11-14 18:03:55 bluish
    One way of minimizing procrastination is to surround yourself with people who are more intelligent, more accomplished, and more success-driven than yourself. Being isolated (which was the case with me during my time at university), or associating with lazy, mediocre people, makes it easy to fall into the bad habit of idleness.

    My experience shows that any kind of approach based on personal organization, use of productivity tools, time management methods, or attempts at habit formation using willpower will fail if there is no environmental pressure (in the form of friends and family, and not just institutions) to maintain a high level of personal productivity.

  3062. How to minimize procrastination 2015-11-15 05:50:32 icc97
    I created a Pomodoro Timer [1] to procrastinate instead of doing actual work. It has the novelty of giving you Lock Stock film quotes every 25 mins.

    [1]: http://pom.ianchanning.com

  3063. How to minimize procrastination 2015-11-15 05:56:44 icc97
    I'm a leechblock user on FF.

    I still procrastinate even when I've got my use of reddit, twitter and facebook down to basically nothing.

    Just HN is enough to kill off most of the productive work time, so if you spend time on the other sites I just don't see how a functional work life is possible.

  3064. How to minimize procrastination 2015-11-15 15:46:12 stewbrew
    I personally don't get why people talk that much about procrastination just to avoid the question: Am I using my time on things I'm actually interested in or do I just go on because I get paid too much to jump ship.

  3065. How the Pomodoro Technique changed my workday 2015-11-18 06:55:38 baby
    I don't think the 25 minutes matter that much. I always did 30 minutes, and then if I feel like I wanted more time, I would ignore the alarm.

    The principle is to give you a small amount of time you have to focus. Then once you did that, everything else seems easier.

    Pomodoro is not really a time management technique, rather a motivation/anti-procrastination technique. But OP is trying to sell his product so... buzzwords.

  3066. How the Pomodoro Technique changed my workday 2015-11-18 07:23:16 such_a_casual
    Creating deadlines for work is not revolutionary, original, or insightful even if you give it a cute name. I used to use 45 minute intervals when I used to procrastinate projects. These intervals would be split up into 15|15|15 minute goals and then again into 5|5|5 when necessary. I'm not gonna call myself a genius, give it a cool name, or write a blog post about it because organizing one's time in such a simplistic manner is just not a big deal.

  3067. How I’m Handling My Depression Using an App 2015-11-23 19:18:45 rotorblade
    I find this approach quite interesting, I'm not depressed myself (I have not been diagnosed with clinical depression, at least) but I am diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.

    At first glance this sort of approach seems also to be applicable to some anxiety disorders, but from how I understand cognitive behavioural therapy, applying such a method might be a bad thing to do...

    Some anxiety disorders makes you, such as mentioned in the article, "[...] procrastinate over all kinds of jobs from the most basic domestic tasks to the really important stuff [...]". One consequence can be that you rely on others to make you do them. For example if you have an anxiety disorder and you get anxious over planning a trip, you might tell a friend to help you do it. Now the anxiety could take another form, which makes you get anxious if you have not had your plan, as in this example, reviewed by a friend.

    This could make it worse; You have task X that makes you anxious (planning trips, in the example), you invent task Y (seeking help from a friend, in the example) to relieve your anxiety for that task, but now when you try to perform task X, you get anxious if you have not done Y. Meaning to solve the underlying problem of breaking your behavioural pattern, you have to not only solve the behavioural pattern that makes you anxious over X, but also stop using Y, which was not there from the beginning (or might have been enhanced from applying this new behavioural pattern).

    This is how I have come to understand a part of cognitive behavioural therapy, and I could definitely see how, if I were to use an app like this, I would start using it to relieve my anxiety by inventing a new behavioural pattern (i.e. using the app) that does not solve the problem, but instead induces anxiety over not using the app.

    This article makes me then wonder, could a similar thing happen to someone with depression? (EDIT: Perhaps like p4wnc6 mentions in a comment below.)

    It was pointed out to me that there might be a form of an app however that might be good in the realm of cognitive behavioural therapy in application to anxiety. One method of facing your problem is to get a realistic view of your expectations and realise your behavioural patterns to be able to break them. For example, one method is to have a thought-diary, where you record your thoughts on a regular basis so that, even without reviewing past entries, you at least start consciously thinking about what thoughts are, for example, inducing anxiety. So perhaps a tool that would help you recognize thought/behavioural patterns would be more safe (in the sense of the philosophy of cognitive behavioural therapy) to use.

  3068. If the internet is addictive, why we don't regulate it? 2015-11-25 19:39:10 karmacondon
    Ok, let's discuss the ideas presented in the article. The two forms main forms of regulation suggested near the end of the piece seem to be letting users control the amount of content/notifications that they consume, and flagging users who seem like they are exhibiting signs of addiction.

    Most sites do offer options to control the number of notifications, etc, but most people just stick with the defaults anyway. Even if there were an option for "Disable infinite scroll for me because I can't control my procrastination", how many people do you really think would use it?

    Likewise, if Zynga et al did implement some kind of flag for users who play too much, do you think it would make a difference? If someone is willing to invest 5 hours clicking a Farmville button, then a popup that says "We noticed that you spent the whole day clicking a button, don't you have something better to do?" probably isn't going to be epiphanic for them. Casinos and some gambling websites are required to do this now, and it hasn't cured gambling addiction yet. Just like adding a perfunctory "Please drink responsibly" to the end of beer commercials has had a small effect.

    What could work? In some parts of Asia, security officers will forcibly remove people from cybercafes if they're showing signs of addiction. But most people in the west use home internet, which would make physical enforcement cost prohibitive. Laws could be passed that outright ban certain types of games. But a politician would look pretty silly taking a stand against Mafia Wars on the floor of a legislative body, especially given recent world events.

    There might be a great solution, maybe offered in your book recommendation (thanks for that, btw). But it's hard to see what can practically be done about this problem, other than people exerting more self control in a changing world.

  3069. Video Game Is Built to Be Prescribed to Children With A.D.H.D. 2015-11-28 21:58:28 TeMPOraL
    > extreme sleepyness during daytime (whenever something gets boring.)

    This is something I suffer from as well, and it tends to affect my productivity at work significantly. Maybe it's time to try out some games too (though I know I have problems with stopping procrastination).

  3070. Addicted to Distraction 2015-11-30 01:47:58 DanBC
    I said "part" of the modern definition of dependence. By snipping that you distort the meaning of what I said.

    > Are you claiming that chemical addiction/dependence isn't really addiction/dependence if you can "override" it?

    No, and you can't read that from my comment.

    > To claim that my addiction to procrastination isn't really an addiction because I recognize it and doesn't feel so powerless than I would want to kill myself is absurd.

    I didn't claim that, and to think I did form what I wrote is absurd.

  3071. Addicted to Distraction 2015-11-30 01:58:03 cobweb
    It's very easy though to procrastinate when in 'command' of a web browser.

    Removing the device removes the temptation.

    Typically I can be in the middle of something else, sit down in front of the laptop to quickly check the news or something, and end up walking away from it a few hours later. It's very easy to get sucked in. I guess I'm weak minded.

  3072. Ask HN: How do develop a side project when you have a 40hr/week job? 2015-12-01 00:42:24 rl3
    Engaging in a leisure activity while feeling guilt for doing so.

    It's probably safe to say there's a large overlap with procrastination.

  3073. Guide to Personal Productivity Methods 2015-12-02 16:26:28 qvikr
    I've had to struggle with procrastination since highschool (now 10+ yrs in the workforce). A couple of things I've noticed about myself and the teams I've worked with:

    - We always find time to do things we love doing. So the trick is to simply fill your bucket with things you genuinely enjoy.

    - Always have a backlog. It might be a note or a sheet on Excel - but always have a list of things that need to get done. Keep adding the new stuff into this as they come, and spend a couple of hours once a week running through this.

    - Get in the flow. Plan your backlog so you have a mix of high, medium and low complexity stuff on your plate.

    - Figure out your "in-the-zone" time. For me, I've noticed that I'm most charged up for creative work later in the evening. Make sure you don't have any meetings or distractions lined up during and at least an hour before your zone time.

    - Get your temple. Everybody needs a place where they can go, zone in and get work done.

    - Have a daily standup where you discuss what you planned to do yesterday, what you did, and what you plan to do today. Do this EVERY SINGLE DAY.

    I've noticed most organized/ disciplined folks just do this automatically. For us procrastinators, it's like starting a workout routine after your BMI has hit the ceiling - you need a system, and you need a system that you'd actually enjoy if you want to stick to it!

  3074. Guide to Personal Productivity Methods 2015-12-02 16:32:32 hliyan
    Someone with a strong predisposition to procrastinate who managed to eventually beat it here.

    As a teenager, I heard someone say "never let a piece of paper cross your desk twice" and took it to heart. Took a while to make it a habit, but now I can apply it to most meetings and emails -- I read, action then archive right there. So I hardly maintain a todo list of any sort. I make a list in the morning and finish/scratch off its items by the evening. Doing that daily, my mind is always refreshed about recurring or long term tasks. It seems to work for me.

    The other thing I found useful is that procrastination, or the getting-started-barrier is proportional to size/complexity of task. I keep breaking the task down to smaller units until I get to something that doesn't fill me with loathing when I think of it. And then I do it. That effectively starts the task.

  3075. Guide to Personal Productivity Methods 2015-12-02 16:59:48 treelovinhippie
    Why is every productivity/procrastination article so damn long? All I do is open it, see the length, add to Pocket, never read. The irony is strong.

  3076. Guide to Personal Productivity Methods 2015-12-02 19:28:27 paulojreis
    Well, I've been down that road a lot. Countless times I found myself reading about ways out of procrastination, until noticing that this was procrastination in itself. Quite frankly, I've even felt ashamed by putting this out loud: I'm delaying work by reading about how to not delay work.

    So, my never-ending work in progress solution: focus on discipline. No magic bullets, no special talent, no nothing. Just focus on being disciplined and have faith on us being creatures of habit (i.e. if you force yourself to do it, it will be easier in the future). A special talent to get things done is cool, as well as being motivated, but - really - you can't rely on those to get things done. Talent comes and goes, much like motivation. Discipline, on the other hand, you can rely on.

  3077. Guide to Personal Productivity Methods 2015-12-02 19:35:14 arocks
    My biggest problem with these list making solutions are what I call the collateral tasks. For example, my list says "Buy a Christmas gift for Jen".

    When I start shopping online, I realize that I don't know much about Jen, so I need to call a friend. Lots of discussion later, I finalize on something to buy then I need to think of a personal note to write.

    At the checkout, my banking application tells me that my internet password needs to be changed. The whole process gets aborted!

    Probably, I exaggerated a little but my point being that each task involves a million micro steps which may or may not be anticipated. No wonder there is a lot of procrastination!

  3078. Guide to Personal Productivity Methods 2015-12-02 20:48:12 endymi0n
    I'm battling procrastination for 15 years now. The three only things that really worked (as in "having effects beyond a few months") for me:

    - Accepting procrastination as part of you & forgiving yourself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10267564

    - Tackling only one important task per day: http://fourhourworkweek.com/2013/11/03/productivity-hacks/

    - Tiny Habits: http://tinyhabits.com/

  3079. Guide to Personal Productivity Methods 2015-12-02 21:08:10 manish_gill
    I've been reading the original book by David Allen and have slowly started to integrate GTD into my life the past couple of weeks using Omnifocus + Google Keep, and it has already made a considerable improvement in my productivity. I've had problems with procrastination as well, but with GTD I see myself wanting to do stuff.

    It hasn't been "life changing" so far, but I almost know that it will change my life once I start practicing it rigorously.

    Also, will definitely check out your setup.

  3080. Repair is a Radical Act 2015-12-02 21:52:24 ghaff
    It won't be $1, but once every year or so I routinely take a handful of items down to a local cleaner to fix/replace zippers, repair a split seam etc. The cost tends toward $5 or so per item. (More for things like zippers.) It's certainly economical if the clothing is otherwise in decent shape. Doing a button myself takes a few minutes--however long I procrastinate about it :-)

    I agree the overall economics of having clothing repaired isn't as attractive as it was 20 years ago. But it can still work--especially for more utilitarian and better-made gear.

  3081. The anonymous Silicon Valley satire that has stumped tech world insiders 2015-12-03 00:20:48 logfromblammo
    We're sorry. We didn't mean to take your productivity out to the back and throw it under the lawnmower. Twice. Can't you procrastinate with us, just a little, please, for old times sake? It'll only take a minute. You can stay for a minute, right?

    Hey, did you see there's a new release of Dwarf Fortress out? You should look at some of the engineering behind the B-29 cannon system. Isn't it interesting how the human body responds to long-term microgravity? How would you like to buy a South Dakota hamlet? Do you think malware could effectively exploit any flaws in multiprocessor computing?

  3082. Splitting Equity Among Founders 2015-12-03 05:11:36 tptacek
    Yuck, what a mess. My monthly rate is absurdly high, because for the last 10 years I've chosen to work primarily for companies that will get a lot of value out of working with me. The fact that I've done security work for big financial firms doesn't mean my work is that valuable to the startup relative to what all the other founders are getting, but my resume anchors my rate there.

    If you're finding it important to draw these kinds of lines between founding team members, that's a sign that you might not have the right founding team members. A founding team that "clicks" and works together is incredibly valuable, probably far more valuable than any year's worth of billing you've ever done. Don't mess it up with stuff like this; it's just not worth it.

    Man, I am even more procrastinatey than normal today.

  3083. Guide to Personal Productivity Methods 2015-12-03 05:52:44 codezero
    Something people fail to recognize or accept is that procrastination is often a manifestation of a form of anxiety. It's an actual mental health disorder, and if you see a professional, you can actually get concrete help.

  3084. Guide to Personal Productivity Methods 2015-12-03 15:51:40 jmnicolas
    I don't understand what's the problem. That you can't include all the collateral tasks in your lists (I don't think you have to do that to be effective) or that these micro steps are a form of procrastination (in your example only the long phone call appears to be a bit procastinuous, yes I reserve the right to invent my own words ;-)?

  3085. Good and Bad Procrastination (2005) 2015-12-03 23:18:00 dasboth
    That's one of the best articles you could read on the subject, I might give it another read seeing as you've linked it here.

    This was another favourite, the one that started my 'journey': http://www.raptitude.com/2011/05/procrastination-is-not-lazi...

    YMMV, but to-do lists were just another source of pressure for me, so I've been trying to create external pressure for myself instead. I was a software developer wanting to learn data science but never went through with any of the MOOCs I started, even though I was interested in the subject. So I started a Masters to give myself that framework of accountability, deadlines etc.

    I realise that's an extreme example, so I'll give a smaller one too. My wife wanted a Wordpress plugin and I offered to help, and immediately set a date for when I'd work on it. Even though she wasn't forcing me or anything, she was the external pressure I created, and rather than make me anxious it actually helped me focus and get the job done.

    The biggest realisation for me was that the barrier to starting something is orders of magnitude bigger than the barrier to keep going, so you can try to experiment with ways to fool yourself into starting. Things like saying "I will work on this but only for 15 minutes, after which I'll reward myself with some time on the Playstation" often lead to me getting into flow before the time is up, and then just carrying on, sometimes for hours.

  3086. Guide to Personal Productivity Methods 2015-12-03 23:50:59 dcx
    I think this goes to the heart of the problem. I've noticed that the root cause of my procrastination is usually fear/anxiety about failure. What do you find works for managing your daily anxiety levels?

  3087. Ask HN: Planning to leave. How best to handle stock options? 2015-12-11 03:10:22 x0x0
    For ISOs, you're only subject to AMT on the spread between fmv and strike price at exercise. However, since there is (I think by law?) a 90-day exercise window after leaving employment, there's only 2 circumstances: (1) exercise while employed, and (2) exercise w/in 90 days after leaving employment. In both cases you're almost certain to be a resident of the state in which you were employed. Nothing I know of would require you to pay AMT to the state in which you were granted the options you exercised, but because it's unlikely for you to be a resident of a different state, it's a less interesting question.

    Also, if your company takes off like a rocket, it's very much in your interest to not procrastinate on exercising vested options, because you want to minimize the AMT-taxed spread between FMV and strike. That increases the likelihood you're a resident of the state in which you were employed when you exercise.

  3088. Ask HN: How do you focus if you work online? 2015-12-12 03:32:38 tinkeredlife
    Procrastinate until you have to do your work.

  3089. Ask HN: How do you focus if you work online? 2015-12-12 04:00:35 staunch
    The hard part is getting started. Productivity is all about momentum. Blocking reddit or whatever is distracting you the most can help you from falling in the procrastination loop.

    Start working on something small at first. Tweak a color or whatever to get started.

  3090. How I became a morning person 2015-12-13 13:37:10 daxfohl
    I'm decent (not awesome) at choosing one and going with it for a few months.

    I find that when I'm a morning person I'm much better at getting "needed stuff" done and also take better care of my health. When I do the night-owl thing, I'm far better at the more forward-thinking things but struggle more with taking care of myself and can procrastinate on short-term requirements.

    I also find that night-owling can make me feel depressed after a while, not taking care of things that I should, whereas being a morning person can make me feel trivial after a while, not really putting any deep thought into things.

    There's some quote the origin escapes me like "they wake up so early because there's so much to do, and go to sleep so early because there's so little to think about" (I'm thinking Middlemarch, but can't find it), which pretty much sums it up. You can't win. (That said I'm pretty happy when on a multi-week solo bike tour and waking up early every day).

  3091. Ask HN: Novelty addiction is ruining my life and career. What should I do? 2015-12-13 15:54:04 y0y
    Do you often show up to work late? Are you seen as generally unreliable? (Be honest with yourself.)

    Do you procrastinate a lot?

    Do you have a hard time transitioning? Are you late for things because you a) can't accurately estimate time and b) can't pull yourself away from the thing you're doing at that moment even though you know you're going to be late if you don't?

    Do you have a very unstructured sleep schedule?

    Do you have high impulsivity? Spending (sounds like it)? Speeding? Substance abuse - including alcohol?

    Did you breeze through HS with decent grades without trying but then suddenly find college and its unstructured environment and lack of supervision much harder and hard for you to succeed in?

    If you answer yes to many of those questions, then you may want to talk to a psychiatrist about the potential for you being ADHD.

    I was very much the same way and was diagnosed at age 29. Best thing to happen to me. I've managed to turn my career and my personal life around.

    Everything you describe sounds like the impulsive behavior of ADHD to me, but I am not a medical professional and I am not trying to diagnose you. You just sound an awful lot like I once did.

    Best of luck..

  3092. Ask HN: Novelty addiction is ruining my life and career. What should I do? 2015-12-13 22:02:35 y0y
    Just realized you had asked for what treatments I had.

    I use medication and cognitive behavioral therapy. They are a tandem duo and neither alone would be nearly as effective.

    First, do yourself a great favor, read the book Driven to Distraction. It's a super easy read and will give you a great amount of insight.

    Second, try to really re-evaluate your fear of medication. ADHD medication gets a bad rap. My opinion is that it's because it's over diagnosed in children and abused heavily at the college level. For those who truly have ADHD, however, it can be a life-change overnight. I mean that.

    The ADHD brain lacks dopamine, this shortage is a major component of the behaviors that follow. A low amphetamine dosage should have no ill effects on the patient (you're not trying to get high on speed here..), but what it does do is artificially boost the dopamine levels in the brain. This covers the shortage that your brain is constantly trying to fill by jumping from exciting thought to exciting thought or through thrill-seeking. Suddenly, your executive functions are much better and you can direct your focus far better. You'll never be "normal", but it's a world of difference. For me, not only did I immediately regain better control over my focus, but I also found I could transition better, I didn't procrastinate as much, and I wasn't as emotionally reactive as I normally was which has always been a major issue in my personal relationships.

    This alone, however, won't fix all the issues. Once you have the medication and are able to wield your focus, the next step is unlearning all those bad habits you've learned over 40 years of struggling and compensating for your ADHD. This is where Cognitive Behavioral Therapy shines.

    These two things together, along with accepting and learning to appreciate your brain for what it is and making use of tools (lists, calendars, regimented scheduling, written goals, etc.) that complement your way of thinking will go a long, long way.

    Anyway, your mileage may vary, and your feelings on medication are between you and your doctor, but this is what worked for me and what I recommend to everyone I know who is thinking of seeking treatment. Best of luck.

  3093. Ask HN: Novelty addiction is ruining my life and career. What should I do? 2015-12-13 22:08:48 y0y
    This is actually a great suggestion provided OP has the organizational skills to keep clients happy and his obligations in order. He also needs to ensure he does not procrastinate.

    I found out the hard way that the freelancing life did not work for me. Double booking clients on accident, forgetting deadlines, not being able to motivate myself to start projects, etc.

    I certainly don't mean to project my experiences onto OP as fact, but ADHD often makes a lot of the skills that are required to run your own freelancing business very difficult to master and stay on top of, alas.

    That being said, I think it's a really great suggestion if OP finds himself out of a job again. Especially if he can do projects serially and try not to overlap them. That's where I got myself into trouble.

  3094. Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy 2015-12-15 02:07:10 jeffshek
    I've played a little with Memorang after reading this yesterday, but I'm struggling to understand what the difference in studying was before and after of Anki.

    What was the reason Memorang changed for the students that Anki didn't provide? Better default flash cards? Gamification? Or multi-factors?

    I've been using Anki for about a year, and I've read a lot about Anki burnout (missing a few days means I'm going to dedicate 2-3 hours on the weekend to catch up). I don't procrastinate this as much so this becomes less of a fear.

  3095. Can't sign in to Google calendar on my Samsung refrigerator 2015-12-15 02:17:51 dasboth
    Thanks, I just successfully wasted 15 minutes on it. 10/10, would procrastinate again.

  3096. How Product Hunt really works 2015-12-16 14:43:10 richardbrevig
    There could be a lot of different reasons why your "Show HN" wasn't successful. Applying that to every "Show HN" is not correct.

    My experience was very different from yours. Stayed on the front page 16 hours, spot #5 for 5 hours (iirc). Similar to you, I had to work myself up to even submit it. I procrastinated 2 hours before posting. Only told 1 friend I had posted. However, I'd consider mine very successful. I did not expect it to be, because if I had, I would have increased the Digital Ocean droplet and my server would not have crashed. Of the ~5 hours I was at spot #5, my server was down almost 3 hours between 3 different crashes.

    I say this on reddit often, between Show HN and PH, people give PH way too much credit. Show HN is a great launching platform, just remember who the audience is.

  3097. Why Are Projects Always Behind Schedule? 2015-12-20 07:43:34 jwatte
    Another common source is delay and procrastination up front.

    First, a dev estimate is given of six months.

    Plan is made to ship in six months.

    Then, stakeholders bicker for four months on whether, how, and when to actually do it.

    Then, dev gets started, being told that they already spent four months, so they should be done in two, according to the "initial estimate."

    Was it "debugging the development process" that called this out? Or "code complete" perhaps?

  3098. Ask HN: PG has many essays. What's your favorite one? 2016-01-01 02:11:45 japhyr
    Good and Bad Procrastination - http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

    I love it; it always makes me feel better about putting aside some obligations to work on really meaningful projects. I share this with students sometimes, and it speaks to some of them as well. There's plenty of conversation about finding your passion in the world, but not so much about working hard on your passion.

  3099. What it’s like to house-hunt in Silicon Valley, the nation’s priciest market 2016-01-01 21:27:51 toomanybeersies
    I feel like the problem with working from home is that people tend to procrastinate and do anything to avoid doing actual work.

    There's a new guy at the coworking space I work at who is self employed, and specifically moved from his home office to the coworking space, just to get himself out of the house and stop procrastinating.

    I'm the same, I can't get anything done at home. Having a dedicated work space improves productivity a heap.

    That being said, it's totally possible to have the staff spread through coworking spaces or serviced offices through different cities, working remotely.

    Also, I spend a lot of time at work interacting with other developers, which is a lot easier and better to do in person. Pair programming is an exercise in frustration trying to do it remotely.

  3100. Findings from 15 years of the International Space Station 2016-01-01 23:44:26 brownbat
    This is an interesting point that has worried me in the past. The clock is ticking on this planet, and this solar system. But the more I've thought about it, the less convinced I am that this really justifies manned exploration at its current costs.

    It will take some big changes to make space more habitable than Earth. If we can make a survivable enclosure in space, odds are that we can make a survivable enclosure on Earth and save the fuel costs, keeping us closer to some nifty raw materials. Massive impacts might make that unsafe,[0] but mostly we're looking at being engulfed by the sun in 5 billion years as a hard stop.

    It's hard to really comprehend how much time that is. It's ten times longer than primates have been around. It's almost 1.5 times as long as all life has been around. Humanity as we know it will no longer exist at that point. If we have living descendents, they could be as unrecognizable to us as apes are to amoebas.

    At that point we're just planning for "life in general" to survive, which we could accomplish by just sending probes with some spores or dormant bacteria on long voyages to distant habitable planets.

    I wouldn't generally recommend procrastination, but this is probably a problem we can kick down the road a few generations. If we hit snooze for just 1/5000th of the remaining time we have, that'd give us a solid million years to up our technological game before tackling interstellar travel. At that point, the problem will probably have become either trivial or hopeless.

    So ultimately, I'm not yet convinced that human survivability experiments are 1000 times as urgent as telescopes, probes, and rovers. That's what I'd be looking for to justify manned's absurd cost premium.

    I was actually hoping this article would convince me otherwise, but if put up next to the top things we've learned from unmanned space experiments, I don't think it would compare very favorably. Definitely not 1000 times favorably.

    I think we all yearn for the stars, and know this is the sort of thing we want to conquer, we want it to be among the great triumphs of humanity. But if we really want it, we should be smart about it. There's so much low hanging fruit we can get from unmanned. It could aid technological progress and deep understanding of the universe, leading to breakthroughs that ultimately leapfrog us past some challenges we'd meet if we just tried to bang our head against colonization today.

    [0] Note that mammals have survived some crazy impacts before, probably by living underground. If we can make a survivable enclosure underground or under the ocean, that will be easier than making one and then launching it into space. Also, near earth object detection and mitigation programs are probably the best way to improve humanity's survivability given current technological capacities (ie, we can't build megastructures in space yet), and those programs compete for NASA money against humans in space too! Gradual climate change is unlikely to make Earth less habitable than Venus or Mars or space. Even if we lost most of our atmosphere and temperatures began to fluctuate by +/- 50 degrees, there'd still be advantages to building controlled structures on Earth rather than building such structures and launching them into inhospitable space. There are degrees of inhospitably, and Earth would have to become nightmarish (eg, probably engulfed by the sun) before we left.

  3101. Ask HN: Would you be interested in a book about coder's block (procrastination)? 2016-01-02 11:42:39 greenyoda
    I have no way of knowing whether I'd be interested in your book since I don't know what your qualifications are (e.g., how much programming experience you have, have you studied the psychology literature related to procrastination, etc.) or how well you write.

    One way to figure out if people are interested in your writing is to blog about your topic and see if your blog gets a lot of visitors and commenters. Then you can use your blog posts as the basis for a book. For example, Michael Lopp's books grew out of his blog - see http://randsinrepose.com/books.

  3102. L(earn) Your Dream Job. Offer Guaranteed 2016-01-05 00:55:47 erikarrabal
    Thanks for the feedback. Our goal is to be extremely transparent, make education accessible and affordable, and help close the unemployment gap (especially for recent graduates and young professionals who are struggling with securing steady career-type jobs the most). So the fact that our value proposition got lost in translation means we definitely need to tighten our copy before moving forward.

    The tuition kick-back is an extra incentive to motivate hungry job seekers to not only learn professional skills that are in demand and address industry gaps, but actively search for quality job offers that relate to their passions and interests on our platform as well. A common problem nowadays (and something I've experienced in the past myself) is active procrastination. Where you keep learning and learning, but never getting your hands dirty and doing anything. Our goal is to become as outcome-driven as possible.

    Does that clear things up? Also, do you have any other suggestions? I'd love to send you an updated link once we tighten and clear things up.

  3103. L(earn) Your Dream Job. Offer Guaranteed 2016-01-05 12:14:42 acconrad
    Hey Erik, I hear you! It is clear from your website what your incentives and message are, but it was lost in the title for this post.

    I think you're making a lot of heavy-handed assertions:

    > help close the unemployment gap

    is extremely different goal from

    > motivate hungry job seekers to not only learn professional skills that are in demand and address industry gaps, but actively search for quality job offers that relate to their passions and interests

    Can I ask - have you ever been unemployed? As in, for more than a day? And against your will? If you have, than you can empathize with how utterly terrifying it is to be jobless - especially if you have a mortgage and kids to take care of. Which contradicts:

    > A common problem nowadays (and something I've experienced in the past myself) is active procrastination. Where you keep learning and learning, but never getting your hands dirty and doing anything.

    Who is actively procrastinating while recently unemployed or underemployed? I can't see that being a realistic scenario. Now throw them into a society which has completely uplifted an entire industry (industrial manufacturing) that they were trained for, and expect them to learn professional skills that are in demand. How do you expect a GE factory worker of 25 years to just magically gain the confidence to tackle machine learning?

    Your endeavor is noble. Your incentives are flawed. People are indeed clamoring for jobs. People are further attracted to hot fields like tech for their lucrative salaries, and they are understaffed in places like the United States. But come on - if I spent $500 or even $5000 and got a job, I'm not only getting my $500/$5000 back, but I'm getting a $80k job too, while the failing factory worker throws down $500 and no job, is now purely $500 in the hole.

    I just don't see that as an ethical incentive, and I would strongly consider talking to your customers to understand and empathize with the situations they are in and how they arrived where they were, and what they need to do to get to the next step, particularly if you believe your customers are those who are trying to get themselves out of unemployment.

  3104. My 'smart drugs' nightmare 2016-01-05 13:25:03 peteretep
    Perhaps. I find Modafinil makes me slightly obsessive about anything. If I take it while procrastinating then I get really caught up in procrastination tasks. If I take it and force myself to start working straight away, great forces come to my aid.

  3105. Bayes's Theorem: What's the Big Deal? 2016-01-05 23:51:38 cwyers
    > In many cases, estimating the prior is just guesswork, allowing subjective factors to creep into your calculations. You might be guessing the probability of something that--unlike cancer—does not even exist, such as strings, multiverses, inflation or God. You might then cite dubious evidence to support your dubious belief. In this way, Bayes’ theorem can promote pseudoscience and superstition as well as reason.

    Oh please. You can do plenty of psuedoscience and superstition with good old frequentist statistics. And of all the people you could pick to represent Bayesian statistics, instead of I don't know, Andrew Gelman or someone, the author picks... Eliezer Yudkowsky? If nothing else, this provides inspiration for me to quit procrastinating on my "ASK ME ABOUT ROKO'S BASILISK" novelty t-shirt idea.

  3106. Bayes's Theorem: What's the Big Deal? 2016-01-06 01:19:18 TeMPOraL
    > If nothing else, this provides inspiration for me to quit procrastinating on my "ASK ME ABOUT ROKO'S BASILISK" novelty t-shirt idea.

    Can you tell us the story about that party when you got so drunk and started yelling in anger at a poor random dude? Except you weren't drunk at all and the dude behaved like an asshole, but nobody cares about the truth since you're a nerd and you look cute when you're sad that we're telling stories about your drinking problems.

    That's basically what happened there. I wish people stopped with this Roko's Basilisk nonsense.

  3107. Bret Victor's Bookshelf 2016-01-06 06:34:20 didgeoridoo
    Procrastination to the rescue! I want this list for myself so I decided to hand-transcribe it while I avoid doing a bit of real work. I'm 1/5 of the way through but figured I'd share what I've got so far:

    (edit: deleted link, use Jack's instead)

  3108. Working fewer hours would make us more productive 2016-01-06 06:44:08 barnabee
    Not everyone is fully utilised at work, nor does every job's output scale linearly with incremental effort. So while the above is true in some cases (particularly for 'assembly line' type jobs, including programming, where there is a constant supply of discrete and valuable tasks) it is also the case that many people are productive for far less than the full time they spend at work and that a shorter working week would result in significant & near immediate productivity increases in a good number of cases. Examples would be bureaucratic work, a lot of generic 'project' roles, and situations where procrastination is common.

    Perhaps it's not that people are particularly much more productive over short hours as that presenteeism and the need to be seen to be working long hours masks the true amount of productive time and many people will do less than they could if they think they can get away with it (particularly if they work long hours at a job they dislike), nonetheless it would be better for unproductive time at work to be spent elsewhere and reducing the length of the work week could achieve this.

  3109. Neal Stephenson: Why I Am a Sociomediapath (2015) 2016-01-06 23:59:25 rouxz
    >Then there's the entertainment aspect: What's wrong with "wasting" time if you're enjoying yourself?

    About the entertainment aspect. I think the point here is following: modern web media/pics/etc is too attractive and people can't focus on things what really matter. Every website with "funny cats" tries very hard to retain you as user and your attention -> entertain you more. I think many people (myself included) fall in risk group and can't actually measure/control time spent on procrastination while browsing infinite number of subreddits or something for interesting stuff. Even when i really need things to be done - there is something that can immediately capture my attention. And I have to say I am not alone.

    The root cause here is inability to focus on important things and finally quit procrastination.

  3110. Neal Stephenson: Why I Am a Sociomediapath (2015) 2016-01-07 02:03:44 jasode
    >since I outgrew the idea that I need to erect some kind of monument to myself in order to validate my existence.

    I know you're generalizing but I don't think vanity "monuments" is accurate of most techies' aspirations.

    People just want FU money: comfort, security, and freedom. The "starting a succesful software based company" is a reasonable shorthand for FU money for techies because if programmers are going to get rich, they're not going to do it by striking oil in their backyard or acting as leads in Star Wars films. If people don't have fu money by the time they're 40-something, they question their current job, their previous life choices, and their future possibilities. People can get bummed out and even question their abilities -- aka wondering why they procrastinate and can't focus (e.g. "Damnit! I'm too distracted with social media!")

    I think most programmers would be absolutely fine with being "not so famous" like Chris Hughes[1] with a net worth of $450 million instead of the more well-known Zuckerberg with $40 billion. Zuckerberg's face is on all the magazine covers but most programmers would be ok with no publicity and $450 million.

    I don't think the percentage of techies with the ego to be the next Larry Ellison or Steve Jobs is that high. Maybe I'm wrong.

    [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

  3111. Hacker Monthly Shuts Down 2016-01-09 22:48:49 TeMPOraL
    I was just posting the link to your newsletter.

    I'm a subscriber, and even though most of the time I am up-to-date with the site (read: I'm a hardcore procrastinator), I still often miss an interesting article and only discover it later thanks to your e-mails. Thank you for all your good work, and please keep doing it! :).

  3112. Research points to to conscientiousness as the one trait to rule them all (2014) 2016-01-10 22:18:46 digbyloftus
    It's an opinion piece by a guy who spends his time pumping out listicles and great journalism such as "How the Hunger Games Can Help You Stop Procrastinating". I don't think it's one of their main articles/something that would appear in print.

  3113. Why NSA Surveillance Scares Me 2016-01-12 06:39:06 junto
    With regards to your comments about assumed stability, I believe you are right.

    The slow attrition of our civil rights and the strengthening of the surveillance state is not unlike the process of smoking cigarettes. In the beginning it seems like fun. Everyone is doing it. People warn you that it's dangerous, but you don't feel bad, and in fact you feel kind of cool.

    Some years down the line and you start to develop a bit of a nasty hacky cough. You brush it off, but in the back of your head you think it might be connected to your smoking habit.

    Then one day you feel a lump. You don't feel well, and after a bit of procrastination, you go and see the doctor. You find out you have cancer, and it's terminal.

    All of a sudden you're dead. How did that happen? You feel like an idiot. You knew smoking was going to kill you, but you did it anyway.

    Slow attrition is the worst for the human psyche. We just can't get out heads around it.

  3114. Cxx.jl: C++ interpreter embedded in Julia 2016-01-12 19:31:35 KenoFischer
    Oh, cool to see my little project on here, just in time for some lunch-time procrastination. Happy to answer any questions.

  3115. So You Think You Can Program an Elevator 2016-01-13 06:48:04 nosequel
    Same exact thing, about 16 years ago for me. He presented it (I think) to see who procrastinated on the project, knowing it'd take way longer than it sounded.

  3116. The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do 2016-01-15 04:28:16 aerialcombat
    Maybe we need to find the answer to 'how to fight procrastination even when knowing the answer to fighting procrastination'

  3117. The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do 2016-01-15 05:40:45 awakeasleep
    The central example of the article supports your point (and undermines the authors).

    If "Akrasia is the state of acting against your better judgment" and Victor Hugo led a wonderful life and compressed all his work into the absolute minimum amount of time and produced a masterpiece, where was he acting against his better judgement?

    He got to have his cake and eat it too! If you look back on your own procrastination with some honesty, you'll probably see the same thing. You had fun, then you sweated through the work and everything turned out fine.

  3118. The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do 2016-01-15 05:48:46 DarkTree
    I've been growing tired of the many articles about "Never Procrastinate Again!", "Top 8 ways to be productive" and "Do These 10 Morning Boosters every day". But I gained some new insights in this article, and I appreciate the context it was laced with. Thanks for sharing.

  3119. Dear GitHub 2016-01-15 07:00:24 ggreer
    I maintain a C repo[1] and user idiocy is much lower than what I've seen in JS projects of similar popularity. Still, I agree with these criticisms of GitHub. I hate +1 spam enough to delete such comments. Sometimes I even ban those who do it. I'm frustrated by people who open idiotic issues[2][3][4][5]. I procrastinate on bad pull requests because my options are:

    1. Close the PR with little or no comment. People then think I'm an asshole.

    2. Spend hours explaining why the code is terrible and why it can't be improved. In addition to being a big time sink, PR submitters often don't understand the criticisms. Half the time, they still think I'm wrong.

    People even defend stuff as obviously wrong as adding a thousand lines of GPL'd code to an Apache-licensed project.[6] Then they say I should remove .gitignore support from ag because it doesn't implement 100% of .gitignore syntax. As if users would be happier with tons of extraneous results instead of some extraneous results.

    A lot of this is cultural, but GitHub could help steer things in a better direction with the features proposed in this letter. I hope they take this letter seriously.

    1. https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher

    2. User accuses ag of hard-locking his computer: https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/issues/791

    3. User wants ag to always print filenames, unlike every other tool out there: https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/issues/749

    4. User wants ag to replace PCRE with a totally different, incompatible regex library: https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/issues/698

    5. User aliases 'ag' to 'grep', then complains ag doesn't work: https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/issues/578

    6. https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher/pull/614

  3120. The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do 2016-01-15 07:31:56 brazzledazzle
    Except when it doesn't turn out fine because of something you didn't anticipate or something outside of your control. Had you afforded yourself the proper amount of time you would have been able to deal with those issues. If you're a procrastinator don't delude yourself into thinking it's somehow a positive attribute.

  3121. The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do 2016-01-15 09:15:38 TeMPOraL
    Folks at LessWrong did quite a lot of discussion and research on the topic. I recommend going there for some in-depth, science-based reading:

    - lesswrong.com/lw/3w3/how_to_beat_procrastination/

    - lesswrong.com/lw/9wr/my_algorithm_for_beating_procrastination/

    - http://alexvermeer.com/getmotivated/ - has a pretty neat anti-procrastination poster that I'm still procrastinating about printing out and hanging on the wall

    - https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Akrasia

  3122. The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do 2016-01-15 10:31:02 theunixbeard
    Does anyone else not have a problem with procrastination but instead following through and finishing projects ? Like you get 80-90% of the way there but for whatever reason drop off before completing the job?

    This seems like the worst problem because you do 80-90% of the work with 0% of the benefit of accomplishing what you set out to do...

  3123. The Happiness Code: Cold, hard rationality 2016-01-15 11:57:16 nefitty
    Jesus, this sounds so complicated. Mental models of self-behavior are effective ways to change those behaviors, but it sounds like these guys are piling way too much on at once. My most effective behavior change models have always been simple and almost singular. The one I'm exploring now is "Dopamine in your brain correlates with motivation." Others have been "Plan ahead all at once so you aren't tempted to procrastinate", "Measure it and visualize it to drive yourself forward", etc. I've effectively changed my behavior in massive ways by playing with simple models of myself. Constantly thinking of all those cognitive biases and mental errors seems like it would exhaust me to the point of paralysis.

  3124. Why I Taught Myself to Procrastinate 2016-01-17 18:51:48 known
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development can fix procrastination

  3125. Why I Taught Myself to Procrastinate 2016-01-17 19:17:18 aninhumer
    If you're able to structure your "procrastination" time, it's not procrastination, it's just enforced breaks.

  3126. Why I Taught Myself to Procrastinate 2016-01-17 19:32:41 justusw
    Very interesting. Especially regarding the starting a task, e.g. writing a sentence, and stopping midway only to return a day later. It resonates with me.

    I think an important distinction in procrastination, that was not explored in this article, is that a task has to be started or at least prepared in order to successfully procrastinate upon it. For example, it won't help to put off finishing a university assignment until the last minute if you haven't read the task description. In that case, the thought processes that were mentioned in the article would never have a chance to start. On the other hand, if you have read a task description, even if you are procrastinating while binge-watching Netflix, a background process is still running and working on the task. The author of this article describes it as "Our first ideas, after all, are usually our most conventional" vs "When you procrastinate, you’re more likely to let your mind wander."

    This ties in with a work methodology that works for me very well. Instead of working on a project non-stop as soon as it starts, I prefer to work in small chunks that give me enough time to "background-process" the task at hand while I'm not working on the given task. It is similar to practicing or physical exercise, in that the time that you spend on the activity is as important as the time that you are not spending on the activity. Your brain and muscles need time to regenerate and help strengthen the abilities that you are trying to nurture.

  3127. Why I Taught Myself to Procrastinate 2016-01-17 20:33:21 andrelaszlo
    I so wish I had this "problem".

    "But if you’re a procrastinator, next time you’re wallowing in the dark playground of guilt and self-hatred over your failure to start a task, remember that the right kind of procrastination might make you more creative."

    On the other hand, if you're not procrastinating you might end up being a professor, a published author and writing articles for The New York Times... I'll just stick to the guilt and self-hatred, for now.

  3128. Why I Taught Myself to Procrastinate 2016-01-17 20:37:08 Eupolemos
    I read an article once with a professor who claimed that all his interesting and good work was done as procrastination from his proper duties.

  3129. Why I Taught Myself to Procrastinate 2016-01-17 20:40:37 andrelaszlo
    I think you might be referring to John Perry :)

    http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/ [0]

    I really liked his book "The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging and Postponing". I read a lot about procrastination, as a form of procrastination.

    It's not all bad, of course. But it can be a problem. These professors writing about it clearly has managed to make it work for them somehow. I guess the grass seems greener on the other side of the procrastination spectrum.

    [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10151481

  3130. Why I Taught Myself to Procrastinate 2016-01-17 20:49:50 LifeQuestioner
    Procrastination and creativity, cause or effect though? Are people who are creative more likely to procrastinate? Does procrastinating make you more creative?

    I don't find when I procrastinate I all more likely to let my mind wander AT ALL. The thing is, my brain is trying to ignore what i'm trying to do by often absorbing in something else. I feel, my mind wandering reduces. Positive mind wandering, for me, happens when i'm relaxed, chilled out on the way home on the bus, bored, many other conditions. Not when i'm chronically anxious trying to hide away from the world and the tasks at hand.

    Purposely waiting...is not really procrastinating...it's purposely waiting...it's thinking...

    But it's nice to see a different outlook on procrastination. And to hear about precrastination.

  3131. Why I Taught Myself to Procrastinate 2016-01-17 21:08:34 pcurve
    "So I woke up one morning and wrote a to-do list for procrastinating more. "

    This guy had some good punchlines. Lol

  3132. Why I Taught Myself to Procrastinate 2016-01-17 22:23:18 heraclez
    Too much contradicting stuff on the internet, it's hard to know what to assimilate and what to filter out.

    -To procrastinate, or not to procrastinate. That should not be a question

  3133. Life is Short 2016-01-17 22:23:53 AYBABTME
    I love this essay, and I love the mindset of being aware that your life is limited and your time should not be wasted. I find it is avery enabling realization. A personal favorite quote of mine:

          "Think of your many years of procrastination; how the gods have repeatedly 
      granted you further periods of grace, of which you have taken no advantage. 
      It is time now to realize the nature of the universe to which you belong, 
      and of that controlling Power whose offspring you are; and to understand 
      that your time has a limit set to it. Use it, then, to advance your 
      enlightenment; or it will be gone, and never in your power again." 

    Marcus Aurelius (Meditations 2:4)

  3134. Richard Stallman on Data Autonomy [video] 2016-01-18 02:01:27 timonovici
    Mostly because you descend into a circle of procrastination and self-hate. And the funny thing is, they are engineered that way: facebook doesn't want you to keep the connections with your dear ones, all they want is to keep you more and more on their website, scrolling mindlessly. That why I blocked the site in /etc/hosts, and only use messenger.com and pidgin with the new facebook plugin.

  3135. Speed reading promises are too good to be true 2016-01-19 01:34:59 mdip
    On its own, you're not going to magically be able to reduce your reading time by 95% and still maintain the level of retention you get by a slow word-for-word read from a few weeks with an app/course. As the article states, there's more to reading than just swallowing a word more quickly. But the techniques enable you to change the way you consume information by eliminating the bottleneck and associated procrastination of staring down a 1000+ page book and the weeks it will take to get through it.

    I'm a huge advocate of speed reading, personally[1]. However, I think the points made in the article have a lot of merit.

    Speed reading should be seen as a tool for consuming information, but you have to adjust the way you learn accordingly[2]. I can read, cover to cover, a 1000 page book in a few hours. My strategy for learning from a large book is to read it more than once (often three to four times) to treat the first read as a 30,000 ft view. I don't do included exercises, and I also limit my note-taking. My second read is with pen and paper in hand. I break for exercises and notes, but otherwise continue to read just as rapidly. If I struggled with the concepts, I'll repeat the process.

    Years ago, that book would have taken several sessions to complete the first read and the second read would only be over particular sections. I'd be done after weeks, rather than a weekend, which also negatively affected my retention. Reading from day 1 is built upon and by day 19, it's foggy. When I can do that in an afternoon, it's fresh on my mind. And at worst, with several reads, I'm still getting through the material in half the time it would have previously taken me and with solid retention[3].

    It's also not something you become good at over night. After I took the course, I could read twice as fast, but not twice as effectively. It requires a lot of practice. When I sit down to read something, I have a goal of learning whatever it is I'm trying to learn, but I have a second goal of consuming that material more effectively. The first few years, I focused on reducing my time spent on the first read. As the years have gone by, I've adjusted my note-taking and methods for retention. I read a 500+ page book (often equivalent text in PDF) nearly every weekend. I pick things I am using today and grab books that build on that.

    [1] I took a multi-week course that focused on the typical "eye movement" techniques along with skim/scan techniques. That course started, for me personally, a rapid change in my ability to consume information from text and I still believe it was one of the most important classes I've ever taken. I greatly prefer book reading over courses these days because I can completely control my pace from very rapid to word-for-word.

    [2] I'm speaking purely of technical reading. I do not speed read fiction and my personal experience is that speed-reading fiction is awful. I stick with audio books for that.

    [3] I do not have data to back this up. I've been reading large, technical programming books for 18 years, and some of that added speed is that I have a relative understanding of the work before I begin. I know how to read a programming book to maximize my retention and I read programming text to become better at what I do, which is something I've learned how to do from years of practice.

    [Edit: Added a note clarifying fiction vs technical]

  3136. How to Leverage Technical Debt 2016-01-19 09:27:38 purpled_haze
    The development team at a company I worked for stated they had technical debt. They said they would spend the next year eradicating it. Then didn't even try.

    You want to know what technical debt really is? The result of procrastination in the realm of tech.

    It's not even worth giving it a funny name like technical debt that upper management doesn't really get. They understand what procrastination is.

    You can't spin procrastination. It is what it is.

  3137. How to Leverage Technical Debt 2016-01-19 09:40:58 chatmasta
    Is someone who takes a financial loan procrastinating paying their bills? Or are they solving a short term problem the best way they know how?

    Procrastination may lead to technical debt, but it's not the only source. The biggest source of technical debt is insufficient planning for future product requirements, leading to old code blocking new features.

    That's why the concept is called "debt," because it's as if you took out a loan on the first iteration of the product, and then many features later, you're still paying interest on that loan.

    So no, technical debt is not purely the result of procrastination. Sure, procrastination, especially in the planning stage, can create technical debt. But even the most productive people, those mythical creatures who never procrastinate, are vulnerable to creating technical debt for themselves. In fact you might argue they're more likely to create technical debt, if they choose to skip the planning phase and jump right into coding.

  3138. How to Leverage Technical Debt 2016-01-19 10:19:41 nlawalker
    >> insufficient planning for future product requirements

    This covers both low prioritization and procrastination, the former of which I think is what you're getting at, and the latter of which I think is what purpled_haze is talking about.

    It's the difference between "we'd like to clean up this technical debt but these new features are too pressing" and "we have nothing else going on, we're going to clean up this technical debt..." and then never doing it. In my experience, the latter happens because no one ever generates a real execution plan to get it done, often because there's just no reward for doing so.

  3139. How to Leverage Technical Debt 2016-01-19 10:29:04 crpatino
    Disagreed.

    Procrastination is letting for tomorrow what you know you should be doing today.

    Technical debt is what happens when you try to do today what is due for tomorrow but you know deep down it cannot be done properly in less than 3 days. Then you deliver and you pray that none will be looking close enough to notice the difference.

    What the article says is that technical debt is actually a good thing if whatever you are doing today has more than 50% chance of being thrown out of the window by the end of the month. If is better to try 20 crappy things, discard 15 and keep 5, than to do 8 good things and keep 1 or 2.

    But this is only true when people take next month to fix the 5 things that were found to work in the past "sprint". The reason we all hate technical debt is because virtually no one does that.

  3140. How to Leverage Technical Debt 2016-01-19 10:37:44 bpchaps
    I don't know if "debt" or "procrastination" are really the correct words. It seems to be somewhat in the middle of the two, where the problem comes from "We'll take care of that in the future." where the future never comes.

    A good example of that might be in log refactoring. I recently quit a place for what amounted to a complete lack of interest in correcting bad logs. After spending 8 hours trying to fix some non-prod issues and being completely halted by timeout errors, I was told "Those errors are fine, they even happen in prod (!!!). We talked about fixing it, but agreed to do it way further down the line." So, not really procrastination or technical debt, but something similar since it's 'debt' and 'procrastination' are simply symptoms of a larger problem.

  3141. How Sandstorm Works: Containerize data, not services 2016-01-21 10:29:01 nickpsecurity
    Appreciate it. I didn't realize who you were or that Sandstorm was a crowd-funded FOSS project until now. Just read through your site a bit, including advisory response to Ben Laurie. Nice touch, there. ;)

    Anyway, overall results give me a good, default impression of this work. I'm semi-retired from high-assurance security but am considering taking on some OSS projects or contributions. I'll add this one to list of possibilities as you're one of the few doing quite a few things right. No promises as I'm often a procrastinator or trying to do too many R&D activities at once to commit to a codebase.

    Except the sandboxing scheme and endpoint. The usual. (sighs) That's OK, though, for now to get adoption and testing of your software. Robust implementations on separation kernels or whatever can come later if it proves worthwhile. Just try to keep it portable, at least not too dependent on Linux model or toolchain specifics. That will help if someone decides to raise assurance level by porting it to high-security tech. It's damn near impossible for a lot of modern software that gets too clever with platform-specific stuff.

    Not sure I could do it in C++, anyway, as I don't remember that language. Was too complex for high assurance. Main idea was to apply something like the Nizza Security Architecture and Softbound + CETS to it w/ extra attention to input validation. LANGSEC has a parsing system, too, so maybe someone could integrate their techniques with your middleware. Quite a few possibilities even with minimal modifications.

    Note: Also, as you're already looking at syscalls, there is an old trick I used to use and which Poly^2 independently invented where you straight up rip sys call or optional functions out of the kernel code. Just put a return 0 or something similar in stuff you'll never use. Ditto with userland although you can just remove whole components or MAC them most of the time. Makes system leaner, too. I ran stuff on non-Intel, unpopular processors while removing evidence that I was doing that for added hacker frustration. ;)

  3142. Ask HN: How do prolific programmers go about their daily lives? 2016-01-25 04:57:15 drostie
    Three tips come to mind:

    1. Get enough sleep. You've only written three paragraphs and there are already a lot of suggestions that you need more ("I don't feel as productive as others", "I just drop dead in bed" when well-rested people usually take 15-30 to fall asleep, "I felt like I was inches away from becoming part of the zombie horde.")

    Coding pretty intensively uses your short-term memory: "I need to take this query which I prepared above and execute it on those variables, wait, this key from the database gets renamed to that on the front-end, okay, test it... dictionary does not have the right key on line 189? What's over there? Oh, I forgot to do this critical preprocessing step, jump back to my code, 3 lines before, add the function call, test again -- what the crap is that, switch back to editor, aha, missed a semicolon here...". Each of those actions requires you to not be overwhelmed by the number of details you have to remember, whether it's where your tool for testing is located, or what the preprocessing function was called, or what have you.

    When you're even a little sleep-deprived, your short-term memory decreases dramatically -- if most normal humans can only juggle 7 balls (7 big details or crucial tasks occupying their memory), missing a few hours of sleep brings it down to 4 or 3. So of course everything looks two times bigger.

    Sleep deprivation also causes you to lean on substances like sugar and caffeine, and those substances tend to cause procrastination "I'll browse Reddit until this kicks in" -- until their effects wear off and leave you right back where you started with a bunch of nothing done. You can mitigate this somewhat by giving yourself a short task to do before the caffeine kicks in, even if it's an asinine one like "write down what you want to do today." Speaking of the which...

    2. Write shit down, set alarms, otherwise use harebrained tools.

    Those 7 balls that you can juggle need to incorporate just about everything that is happening in both personal and professional life -- not just code. If those things are in the mix, then you're not as effective. Just like how you should set an alarm for "time to start brushing my teeth and getting ready to go to bed" so that you can get enough sleep, you can set an alarm for "at this time I need to stop everything and call the couch company to send someone to fix the couch at home." Write those things down somewhere, set an alarm to look at that list and do the things on it.

    3. Kill context-switches. Either lie your ass off about them or say "no" up front or be honest -- whatever is necessary to kill them.

    Take your hands, open them in front of you, spread out your fingers, interleave them. That is 8 work tasks spread out over some distance L. Maybe it's 8 hours of the day working on two projects, Right and Left. One gets concluded at 4pm, the other at 5pm. We'll assume you got started at 8am and ignore an hour for lunch.

    Now separate your hands and collapse your fingers. Put your right hand above your left hand, touching. Still 8 fingers in a row, but now you notice that your Left project is released at 12pm before lunch, while your Right project is still released at 5pm after. You just improved your average time-to-completion by 2 hours with no stress, and no improvement in efficiency: you just rushed one project out, then focused on the other.

    Now interleave your fingers again and remember how each of those switches between projects feels. You've got 7 in there, yes? Each one doesn't feel good, does it? Because you've got to stop juggling one set of balls, put it all down, and slowly start juggling this other set of balls. Each context switch eats up mental energy. (It also eats up time -- if you need 15 minutes to really get up to speed, then the 7 context switches eat up almost 2 extra hours of your day. So there is an undisclosed efficiency gain here.)

    If management forces on you to be working on the two things at once with constant status updates, strongly consider lying your butt off. (Of course, first show your boss the trick with the fingers, it usually convinces them.) Because if management is asking you to do worse work slower so that they can be polite to two of their separate clients, then management has failed. They're supposed to buffer you from all of that crap.

    If you can't lie and you can't convince your management, try a firm "no." Just say "I'm on this high-stakes Project Left right now, I can't take on Project Right right now, maybe when Project Left is over I can. Fortunately I think Project Left will be done by end-of-day today, possibly before, so if you really can't find someone else, I may be able to start Project Right today." A "no" always goes better with a nice timetable that suggests that the task will still get accomplished in a timely manner.

    Similarly, ignore those "trends" when you're coding. Trends are another project with another context switch. Don't interleave it with anything else.

  3143. Ask HN: How do prolific programmers go about their daily lives? 2016-01-25 06:07:22 Numberwang
    As someone who has tried GTD and failed. Do you mind me asking a few questions?

    How do you deal with habits? What are projects and what are tasks? Is vacuuming once a week something you would schedule in a calendar? Would you schedule doing dental floss every night?

    Also, for big projects which would have a task list of several 100 tasks, many of which would not be visible to you on the outset, how would you deal with those?

    And what about all those halfbaked, barely logged ideas, sentences for things to write someday, concepts...

    In essence. GTD stresses me out because it promises complete control over what to do and think about and when. Trying to implement it whilst dealing with the above questions induces anxiety and procrastination.

  3144. Ambition: How we manage success and failure throughout our lives (1992) 2016-01-26 00:04:15 rashkov
    Same here, though I find that it still helps a lot with procrastination. Separating the process of discovering content and actually consuming it means I'll only lose 10 minutes instead of getting sucked in for an hour because I'm too afraid to close the tab.

    I actually got through a nice chunk of my read offline folder during a long car trip recently, but that only justified this hoarding tendency!

  3145. Show HN: Read Hacker News in a Pinterest Way 2016-01-26 17:48:22 thomasdd
    Cool to see how HN user comunity always shows new ways to read your favorite News Source. I think, first I noticed was http://hack.ernews.info

    It is time to make my own HN frontend! :) And this applies, for each of You!

    Anyway my favorite frontend/design and UI is still https://news.ycombinator.com as it is fine to read and navigate 500 times per day and also offers the procrastination mode if I declare my self as addicted for compulsive HN site visiting. (Witch I should activate long ago :).

  3146. ADHD Is Fuel for Adventure 2016-01-29 10:16:13 sathackr
    thank you for the sound advice. I'm checkout out bulletjournal and will likely at least try the medication route, assuming a doctor agrees and officially diagnoses me.

    I was on Ritalin for a short time when I was around 14, I was as anti-medication then as I am now, didn't notice a difference and started refusing to take it after a month or so. I remember depression being mentioned at the time, although I don't know what the official diagnosis was.

    The one medication that did seem to have great effect scared me so bad that I stopped taking it and refused to take any more -- percocet. I was prescribed some after oral surgery and threw it out after taking it for a couple of days. During that time, the house was cleaned spotless, laundry done and folded, even ironed my shirts and hung them (as opposed to my typical pattern of snatching them from the dryer and ironing them immediately before I wear them), and many other things were done that I would have normally procrastinated and waited until the very last minute. From talking to others, this doesn't appear to be a normal reaction to opioids.

  3147. Show HN: “Nim in Action” is now available 2016-01-29 17:35:23 masklinn
    > It seems to me that a) Nim is (or at least is meant to be, but bugs can sidestep it) memory safe if you stay within the rules for it

    That's completely worthless. C is also memory-safe if you stay within the rules for memory safety.

    > Nim is not throwing around vague claims of safety that are not documented in the language manual.

    Of course not since nim is not posting on HN (as it's not a sentient being prone to procrastination) it's obviously nim supporters making claims about nim's safety.

  3148. Rich dad, poor dad – the story that formed my views on making money 2016-01-29 20:49:09 pkorzeniewski
    The problem with all these "how to get rich" books is that they're full of anecdotes, quotations, fictional stories, motivational bullshit etc. which make you feel good while reading them, but as soon as you put the book back on the shelf, it's all gone. It's just a temporary boost of energy and motivation, because reading requires almost no effort and more often that not it's just another way of procrastination. Seriously, do you think the majority of rich people prepared for "getting rich" by reading hundreds of motivational and self-help books? It's not like you'll find some magical recipe in one of the books which you can just apply to your life and 10 years from now become a billionare. Each success story is so different and depends on so many factors - being in right time at the right place among the most important - that it's impossible to simply recreate any of them and just wait for the results.

  3149. Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research? 2016-01-30 06:10:13 TheLogothete
    Procrastination.

    Obviously.

  3150. Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research? 2016-01-30 15:03:44 empressplay
    You can live for a thousand years and you will still procrastinate and you will still not want to die. An extended lifespan won't help those issues. You need to get over them whether you live 50 years or 500.

  3151. Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research? 2016-01-30 15:32:56 JoshTriplett
    > You can live for a thousand years and you will still procrastinate and you will still not want to die.

    Of course not! Why should you ever want to die? Why should you ever "get over" that?

    It's a bug. We haven't fixed it yet. It should not be romanticized, and it should most certainly not be treated as inevitable. It's an abomination we have yet to eliminate.

  3152. Ask HN: What should we fund at YC Research? 2016-01-31 02:45:43 beefman
    If there were a drug for motivation, that would be a big win. Many people suffer from procrastination, and it seems to me plausibly implicated in poverty.

  3153. Ask HN: How happy are you working as a programmer? 2016-02-01 15:08:06 abalashov
    I'm not. I have been doing it since I was 9. I pulled most of the heavy-duty, hardcore all-nighters during my teenage years; I grew up writing C, and was hacking on socket code and compiling kernels when I was 12-16. So by the time I was 20, I was utterly burned out. Most of my peers discovered the crazy, hyper-caffinated, 24/7 techie life in university years, and still have a few years of this insanity left in them. I don't.

    I'm 30 now, and feel like I've been running on fumes ever since. I am still interested in software architecture at a conceptual level, of course, but suffer from immense fatigue at the keystroke-based deliverables aspect. It's always a motivational struggle to write even a little code, with few exceptions. I procrastinate horrifically, because I find it tedious.

    Some of it may be because my work entails dealing with fairly uninteresting and unexciting things, and some of it is the cash flow schizophrenia of constantly operating at the very margins of economic survival, but above all else, it's just psychological, cognitive and physical fatigue. I'm also fairly extroverted and have always been interested in the social and political dimension of what I'm doing, but, through eight years of self-employment, have pigeonholed myself into a solipsistic role without a collective--rewarding to those who crave peace, quiet and code, but not at all catering to my particular reward centres. I love selling what I do, but the dreaded implementation of what I just sold is like pulling teeth. Deprived of a collective, recognition, the competitive aspect, and any sense of larger purpose, it's a real challenge to get myself to work on code.

    In retrospect, I probably would have been better off sticking it out in corporate America and tracking myself into technical management. However, I left the employment world at age 22 and decided to hole up in a business model where I'd be most economically rewarded if I could get myself to write more than a few lines a week.

    I am deeply specialised in a niche vertical that can pay well, so one would think the money would keep me going (I can easily bill $250/hr for what I do), but it doesn't. Some of that is a business and life problem, but some of it is that I just don't care enough to pound code anymore at virtually any price--though, of course, that's not to say that taking the bricks of economic stress that come with a bootstrapped eight-year consulting-turned-product death march off wouldn't help.

    I still do it, but it's taken me five years to write a slightly half-assed software suite that an energetic and motivated programmer could have done in far, far less time.

  3154. Ask HN: How happy are you working as a programmer? 2016-02-01 15:26:13 manish_gill
    3 years since I graduated from my CS program. Enjoyed the internship and the first year as a python developer. Then I had the bad luck of landing a Node.js + MongoDB project. I've been hating on programming (particularly JS) ever since. Just like @abalshov, I procrastinate as much as I can. Side projects and Open Source contributions have dropped to practically zero. It's just...tiring. Assembling X library with Y framework and then spend 10 hours trying to figure out that one bug. This isn't what I got into CS for.

    The pay isn't amazing either. Though I'm good at what I do (a lot better than some colleagues who are getting paid much better), I just can't get excited for yet another startup job (which is where I've been most of my career) which is working on a non-problem.

    The work needs to be interesting for me to be motivated. So far, it's mundane. And given I'm not in the US or any western country, I haven't found many companies working on interesting stuff here. It's all ideas copied from the valley and hammered into the ecosystem here.

    Perhaps I need some inspiration or some creative idea to put things into perspective. But yeah. Things could be a lot better. I've recently started getting into Statistics/ML and learning Clojure on the side as a distraction and that's been going well.

  3155. Show HN: Plain Email – An app for one-touch email processing 2016-02-04 00:35:47 jurajmasar
    "Made with <3 while procrastinating on actually dealing with email."

  3156. Idea Debt 2016-02-05 00:03:36 dandrick
    I don't see the difference between this and procrastination - there doesn't seem to be a great deal of new insight here.

  3157. Idea Debt 2016-02-05 00:16:13 jjaredsimpson
    procrastination is delay in doing things you don't particularly want to do but still understand are obligations. Delaying doing homework/office work/yard work.

    idea debt is: the struggle with creative sunk costs. Thinking in circles about something you are interested in while accomplishing no really progress in making your idea a tangible thing.

  3158. Idea Debt 2016-02-05 02:15:51 seivan
    I read somewhere that fantasizing about new features, off spins, optimizations, marketing tactics and etc would release enough dopamine that you'd eventually lose interest as the real deal wouldn't do better. I'll see if I can find it.

    But what you posted is interesting and seems to be a perfect fit here and my project app/game graveyard. Someone actually said that I'm not building, im playing with borrowed Lego, pretty much sums it up. I think it boils down to analysis paralysis, that's the root cause. Any anxiety, any doubt, lack of focus, and procrastination stems from that. At least arrived at after really digging.

  3159. Dead Men Write No Code 2016-02-07 15:14:05 gavanwoolery
    Glad to hear you are ok. I am also an advocate of shorter work schedules - it was not my recent incident, but rather having a child that prompted this. Having a child reduced my available hours and made me optimize the time I did have to work - and I found out I was more productive when I used my time carefully, rather than allowing procrastination and working longer hours. To be clear, even with a child my hours were much longer than they should have been (12 hours a day, 7 days a week, vs 15 hour days)

  3160. Dead Men Write No Code 2016-02-07 18:51:51 gavanwoolery
    40 hours of solid, uninterrupted work is worth 80 hours of procrastination/interruption-filled work. You have to choose those hours carefully. I remember when I worked in an office, we would always go out to lunch at 12:00 and the resulting 3 hours would be destroyed for me by a food comma and the disorientation from leaving my desk for an hour.

  3161. Will Bond (Package Control) Joins Sublime HQ 2016-02-09 17:11:25 laumars
    I don't disagree with you per se, but I do think you're exaggerating things a little with regards to just how unique Sublime Text is. I've spent a lot of time switching between text editors (more time than I really should - but sometimes procrastination trumps productivity) and here are some of my thoughts on the points you've raised:

    > Brackets was only good for web (wasn't it?)

    That's certainly where it excels at, but there are plugins for other languages (eg I did write Go code in Brackets, albeit only for a brief period).

    > Notepad++ is, I think, quite outdated

    It's not the prettiest editor in the world, but it's a little unfair calling it "outdated" when it releases updates more frequent than Sublime Text does.

    > Emacs (and Vim!) are hard to learn and slowly dying off

    They're no harder to learn than any other IDE. But it's definitely fair to say that there's a steeper initial curve than something that's largely point-and-click; and that they're not as trendy nor pretty so most users (understandably) aren't interested in familiarising themselves with the basics.

    > Other specific editors are... specific, and thus not direct competition to ST

    That's not entirely fair as a lot of peoples ST use will be for specific things.

    In fact I often find myself using about half a dozen different general purpose text editors for specific things: vi for when I need to edit root owned files; Kate for general config files / text files; ST for Go; Brackets for JS and CSS; Notepad++ for editing Windows scripts; and POSIX tools (echo, tee, sed, awk, grep, etc) for automation in editing text documents.

    For me, ST could easily be replaced by any of the other editors I use or some of the specific ones (eg LiteIDE). I pretty much only use ST for Go because of habit and I'm sure in 6 months time I'd have gotten bored and switched again.

    My point is that not everyones usage for ST to be as diverse as you suggest. So Sublime Text is still having to compete with other tailored editors as well as the general purpose ones.

    > windows only ... KDE, that is very niche compared to Windows, OSX

    I don't think that many people switch between Windows, OS X and Linux enough that they need a single cross-platform editor. For most people, an editor that "just works" on their preferred platform is all they need. So in that regard, Kate and Notepad++ are just as viable competitors to Sublime Text as Atom is; albeit the former two are only competitors on specific platforms.

  3162. We're ditching the office completely 2016-02-10 07:41:40 stronglikedan
    I have no children running around my house, but I still lack the discipline to work from home effectively. That "separation of space" helps to keep me focused. That's just me personally, and I know plenty of people that are effective working form home, but I just procrastinate and distract myself. I am my own interruption.

  3163. Friction Between Programming Professionals and Beginners 2016-02-11 02:07:49 32bitkid
    There are only three reasons why people answer questions on stackoverflow:

    1. fake internet points 2. a genuine interest in the question/problem 3. get paid to do it

    I don't know anyone who sticks with stackoverflow very long if #1 is their primary motivation.

    And group #3 is a pretty small percentage of users whose companies have off loaded support onto SO, but they are paid real money to answer whatever question someone posts, so they will put up with a lot.

    But leaves, in my opinion, #2 is being the majority of people actually answer questions on stackoverflow. Which I think breaks down to an aspect of question-asking that is often overlooked. Given that I am not just waiting around to help you, then it is up to you, question-asker, to motivate me to want to take time out of my day to answer your question.

    At the worst, are people who asks questions with a chip on their shoulder, as if the internet is broken or the people who wrote the documentation committed some personal foul against them, and its up to the rest of the internet to make it up to them. I have absolutely zero motivation to help that person. Then there are the people that but no effort into either composing the question or finding thier own answer, a question that can be answered trivially enough by copying the title of the question into google and looking at the results. Again, you have failed to motivate me to answer your question.

    Then comes the good questions, the ones that tell a story, that entice me into wanting to help this person achieve their goals. I want to help you, but have other things to do, give me a reason to procrastinate and help you figure out your problem/misunderstanding. Tell me a story of what you are trying to do, what you tried and failed, let me see your thinking process that went into it. It's up to you to build a social bond that I care enough to help you.

    That, to me, is your job as "the asker". Make me want to help you, and when it's done we can both feel good about what happened. If you can't take the time to do that, then there is little point in me helping you. I, honestly, have more important things I should be doing.

  3164. Why Do Employers Rarely Offer Explanations to Rejected Candidates? 2016-02-13 06:58:48 Swizec
    > I'm sure you know the stock phrases.

    I think it has more to do with feeling like a dick and not wanting to say No explicitly because it causes emotional discomfort. So you procrastinate to avoid that discomfort.

    I'm sure you've heard of the concept of "fade out" in dating. Same thing.

    I know on a logical level that this makes me a dick and that I shouldn't do it. But on an emotional level, it's so much easier to avoid making an implicit decision explicit.

    That said, I hold everyone who's ever followed up of their own accord in very high regard. If I don't say anything for two weeks send me an email.

  3165. Do you really need 10,000 steps a day? 2016-02-13 07:08:02 irremediable
    Ah damnit, what?!

    Due to my intense procrastination, when people say "something that most people don't know" [1] I've usually at least heard of it. But somehow this has completely slipped under my radar. Makes me rethink a lot of how I understand motivation.

    [1] (On the Internet, in certain circles, for certain topics.)

  3166. Douglas Rushkoff: I’m thinking it may be good to be off social media altogether 2016-02-14 09:16:47 generic_user
    One of the things I dislike about social networks is that people carry over short snarky commenting style to places on the net where you expect people to post more thoughtful comments. Or technical forums where your trying to have a detailed conversation and solve problems. It can really add unnecessary noise to otherwise productive boards.

    I really wish people would take a breather and slow down before posting outside of those services.

    They also seem to be more of a time sink then anything else where people can procrastinate from doing more productive or important things.

    I suppose I'm guilty of doing the same thing on HN on occasion.

  3167. We Are Hopelessly Hooked 2016-02-15 06:20:32 GoToRO
    I try to have at least one day a week in which I stay unhooked. I will use the phone just to call family while somewhere in nature doing nothing. It clears my mind and helps me get over procrastination.

    The first 5 minutes are the worst. Then you realize how bad it must be if 5 minutes feel like an eternity.

  3168. How Meditation Changes the Brain and Body 2016-02-19 17:52:11 manuelflara
    A lot of time? I'd say 30 minutes a day (consistently) is enough to get significant benefits. And after all, don't we all easily waste 30 minutes a day or things which really don't contribute much to our lives? Say, browse reddit or watch a TV show. Personally, I've found that trying to meditate in the middle of the day, even late at night, when I'm all "wired" from/during work, or just everyday life, is hard. What I found way easier to stick to is meditate first thing in the morning, only after going to the bathroom. At this point, if you're like me, you're the least anxious / stressed / wired or however you want to call it, and it's way easier to justify spending 30 minutes just being present and quiet. Any other time of the day and it feels like "I don't have time for this", even if I just wasted 30 or 60 minutes procrastinating (or I know I'm about to).

  3169. Discover Flask 2016-02-21 17:03:26 0xCMP
    I haven't checked the quality, but I love the idea and presentation. This is an awesome way to approach showing people how to build fullstack websites in any framework or language to advanced beginner or intermediate programmers.

    As someone who procrastinates on their own blog to teach people this topic, this is going to inspire my direction a lot.

  3170. Why the Future of Work Is at Home 2016-02-21 22:42:49 seivan
    I've come close to trying to nail down the zone issue. Still not certain, but it's related to decisions. The days I don't have to make an actual decision, but to just solve the problems, things move faster.

    But sometimes, when I'm uncertain of the design or whatever decision that needs to be made, I fall out of the zone and into procrastination mode to avoid making a decision that I feel might be wrong.

  3171. Why the Future of Work Is at Home 2016-02-21 22:50:18 eknight15
    Wow you may be on to something there.

    I think that applies to me, especially in a small startup where there is a ton to decide on (versus outlined tasks). I think when a task is already decided on, I move quickly. Depending on my mood I think I get overwhelmed and procrastinate when lots of decisions have to be made.

  3172. The Ad Blocking Wars 2016-02-22 05:09:04 Geekette
    Ah, the ad war wages on. I say no to ads because they exist in opposition to visually clean pages, no tracking, no malware.

    As a lot of online content falls under entertainment, if it came down to it, I'd be happy to unclutter my mind/reduce procrastination by restricting my browsing to non-essential content, rather than eat ads.

    Seems part of why the frenzy is heating up is that many media sites merely regurtitate news and do not produce any unique content, but are ad and tracker heavy. So, they stand to lose, even in better-case scenarios where some people are willing to pay for content they value.

  3173. You hear a voice in your head when you're reading, right? 2016-02-24 16:56:49 agumonkey
    When stuck in a procrastinating loop, I can almost feel the word bounce on my visual cortex. They're just packs of glyphs. Like a full queue, I have to carefully wait for more "room" occur and then swallow a few words, so on and so forth. And after a few runs likes this, all of a sudden my brain starts crunching again and I can run through a paragraph in logic-mode. It activates blood flow in deeper parts of my brain (a recent reduced cardio vascular capacity , "make me feel" where blood is going). It's also very emotionally linked. Whenever something valuable happens to me I don't struggle to get into the nice state.

  3174. Don't let a single day pass without doing something towards your goal 2016-02-27 03:10:36 rl3
    Cool project, but where's the money going in the event the user has a "Zero Day" or otherwise fails to meet their deadline? I'm not trying to be judgemental about where, just genuinely curious.

    Also, it's probably a good idea for people to establish a bare minimum as to what constitutes progress for them. Chronic procrastinators will simply pass off even the most miniscule items as progress (I know; I am one). Granted, that's not necessarily a bad thing if they're escaping the throes of depression, but in normal situations such justifications may constitute slacking.

  3175. Don't let a single day pass without doing something towards your goal 2016-02-27 03:20:49 kiloreux
    As much as I like the idea and would love to use it, but I am not really motivated by the fact that you are taking the money, you are not offering any service, just using people's procrastination to make money, I don't know about others but I really don't like that.

    It could be much better if the user has to choose a charity that money goes to, I understand that you also have costs for running this app, but I think I will write my own app and besides that, it's not always about workouts, it might be about reading , FOSS, self development, or whatever of that things, would love if it had something like that.

  3176. Don't let a single day pass without doing something towards your goal 2016-02-27 03:24:54 gene-h
    So in short, you are monetizing procrastination?

  3177. Don't let a single day pass without doing something towards your goal 2016-02-27 03:31:07 shubhamjain
    The philosophy hits the nail in terms of battling procrastination. It doesn't burden you with guilt of not doing enough but just tell you to make an effort to take the first step which will make you take the second. Sadly, where it can fail is same as where it succeeds - It is easy to slack off another day, if you slack off on one.

    There is no magic pill for procrastination that will fix everyone's problems even if you follow every productive hack out there.

  3178. Ask HN: What is the best way to learn JavaScript for a beginner? 2016-02-27 07:57:58 novicei
    I recommend https://ilovecoding.org/ There are lots of awesome answers there, do read books and watch Javascript tutorials but don't just read or watch them. GO AND WRITE CODE. Don't procrastinate, just do it. You learn by doing it.

  3179. Will the Push for Coding Lead to ‘Technical Ghettos’? 2016-03-01 08:14:42 gexla
    > Coding is one piece of computational literacy

    Literacy is the wrong word to use here. It doesn't work to compare English literacy with this sort of thing.

    English literacy in school is gained by a lot of practice. Writing, even if it's texting friends, is something you do daily and throughout the day. The written language is in the same language (though there is some transformation involved in turning words in the brain to symbols on paper) in which you think and speak.

    Doing something like computer programming is far different. You won't get daily practice just by going through the norms of life. Even pushing yourself to getting daily practice won't happen if you don't have something on your plate which is interesting. People are lazy by default and just opening an editor can be too much effort. I procrastinate bad enough on paid projects, let alone things nobody is expecting me to do.

    Just because people can read, doesn't mean they pick up books to better themselves. People would much rather be spoon-fed entertainment through TV.

    I don't see the point of learning to code beyond having some familiarity with it. For this to be a useful skill you have to put a huge effort into keeping up with it. Learning a different language is a huge barrier (not difficult, but for surpasses the point of which most people are willing to go.)

    Jobs aren't easy to land. There is no equivalent to manufacturing in tech which can lead to an army of workers being employed. The tech rabbit hole grows deeper each day as we add more tools and specialty areas in which we need to be familiar with. Areas such as wrangling data has a daunting list of pre-reqs and I imagine this will be a trend moving forward (programming paired with knowledge of the domain you are building software for.)o

    The sad fact is that technical knowledge doesn't take down the issues which data shows to be a problem with people in ghettos.

    People who live in a ghetto have a hard time moving. A life of poverty creates huge issues which people who don't live in poverty don't understand. It's called grinding poverty for a reason. The grinding is going on in your head and that will drive you mad. For a long list of reasons, jumping past the most bottom rung of the employment latter is something few people in this situation will ever be able to do. A well paid programming job isn't a bottom rung job.

    Well paid development jobs are well paid because they are hard to get and hard to employ for. If it were easy, then they wouldn't be well paid. Teaching people in the ghetto how to write code isn't going to help them get these jobs and it isn't going to help employers in hiring.

    Freelancing and the gig economy is even worse. You can make far more money going solo by starting your own shop than by traditional employment. But the same ratios work here as in the rest of the economy. You get 1% (or less) who can figure out the game and thrive while everyone else just scrapes by.

  3180. The Most Dangerous Writing App 2016-03-01 10:08:24 derefr
    I think you're assuming someone who procrastinates by doing other things on their computer. People also procrastinate by getting up and doing something else. Part of the point is to keep you in your seat, rather than letting you, say, get a reference book to "just look up one detail" and end up reading it for hours.

  3181. Get an unbiased opinion on if you should get out of bed 2016-03-03 21:35:22 mbrock
    If you're having sex while reading this, you should definitely stop. You don't want to associate browsing Hacker News with anything except procrastinating at work... so put your pajamas back on.

  3182. Making voice calls in Slack 2016-03-04 12:15:03 nonuby
    Let's hope co-working center remain quiet, coworking centres its the obligatory 50% procrastinating on facebook (top blue bar), then 25% on slack (purple left side) and the rest possibly doing some work. At least with phone (and skype on phone) people take their calls outside or to a booth

  3183. Psychology study that induced "reproducibility crisis" was wrong: researchers 2016-03-04 20:13:50 vacri
    > The history of psychology research ... Research lobotomy...

    So, you've pretty much publicly announced that you're heavily clueless about what psychology is, and are buying into that armchair critic opinion that it's a discredited arm of psychiatry.

    Discussions on HN constantly revolve around psychology. How to negotiate for a better salary? Psychology. A/B testing? Psychology. How to give or take an interview effectively? Psychology. UX design and testing? Psychology. How to motivate yourself or others, or avoid procrastination? Psychology. Game theory? Psychology. And this is just the common discussions on the rather niche forum of HN. As I write this comment, the #1 article is "Dsxyliea", which is... psychology.

    When you abuse psychology because of a brief, discredited and niche episode in its history, you're saying the equivalent of "web browsers are shit software, because IE on XP can't do SNI".

  3184. Ask HN: I'm taking 2 weeks off work to build a prototype. Any advice? 2016-03-07 10:19:38 seanwilson
    If you're planning to make money from it, try doing a good draft of the launch page first. This helps you focus on which features are critical and which are just nice to have that aren't big selling points.

    Also, don't obsess about making the code and architecture good. Get it working to prove the idea works then using what you've learned you can go back and improve it. I see so many side projects fail because many coders obsess about making code perfect over more important things. Releasing a project with imperfect code is vastly better to never releasing anything because you procrastinated trying to write perfect code in my opinion.

  3185. How Duolingo got 110M users without spending on marketing 2016-03-07 19:46:55 yodsanklai
    I've been using Duolingo everyday for 2 months now (to learn Spanish). Some thoughts: It's entertaining. You don't need much motivation to "play" everyday. Whenever I want to procrastinate, I feel it's a better option than reading the news and so on... However, it's too simple (which is why it is addictive). By itself, it's not enough to learn a foreign language. It's a good complement, and a great way to get started though.

  3186. Ten years on LinkedIn 2016-03-07 21:48:31 probably_wrong
    I still find amusing how much faith people put into LinkedIn. I gave myself some (very) fake awards, and yet I had people come up to me and ask about them. I also tried to get people to endorse me for procrastination, but couldn't find a contact willing to use their account for something not 100% business.

    I have no idea how they managed to get such a high reputation.

  3187. Ten years on LinkedIn 2016-03-07 21:55:39 drb311
    "I also tried to get people to endorse me for procrastination"

    I will.

  3188. Ten years on LinkedIn 2016-03-07 22:13:00 VLM
    The right answer is "I've been meaning to endorse you but I've been really busy and I'll get to it real soon now".

    Speaking of procrastination, the original author should consider that procrastinating is observationally the same as not using. The original author is of the strange binary opinion that having an account means having to use the service. There's nothing wrong with setting up an account then basically abandoning it. Thus no weird interview discussions about "no account". I'm part of the post-FB, post-linkedin, post-twitter generation and I don't use those services more than once a year or so, but I do have accounts specifically designed and curated for the amusement of older HR-types. Aside from social media job descriptions, no interview ever ended early because "I don't goof off online very much". So set up the account and procrastinate at using it.

  3189. Ask HN: Why don't you blog? 2016-03-08 04:55:17 ichiragmandot
    I have a lot of ideas in my evernotes, but I am procrastinating on building my webpage. I want to be perfect, which ofcourse will require time and I am too lazy to invest that much time. so basically cos I am lazy and just trying to convince myself with false reasons

  3190. Let’s ban elementary homework 2016-03-09 10:37:08 rogerthis
    I'll post this without any real citation, except the word of a high-school, then college teacher and neuroscientist i have known.

    That teacher said: classes are not for real learning, but for getting the first contact, or solving doubts. Homework is where the magic happens. Small amount of (handwritten) homework, related to the same day class, and a good sleeping night.

    He also advocated for less class time, some school time for homework, and more time of extra activities not related to TV watching or internet procrastination. Also, reading, reading and more reading.

  3191. Show HN: Open-source StackOverflow-like service 2016-03-10 14:53:01 manu29d
    I've been procrastinating a long time to write an article similar to this. I've been using the generator since v1.x.x. Nice write up!

    I even wrote a rails console-like equivalent for the older version[1]. Didn't get time to write a new one though. Will be a good addition to the generator I think.

    [1]: https://gist.github.com/manu29d/ced4a558abf2fa654bff

  3192. C++17 and other future highlights of C++ 2016-03-11 01:50:54 eclark
    Does it feel to anyone else like they are procrastinating on modules? C++ has been thinking about it for a very long time. Yet the actual result is a generic "soon."

  3193. Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it awesome? Please include URL 2016-03-11 03:19:31 egypturnash
    I recently finished a graphic novel about a robot lady dragged out of reality by her ex-boyfriend and am procrastinating on the Kickstarter for the printed version. http://egypt.urnash.com/rita/

    "Seriously folks, if you haven't looked at "Decrypting Rita" yet you really ought to. Innovative, fresh, interesting, and it does my head in." - Charlie Stross (Accelerando)

    "Deliriously confusing and addictive... It’s kind of wonderful." - Peter Watts (Blindsight)

    I'm also getting started on two new graphic novels; one is a fantasy story about smart people making very bad relationship decisions, and the other is about a girl slowly turning into a monster while elves invade New Orleans.

  3194. ADHD is vastly overdiagnosed and many children are just immature, say scientists 2016-03-11 05:01:05 brazzledazzle
    The tragic thing about mental disorders like depression or ADHD that your average person thinks that it sounds like what they deal with ("Hey, I hate doing Laundry too but even if I procrastinate a little I do it.") and those that have them and aren't diagnosed or treated think everyone else has it as hard as they do and that they're normal. It's incredibly difficult to empathize or understand something that happens in other people's brains.

    I think it's safe to say you could pick any person off the street and you'll find at least one, if not several, attributes from any given mental disorder. Who doesn't know someone with noticeable but mild/manageable obsessive behavior or narcissism? But what characterizes a disorder isn't the attributes themselves, it's whether or not they cause significant harm and impairment.

    So sure, I'm describing humanity but that's only because it's the same problems that everyone has except brought to an extreme.

    I'm sorry that your experience with ADHD has been shitty but it has nothing to do with the disorder or those that actually suffer from it. Should diagnosis be more rigorous? Of course. Should doctors unsafely prescribing medication for profit be ousted? Yes. But this is a problem for any controlled substance that has legitimate uses. There are real doctors with PHDs doing research, studies and testing that you've never met. Are they evil because the psychiatrist you know is?

  3195. Ask HN: What are you working on and why is it awesome? Please include URL 2016-03-11 23:31:50 pcmaffey
    I'm curious when you say "publish to the web", do you have a specific output/platform in mind?

    One key difference with Bicycl from those other tools is that it's based on micronotes (think tweeting vs blogging). This is intentional. I use Evernote to go into detail about my work. But that makes serendipitous discovery more difficult, when the jewel of your content is buried...

    Also, this allows you to focus on just what's important. As any good procrastinator know how easy it is to sidetrack yourself in details. Of course, sometimes that's wonderful and creative. But there are lots of tools out there already for that.

  3196. Work for only 3 hours a day, but everyday 2016-03-14 06:10:46 ams6110
    I think maybe the larger lesson is to timebox work so that it's not overwhelming. This can tend to reduce procrastination and time-wasting distractions in some people, as it's less intimidating to start a three hour work session than an all-day one, and easier to stay focused with a clear ending time already known. Whether that's three hours, or four, or two sets of two hours, maybe is less important.

  3197. On asking job candidates to code 2016-03-16 08:07:57 autotune
    At the opposite end, I had a company fly me out and pay for expenses, and didn't get the job. They followed up a month or two later and sent a check, although by that time my address changed, so I didn't receive it, and told them this after asking my why it wasn't cashed. They sent another one and after procrastinating on cashing it (it was something like $80 worth of Lyft rides), they followed up again at which point I cashed it. Some companies are pretty good at giving a decent interview experience even if they reject you.

  3198. Qt 5.6.0 released 2016-03-17 06:00:23 sago
    Thanks for the tip on JUCE. I have an audio project I've been wanting to implement for a while, and procrastinating because of ugly audio APIs, JUCE looks just the ticket.

  3199. Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering 2016-03-17 14:32:19 themodelplumber
    I like this. Not because I use this process or even Emacs, but because it focuses on the center of the issue: Bringing your full mind to bear on the object at hand. If there's anything that will de-stress a frustrated hacker, it's that sort of directed, decisive action toward the best perceivable outcome.

    Often you don't even have to save your notes file if you are just using this as a method to defeat procrastination or build up momentum for a busy day. Many of mine don't survive the day and that's fine.

  3200. How I Built 180 Websites in 180 days and became a YC Fellowship Founder 2016-03-17 19:32:36 JonthueM
    I am deeply encouraged by your article. Surprisingly! I was thinking of doing the same thing prior to reading your article, which is, as part of my 100 day of code challenge to build a website every day and GitHub it. I guess the reason for my procrastination is being afraid of using GitHub, my lack of javascript knowledge & I barely know any design. Your input is definitely helpful! I really want to start being proficient in those areas mentioned. Also what learning resource would you recommend for javascript front & back end, web/application design, UX design and better grips on Github!

  3201. I Am Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator. AMA 2016-03-20 13:41:31 JabavuAdams
    You haven't let anything stop you yet, so why would a negative answer from Sam stop you?

    With that in mind, what's the point of asking the question? There's nothing to be gained by asking, and potentially something to be lost (displaying lack of confidence).

    For my part, I've had "entrepreneurial spasms" as a solo founder and it's been a terrible idea for me. This is because I'm a terrible procrastinator. I need a schedule-oriented person to keep me in check / act as the rudder to my "powerful engine".

  3202. 3 months and 1M SSH attempts later 2016-03-21 13:18:02 pdkl95
    > He's still going at it 100,000 ssh attempts later.

    I got hit with >100,000 on my main desktop a few years ago when I was procrastinating fixing my heavy-handed fail2ban config. I noticed what was happening first from the lag it was causing. It turns out >10 SSH password attempts/second can eat up a significant portion of my 3GHz "Yorkfield"[1] CPU. It wasn't hard to discover the problem: the logfile was rapidly filling with failed SSH password attempts. This is particularly useless as I have used

        PasswordAuthentication no
    for many years. There is no chance that the script was going to gain access, but the system load from the rejections was terrible. So yes, I fixed fail2ban and added a few more "instant-ban" rules against anybody that tries password authentication, but the real fix that was moving sshd to a random port. Invalid SSH connection attempts dropped to approximately zero immediately. It's trivial to find with a port scan, but in practice almost nobody has even bothered.

    It's probably like the old joke where two hiker see a grizzly bear and one stops to re-tie his shoes. "You can't outrun a grizzly!" "I only have to outrun you."

    [1] Q9650 (E0); it still works great, even if it's starting to show its age

  3203. My dad hid his depression. I won’t hide mine 2016-03-27 13:45:14 HCIdivision17
    As so many others note, keep trying stuff! You will, eventually, find a therapy that works for you. Me, some friends, coworkers, family - just a lot of people - have battled internally with depression. And we all cope a bit differently. Prolly because we all have something a bit different.

    I never took medication. I think that was a mistake that added years to my recovery. I'm still not sure I'm a person yet (but I'm optimistic about it). I never had the crushing sadness many relate to depression, but rather the emotional void variant [0]; I can't imagine how crippling it must be to not only fake happiness, but to also have to compensate for genuine unhappiness... I hope you find what you need soon. I have an account at gmail (see username) if you feel safe venting to an anonymous person; just keep looking for something that gives you the contrast to see what feeling normal is like (not even feeling good! Just normal. Life is sometimes brutally sad for long periods. And that's ok. But if you can't imagine feeling differently then maybe the mind's chemistry has wedged itself.)

    Anyhow, if anything else comes out of this rather large thread of responses, you ain't alone. It's hard to slog through and find what works for you, be it a next gen medicine, meditation, or an hour on the motorcycle every day, you'll find the thing(s) eventually. Just slog through it a bit longer.

    Also: we seem to only have the one life, so procrastinate on ending it. You've a worst case of dying of old age or accident, then, and you may just be surprised to be in a better place a few years from now. Being able to look back is certainly a luxury I cherish, personally.

    [0] http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/05/depression-par...

    It's so silly, but this is to me the best, most consice write up of depression I've stumbled upon. YMMV. But my friends and I were in tears laughing over it - but over different parts. Depression nails a lot of people in different ways, so keep trying to fid the fix for you. It really does exist.

  3204. How to Get Out of Bed 2016-03-27 14:41:17 openfuture
    Practice.

    The day before lie down on your bed and practice standing up and starting your routine (brushing teeth).

    When you wake up you shouldn't give yourself time to think because then you will start procrastinating, instead autopilot should kick in and before you know it you're brushing your teeth.

  3205. How to Get Out of Bed 2016-03-27 14:50:40 elcapitan
    I think it's similar to procrastination: Have a good reason to get out of bed early. If you have to get out of bed early but really really don't want to, maybe it's not the getting up that is the problem.

  3206. Deadlines deserve to be called Lifelines 2016-03-28 06:49:31 alsnie
    Another good source on procrastination and deadlines: http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_mast...

  3207. How I got fired from my job, and what I learned 2016-03-31 00:26:04 shambulatron1
    Signed up specifically to reply to this comment, and to add my thanks for your blog post :)

    I'm going through a lot of exactly the same thing at the moment, though sans startup environment. I'm intrigued to read that you consider the root cause to be extroversion. I wouldn't call myself an extrovert at all, and would ascribe most of what you write about to anxiety (for which I've recently started seeing a CBT counsellor).

    Do you think that having your coworkers available in-person would have changed things because 1) having them around would have "recharged your batteries", i.e. the extrovert theory, or 2) having them around would have added the pressure to counterbalance the procrastination (my situation a lot of the time), or 3) something else?

  3208. Climate Model Predicts West Antarctic Ice Sheet Could Melt Rapidly 2016-03-31 04:11:27 TillE
    For the past 15 years or so, Germany has been pursuing an aggressive plan to switch entirely to renewable power, which includes building out lots of wind and solar. Some say it's not fast enough, but it's still pretty impressive, especially for a country so far from the equator. I think the country is around 30% renewable by now.

    Bear in mind, this is absolutely necessary for the entire world at some point. Fossil fuels will not last forever. Best start now and not procrastinate.

    In terms of specific policy to pursue: basically lots of subsidies.

  3209. Implementing Client-Side Post Processing Effects in Wayland 2016-04-01 23:16:43 BenLloydPearson
    From the article:

    One of the most notable and enduring Linux desktop paradigms has been desktop effects: the coupling of various desktop environments with graphical niceties, also known as “eye candy.” With the advent of the XComposite extension in the mid 2000s, mainstream eye candy was taken to new levels through a small project called Compiz which used the texture from pixmap extension to apply hardware-accelerated effects to windows on the fly.

    Partial implementations of it have been developed for Enlightenment a couple times over the lifetime of E17 and onwards. However, none of these are great solutions in today’s modern world of GLES/EGL, Wayland, and embedded devices. Currently, Compiz uses Xlib internally as well as GLX, enforcing a dependency on X11 and the Xserver. Furthermore, given the server-side location of the effect handling, this will not play too nicely with the client-oriented Wayland protocol.

    And so it was, armed with this knowledge, that a pair of procrastinating-yet-ambitious Samsung Open Source Group graphics engineers set out to improve the Wayland world with client-side, window, post processing effects. The goal: implement wobbly windows using the client-side decoration region and a lot of elbow grease.

  3210. Theranos – Statement of Deficiency from CMMS [pdf] 2016-04-01 23:36:20 atonse
    This is one of those rare times where my procrastination in applying for a job at Theranos actually paid off. So grateful I avoided moving my family across the country to get entangled in this mess.

  3211. Exercise Makes Our Muscles Work Better with Age 2016-04-01 23:54:09 agumonkey
    Barely made anything, my system just couldn't take anything, that what I tried to say, at one point your just deprived of good sensation from your body, lack of blood flow, inability to take any junk food (even processed). Your mind is a bit in danger mode and your body very explicit about what is good and what is not. Having your vascular system above a certain threshold will trigger a strange form of pleasure even. Imagine the bliss of getting in bed after 48h+ being awake, but coming from each every cells, muscle, veins.

    To be honest, even in that situation I procrastinated, I should be walking every day morning and evening. But the weakness was so stressful I was worried about doing anything. Fun part: blood sample, ECG and echography revealed nothing so doctors pat me on the back as if I was seeking attention and feared of nothing. So anyway the tests having came back I walk more and every time that bliss comes back. I can understand why overweight people sitting all day can harm their body, killing me softly style, if they never walk more than 45min.

  3212. My Biggest Regret as a Programmer 2016-04-06 22:29:25 raducu
    I understand the authors frustration, and it's not really about money as some here believe. In my 6 jobs as a programmer I've also seen so many incompetent managers, so much time wasted, so much bullshit, so much backstabbing and narcissists galore. But the problem is not really about THEM managers, but about ME and my maladaptive cognitive schemas (commonly known to everybody as lack of social skills, subjugation to authority, procrastination, lack of discipline and so on). The bitterness results from the fact that even if you're a great programmer, most companies will try to stamp you into a predictable, replaceable and interchangeable little cog and will use you as it sees fit. If you're not happy with that, if you think you posses great insight and you can do better, you either develop your own product or you take on some sort of leadership role.

  3213. I am quitting my job. Is this a good idea? 2016-04-07 07:52:53 kjksf
    That's not the only option.

    You can create your software on the side, offer it for free and only quit your job and start charging when the software takes off.

    The hardest and least predictable thing is finding product/market fit. I don't know how to do it (other than launching a product and waiting to see if it takes off) and while I lurk in startup-related forums like r/startups, most of the ideas I see seem very unrealistic (from the point of view making money).

    Second hardest thing is finding users (i.e. marketing and such) even if you have a decent product.

    Also, beware procrastination. Many people underestimate how easy it is to not work when you don't have to. You might be an exception (you can test it by doing 8hr of work on your project on Sat/Sun and seeing if you can keep it up for e.g. a month).

  3214. Being tired isn’t a badge of honor – Signal v. Noise 2016-04-08 00:40:02 beachstartup
    i'm sure what you said applies to me as well, but i also procrastinate more when i'm tired, which only compounds the problems.

  3215. Ask HN: What are you currently working on? [April 2016 version] 2016-04-09 13:11:09 ninjavis
    There's something in the pipeline for me on innovating on how we type, as in articles and web content. To me, it seems like the QWERTY keyboard has been around forever, its layout was specifically designed to make people type slower when the first typewriters were introduced. Why aren't we seeing more innovation on the software side of things? That's where I come in :)

    And I also launched my first startup, upperhound.com, this morning - eyes bloodshot just before I went to bed. I decided I don't want to be a wantrepreneur any longer. Procrastination is such a killer. I mainly negotiate 50% + SaaS membership discounts for interested subscribers.

    Btw, asimuvPR, what are you working on currently?

  3216. Climate-Related Death of Coral Around World Alarms Scientists 2016-04-10 21:59:00 blondie9x
    So true. Washington is too tainted by vested interests that seek to procrastinate shift. Time has literally run out. From here we are already in catch up mode.

    It seems like a revolution is necessary to stop them from acting against humanity's long term existence for their short term financial gain.

  3217. Google Calendar now uses machine learning to help you accomplish your goals 2016-04-13 20:51:58 foolinaround
    Now, if only it could cure my procrastination...

  3218. Jeremy Guillory's Counter-Complaint against Cruise Automation 2016-04-15 10:50:31 rboyd
    This whole case is really surprising. I would expect intellectual property assignment agreements and a vesting cliff, particularly after cofounding Twitch.

    On the other hand, I know how normal it can feel to trust each other, procrastinate on docs, and just get all over the tech.

  3219. San Francisco Home Prices Fell for the First Time in Four Years in March 2016-04-16 00:28:03 marincounty
    I don't know anything about this company. I have an idea what market they are trying to crack. I can't believe it's taken this long.

    I've always felt paying a Realtor 3% on the biggest item most of us will buy in our lives is crazy. I just don't know what they do for that commission. I don't know what makes one successful--just because he/she sold more than the others? Pay them more because they know how to network?

    I missed getting my RE Brokers license a few years ago. I procrastinated. The Realestate lobby got to Jerry Brown, and got their bill though. A rediculious bill that just made it more difficult to get a license, essentially cutting down on supply. Enough said. To get a licence. It's about eight courses, and couple of years of doubious experience, and a simple test.

    Now what does a good Realtor do earn that huge financial jackpot when they sell/buy you a house? I haven't a clue. Maybe a good omissions/errors insurance policy? I don't have a clue.

    I've been told to pay full commission, and you will see what they bring. Then again, this sounds like something the King of Realestate came up with?

    So, to all you young, hungry developers. I really believe the Realestate Agent is long past it's due date. I would love to see a safe way to exclude them, and their commissions form the home/commercial buying experience. A fool proof way?

    I will now look into Redfin. If it's half what I believe it to be; there's much room for competition?

  3220. Justin Trudeau explains the basics of quantum computing to reporters 2016-04-17 01:59:54 thevibesman
    The anti-procrastination feature kicked me off after my last post, but I was planning on submitting the video link to HN after my comment; here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11511570

    Interesting note about 'Contact'; the film came out the summer before I was in 7th grade so that and the book are far away in my memory.

  3221. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-17 21:33:03 brudgers
    When this sort of thing happens to me, I attribute it to a combination of factors.

    1. The work is complex and not actively "doing something" lets it simmer on the back burner of my brain.

    2. I'm not overly busy.

    3. I'm too busy.

    4. The work isn't really interesting at a deep down level.

    5. The work is so interesting that it sparks curiosity about related topics that might help me do it better.

    6. I'm burned out.

    7. I'm not in the habit of working on problems that require that particular way of thinking.

    Which is to say that if the work gets done and done well, then it's not really procrastination it's just that the process isn't particularly straight forward. Of course, that's not to say that what I do and how I do it is a particularly great model to follow. It's more about understanding myself in the way Torvalds shows in his recent TED interview...and it's an interview not a talk because Torvalds knows his own personality. And if you watch it, you'll probably understand why Torvalds does what he does and why it's sort of fruitless to compare one's own life with his.

    Good luck.

  3222. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-17 22:16:56 hoodwink
    It's a common problem. Watch this TED Talk about why we procrastinate by Tim Urban and read his articles. They're both funny and insightful.

    https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_mas...

  3223. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-17 22:24:24 cylinder
    It's pretty bad for me, I dream about bailing to a blue collar life because then I can focus and work with my hands, and not click around online procrastinating.

    All that talk did was talk about the symptoms of what it's like to be a procrastinator. Including the link in another comment. Who wants to talk about how to fix it other than "stop procrastinating!"

  3224. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-17 22:25:11 lallysingh
    Two things:

    1) Figure out your MBTI type, and research it. I found that my own type (INTP) really described my work pattern quite well. I found it a bit liberating, as I can try to plan towards my strengths a bit.

    2) Exercise can really help here. If you're procrastinating, you're not doing useful work. So work out instead. The exercise can help your motivation and focus substantially. Much more than coffee or red bull.

  3225. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-17 22:25:29 dyarosla
    Many people procrastinate on both large and small tasks. It's especially hard to get going on large tasks due to, as others have mentioned, a lengthier span of time before you get a sense of completion/accomplishment instead of a quick fix reward. Different methods exist for combating this and tricking your mind into getting its quick fix sooner.

    One such method I would suggest trying is 'timeboxing': dividing up tasks into smaller pieces and forcing yourself into 25 or so minute windows that are uninterruptible. This forces you to get into a flow state and also feel accomplished by the end, knowing that you've made progress on any given task. Given enough 25 minute periods, you'll have done more work than you may have otherwise.

    The biggest pattern amongst productivity methods is to predetermine a calendar or pattern to stick to for when you do work. In general, when it comes time to doing work without a plan, it's quite easy to get distracted by a quick fix activity instead. Extrapolate this over a long enough period of time, and you'll feel like you never get anything done until the last minute.

  3226. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-17 22:33:39 libeclipse
    I'm procrastinating right now reading this post.

  3227. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-17 22:36:28 martinald
    One way I get round this is make lists (I use clear for mac because it is so simple. Otherwise I end up procrastinating making overly complex plans in JIRA etc).

    Firstly make a list of all the tasks. Then of the big task you're putting off, split it into loads of small component tasks. Smaller the better - even if it is is 'make a GitHub repo'.

    I then find that I do the first small component tasks and after marking them off start ploughing through the rest of the stuff.

  3228. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-17 22:42:22 rasengan
    I never want to do anything. I only want to play World of Warcraft everyday (on the Emerald Dream realm which is an RP-PvP but it's actually more PvP than RP and features lots of World PvP so it's actually amazing).

    That said, there are things that I want, and since I want them I take the steps toward achieving those things.

    Here is an example:

    Goal: I want to eat. Steps: 1. Get money. 2. Get food. 3. Make food. 4. eat it.

    However, each step may need to be broken down as it is accomplished. 1. Get money. a. Look in couches; b. Look in floors. c. Try to get gigs on freelancer. d. Apply to McD's. e. Apply to YC. f. Sell WoW gold, items and services with Bitcoin.

    Either way, once you know what you're doing and why you're doing it, it makes it a lot easier to do it. If you don't know why you're doing something - or more importantly - can't figure out why you CAN'T do something, it might be pertinent to explore what that something is and if you really want to be doing that something.

    Lastly, one word of advice, every day when you wake up and every time you go in the bathroom or are in front of a mirror, look at yourself and say:

    I get it in. I get it done. I am a champion. I am a winner. I am beautiful. Everyone loves me. I love everyone. I am a billionaire. I am so smart. I never procrastinate.

    If you say that to yourself every single time you're in front of a mirror, you'll slowly never procrastinate. You don't even have to believe the things you're saying either. Just say it to yourself anyway everytime.

    Hope someone finds value in this comment. Going back to WoW now.

    edit: if interested, im hanging out in goldshire. im horde. ;)

  3229. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-17 22:46:43 ymse
    While knowing your MBTI type can be useful in some aspects, it certainly does not help with the issues OP is describing. Excercise is probably the right answer.

    Source: chronic procrastinator who has been studying MBTI for years.

  3230. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-17 22:53:43 mchannon
    Here's a contrarian viewpoint-

    There's nothing wrong with you- your subconscious is doing its job. Procrastination is an unpopular but nonetheless effective method of time and task management. In fact, I'd argue it's the most effective.

    Take a college class for example. Your instructor gives you a weeklong homework assignment. While a few type-A personalities may dive in right away and have it done by the following day's class, they run into two problems: one, the instructor may revise the assignment (you don't have to do problem 36, it's a typo in the textbook); and two, their subconscious didn't spend a week thinking about the problems.

    Compare to doing it the night before it's due. You end up spending no more time doing the homework than is necessary (whereas type-A will have to go back and spend more time at it than you), and you've had the benefit of your massively parallel subconscious cranking through it for a week.

    If you find your procrastination actually results in lateness (and actual detriment to your performance), then what you should consider targeting is better deadline management (change how you define "last minute"). I consider deadline management more an art to be practiced rather than a science you can be taught. Still, I find our subconscious gets short shrift when it comes to managing our time.

    I may still occasionally instinctively kick myself for waiting to the last minute (anyone else still doing their taxes?) but it's probably healthier to procrastinate with awareness of its benefits than to procrastinate without.

  3231. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-17 22:54:25 Mahn
    Have you considered that you may not like your current job? I know this isn't always possible, but if you can, consider looking for a job that you care and feel more passionate about. You are less likely to procrastinate if you like what you are doing.

  3232. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-17 23:11:16 nphang
    1) pomodoro will fix your procrastination. just say you will do like 6 pomodoros a day and you will be more productive than 8 hours of multitasking. work up from there.

    2) "working on the project that I know I must work on to accomplish my goals" sounds like a fundamental mis-step. what makes you think things will change once you achieve those goals? are you certain your goals are what should be your goals?

    3) buy a 12 kg kettlebell (i don't care how beast you are, 12 kg is enough to start or you're gonna fuck your back). fuck around with it for half an hour every night watching TV like 2-3 hours before bed. don't do a regimen, or a program or any of that bs, you're not van damme and you never will be. just fuck around with it and have fun. eat an egg and drink a craft beer go to sleep. move to 16 kg, you should see mental and physical results in a week.

    4) some people saying stop fapping? that's absurd, fap every day if possible, good for your testosterone. although, maybe stay away from the dehumanizing kink shit, that definitely gave me interpersonal problems for a while. I see a connection between personal relationships and fapping, but not productivity so much. besides, there will come a day when you can't do it more than once every few days, or once a week, or whatever, and believe me it's fucking depressing. there is absolutely no reason to not fap.

    5) screen killers like lux f.lux etc. that gradually shut all your screens down in intensity as the night goes on. blue light sends wake up chemicals, wake up chemicals for 18 hours a day will fuck you up.

    6) if you drink more than 10 beers a night, try cutting it down by 1 per week until you're at a normal person level. it's a bitch and a half to get to sleep, but it really does feel great the next day. but if you go from 10-0 in a day it will feel like fucking ebola. quit smoking cigarettes.

    7) if you don't smoke weed, smoke some and watch youtube tutorials on like whittling, don't take notes. if you do smoke weed, go sober a day and go to the park to read a book. both of those are amazing after prolonged time of being the other state. adderall, cocaine, anything from the amphetamine family is not your friend. benzos, ketamine, anything from the barituate family is not your friend. mushrooms are your friend. ecstasy / lsd i have mixed feelings on. basically find anything that gets your eyes wide open _and makes you feel awake_. The goal is to feel childlike wonder, _NOT EUPHORIA_ euphoria is a dangerous emotion and should be shunned.

    8) drink your weight in ounces of water each day. It is difficult.

    9) walk, but not like chore walking running jogging fitbit bullshit. just opt for the stairs, or park at the far end of the lot. people say you should meditate like half an hour a day, but that's just because we're so fucking busy optimizing our movements all the time that we can't think in between actions.

    10) similarly disable facebook and twitter and instagram and whatever they've made in the last 5 years I don't know about. Mine are all deleted, you don't have to do that, but when they are installed, and you get notifications on your phone, you are in a state of anxiety at all times of the day because you feel good when you get a notification so you're always waiting for one and pop-psychology pop-psychology pop-psychology. Around day 3 or 4 of having it off it starts to feel good, like really fucking good. I'm well known as "the guy that sends emails" and people love it. similarly with browser notifications, system notifications, etc. If it beeps at you or rumbles at you, it is offensive.

    11) self help books, ted talks, anything that makes money from things being wrong in the world and promising to make it better is a fucking waste of space. Avoid these things at all costs. you intrinsically know what is wrong, you just have severe cognitive dissonance naming it so you psychologically pretend you don't. if you're going to read something to make you feel better, the answer is to read something that has nothing to do with anything, it's not work so don't read a machine learning text, it's not a social game so don't read whatever is on the NYT bestseller list in the sci fi section, read something that's purely fun. I'm in the middle of a textbook on ancient chinese history. Or watch some conspiracy theory videos. Or start growing designer peppers. Again, the goal is anything that opens your eyes wide.

    Not being able to focus is a common problem that happens when your entire life revolves around one thing, one routine, one goal, one person, one whatever. You just need to do something, anything that's not that one thing, whether it's playing catch with a 12kg metal ball, getting high and watching some redneck whittling wood for half an hour, or reading a hundred pages about the Yuan Dynasty of China. You need to turn off -- so stop letting bright blue lights, email chimes on your cell phone, rushing up and down elevators and hunting for the most efficient parking spaces dictate your actions, intentionally say "fuck you" to that. Also chemical balance is a thing and almost everything I've said directly has an effect on that balance.

  3233. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-17 23:12:35 nextos
    I also recommend getting into deep work environments, with no distractions (IM, email) or noise (open plan). Sadly this is not often possible in modern work environments.

    Cal Newport wrote a pretty nice book about the deep work concept and its importance for makers, full of interesting annecdotes [1].

    Another critical point is to limit work in progress. If you work on too much stuff at the same time you can become overwhelmed, and thus this will lead to procrastination.

    Starting tasks late, close to the deadline, might indicate you have incredible high expectations about yourself and you are afraid of underdelivering. If you are a perfectionist, understand that perfection is achieved by iterating not by getting it right initially.

    [1] http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25744928-deep-work

  3234. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-17 23:15:11 jonnathanson
    Of course, that assumes you've even thought about or glanced at the material or project at all throughout the week leading up to your deadline. There is definitely a benefit to letting something "marinate" for awhile, and spending time on other things while your subconscious plays around with the problem. But that's different from unstructured/avoidant procrastination, wherein you don't even open the proverbial textbook until the day before the homework is due.

    You can call this "deadline management," sure, but that feels like another way of saying "don't completely put stuff off." You're qualifying and delineating your purported benefits of procrastination. But there's something interesting in that thought, nonetheless. If you know you're going to procrastinate, set an artificially early deadline to drop everything and actually get to work, like it or not. That way you gice yourself some permission to goof off and decompress, but you're putting a backstop on your "last minute." It's interesting.

  3235. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-17 23:20:57 tirade
    Thought I'd never bother with a TED talk again, but having now spent the 14 minutes watching this one, I think you've actually oversold it. It's 10 minutes restating the OP's problem (the urge to procrastinate with what is easy and fun until time pressure and fear provide enough motivation to finally work) with the visual of a funny monkey. Worse, the last 4 minutes is just the speaker throwing up his hands and saying, "Well, I'm fine with this being my way of working (it's even how I prepped for this talk) but I got lots of letters from people who find this to be a totally crushing and painful way to live. But rather than discuss solutions to the affected, I'll just blithely say that everyone is a procrastinator and we should all stop procrastinating so much, because life is short."

    Gee, thanks, TED guy!

  3236. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-17 23:21:28 oxplot
    > realize that if you are procrastinating it might be because part of your brain disagrees with a decision you have made

    [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9285481

  3237. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-17 23:23:34 thwoaway6470
    I have this problem. Things that I find helpful fall into three categories:

    1) Make sure I'm taking care of my body because my brain is part of my body.

    2) Make sure I have a super-clear idea of what the task is.

    3) Do things to block distractions.

    For the first:

    - Keep to a regular sleep schedule. Spend $10 on a sleeping mask and buy an alarm clock and white noise machine.

    - Regularly eat a balanced diet. If you're poor or super-busy, get a blender bottle, chocolate powder, and Soylent subscription. You can make a meal in 30s and $2 with that. Otherwise, get a slow cooker with a timer and the app Paprika for iOS/Android.

    - Regularly do at least 30 minutes of intense excercise. This will improve your sleep and is also great to do in the moment when you feel jittery. Running is good.

    For the second:

    - Get a notebook and step away from a screen write down what you think you need to do in order to complete the task. Break it down into a super-granular level.

    - Make a list of all of questions you need answers to in order to do the task. Often, procrastination results from not actually being able to complete something, but having consciously realized it.

    - Send emails with all those questions at once so you give people time to respond.

    For the third:

    - Download an app like https://getcoldturkey.com/ (for windows) or https://selfcontrolapp.com/ (for OSX) (for linux, this might work http://svn.jklmnop.net/projects/SelfControl.html, but if it doesn't, it is cheaper for you to buy an OSX machine). It lets you block a list of urls for a specified period of time.

    - Put your phone in another room.

    - Go to https://appear.in/kbody and turn on screensharing. open as many tabs on that url as you have monitors. Then, pay a friend to periodically check up on you and, if they see you distracted, to charge you even more money.

  3238. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-17 23:26:14 jonnathanson
    For a counterintuitive remedy, I'd suggest this: get busier. Have more stuff going on in your life. Pick up a hobby or two. Take on more projects. Busy people don't have time to procrastinate. Your projects, like gasses, will expand to fill the free time allotted to getting them done. So give yourself less time to get them done. Structure your time. Have at least two or three things of significance to worry about each day.

    I'm not saying this will work for everyone. But if you're the kind of person who doesn't do well with unstructured time, you will want to acknowledge that and put some structure in place. I did my best academic work in high school, for instance, and that's largely because I was overloaded in high school. I'm not saying you want to overload yourself, as that's not emotionally sustainable. But if you really want to perform at your best, you need to be at least a little stressed every day. (See: the concept of "good stress" or "eustress" vs. "bad stress.") I struggled at first in college, and in my first year in the professional world, until I realized as much and added high school-like structure (of a sort) back into my life.

    I also find that productivity benefits from a sort of momentum. I'm never more productive than when I've just knocked one or two smaller tasks out of the way and build up an energy to keep clearing through the list. Atomize bigger projects, and also chain them together with smaller, easier projects in clustered to-do lists.

    To use another physics analogy, consider the inertia of productivity. The more time you spend idle, the harder it is to get started. The more time you spend working, the harder it is to slow down.

    (Lest someone read the above and think it's a recipe for burnout: I'm not saying to work yourself into a frenzy at all times. Schedule breaks. Hell, have entire days where you do absolutely nothing unless the spirit moves you. But have enough going on in your life that you never find your days totally bereft of structure or things to get done.)

  3239. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-17 23:40:19 grok2
    As yet another variation of the "something might be physically wrong with me" theme, please have yourself tested for thyroid issues if you feel yourself feeling foggy when trying to tackle something and if that is the cause of your procrastination. Low levels of some thyroid hormones can result in this condition of feeling a "brain-fog". It is simple to get tested for and is a relatively common problem and in most cases is a simple fix.

  3240. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-17 23:41:54 hoodwink
    Agreed. Unfortunately the solution to procrastination is unlikely to be found in a 14 minute TED Talk. However, I hoped that the OP could find some solace in recognizing that he is not inherently worse than other people. Procrastination is part of the human condition!

  3241. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-17 23:44:35 distracted828
    When you start looking for jobs, only join a company that does TDD and pair programming. Ask about this in interviews.

    TDD helps you break down tasks and, when you lose focus, you can regain it by re-running your test suite and seeing which test fails.

    Pair programming help you because:

    - They'll tend to have closer to a 10-6 schedule rather than encouraging you to stay up late.

    - When talking through the problem with a colleague, you break the task down more easily and get through whatever mental block you have.

    - You can't get distracted when someone else is right there.

    It may be harder to find a company that does this because many folks think that they can move faster if they build something the "quick and dirty" way. "Quick and dirty" doesn't exist for you. "Quick and dirty" means that the project either fails outright or is one that you start procrastinating on until you get fired.

    Take a look at the book The Clean Coder (http://www.amazon.com/The-Clean-Coder-Professional-Programme...). It talks about procrastination and how to overcome it.

    For a practical introduction to TDD, I'm a fan of Test-Driven Web Development with Python. It is Free. http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000000754

  3242. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-17 23:49:24 ljf
    One thing I've noticed is that in some people procrastination is some sort of protection system. (Not saying this is what op has, just a discussion point)

    They seem to feel that most tasks in life are a bit beneath them (of course I can do this course work / assignment / deliver this project / get great grades / ace this interview - I don't really need to try). Then they keep waiting and waiting until there is little time left to do the work. If they get praise/good grade/the job they have proof that they are cleverer than most and can knock work out in no time. If they fail, well it's because they didn't try that hard, so their ego isn't damaged.

    Anyone else noticed this kind of procrastination? Since realising it I've noticed it more and more in people around me.

  3243. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-17 23:58:46 trott
    It's a very common problem, perhaps especially among programmers: PG talked about primarily working on a computer that had no Internet, RMS talked about using only a computer with no browser, and limited graphical capabilities.

    There's a book written about the science behind motivation called The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel: http://www.amazon.com/The-Procrastination-Equation-Putting-G...

    The following has a pretty good summary: https://alexvermeer.com/how-we-use-the-procrastination-equat...

  3244. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-18 00:19:16 feiss
    Try to analyse if you have noise in your mind. I sometimes feel that procrastination is due to a non focused state of mind. I lately feel that is caused by Internet addiction and a lack of routine.

    Also, I use to procrastinate when I have personal projects much more appealing than the project I must do.

    Try to unplug from the net, go for a long walk, try to tidy up your mind.

  3245. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-18 00:23:57 daxfohl
    Five lines of code. Each day, just get to the point where you've written five lines of code, immediately when you get to work, before looking at twitter or news or whatever. Tell yourself that once you get those five lines in, even if it takes two minutes, you can take the rest of the day off. Justify it because ultimately five lines is better than the zero lines you'd have written otherwise.

    Likely, once those five lines are behind you you'll whip out 100 more because you've gotten over the hump. But don't think about that initially, lest it overwhelm you. Just think about the five lines and how much better it is to have those out of the way and the rest of the day to do whatever you want, while feeling like you've at least done something that day.

    Use a website blocker like "stop procrastinating". Yes they just work by updating your `hosts` file. You may think "that won't work because I know how to override it", but they do: usually you're only going to twitter because it's a single button click away; if it involves more effort then it's not worth it. And yes you could write it yourself but I think don't: otherwise you'll spend too many hours gold-plating a dumb utility.

    Finally, try to end each day with an interesting task five lines of code away from completion. It'll annoy the crap out of you as you toss and turn all night thinking about it. When you get to work you can't wait to get that done and out of the way.

  3246. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-18 00:32:26 raldi
    Well, there's also the scarier point made at the end of the talk that a lot of procrastinators find a way to get through life by using deadline pressure to trigger productivity, but that while this can seem like a perfectly functional, if gut-wrenching, system, it actually leads to long-term life problems that are hard to notice until it's too late to do anything about them.

  3247. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-18 00:38:21 trampi
    Unfortunately I have observed exactly the described behaviour on myself from time to time. You have also described the thoughts I have regarding this. Sometimes I procrastinate to prevent possible negative outcome of things I am not sure if I am able to solve them and focus on things I am certain I am able to instead. I am someone who gets up late and I feel way too happy if am able to be on time while getting up late. Can anyone provide more information regarding this?

  3248. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-18 01:16:46 solidsnack9000
    Maybe you turn away from your procrastinating for moment, open the editor window, type two or three lines, and then go back to procrastinating. I bet this happens a few times throughout the day.

    Just as you are typing the three lines and turning back to procrastinating, how do you feel?

  3249. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-18 01:18:26 56k
    Read this: http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastin...

  3250. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-18 01:26:17 pflanze
    Don't blue collar workers procrastinate by chatting with each other?

  3251. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-18 01:34:13 jonnathanson
    Taking care of yourself is definitely a must. Especially sleep and exercise and diet. No question, and sorry if I gave the wrong impression. I'm not an advocate for the coffee-and-pharmaceauticals grindcore crowd.

    I should probably clarify: I'm not saying people need to fill their days with random tasks or meaningless busywork. Nor am I saying that people need to overcommit themselves. Rather, I'm saying that, if you believe you're the kind of person who doesn't handle unstructured time very well, then some small amount of structure is your answer.

    Everyone procrastinates for his or her own reasons, and I can't claim to have a magic bullet for all types. But I know what my type used to look like, and when I turned the lens of objective introspection on myself, I realized that my issue was not dealing well with unstructured time. I am guessing there are quite a few of us out there, and those who grok what I'm putting down will probably self-identify as such.

    Note, too, that "finding more to do" should come from a goal-directed place. Make life goals, then atomize them into tangible steps, then atomize those steps into action items. Even hobbies and leisure have a place in the mix -- as things you'd like to get better at, or hell, just fun ways to kill time that refresh and reenergize you, or help you decompress.

    (The opposite of this, which is just randomly committing to a laundry list of things with no overarching purpose, is indeed a recipe for burnout and thinly spread attention.)

    My only real point is, procrastination is remarkably easy to do in a void. So next time you find yourself procrastinating constantly, look around the void. See how big and empty it is. (Or isn't.) Think about what that means in terms of how you're spending your time and planning your life.

  3252. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-18 01:37:59 max_
    The problem you have is called procrastination. Everyone has it. Just in different doses.

    I had a serious problem with this. but these articles by Tim Urban helped alot.

    For a solid understanding on why you procastinate, read this http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastin...

    To know how to beat procrastination read this http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/11/how-to-beat-procrastination.ht...

  3253. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-18 01:47:55 runnig
    I started writing a table:

      start_time, end_time, activity, project
  08:00, 08:30, emails,
  08:00, 08:35, facebook, procrastination
  08:35: 09:00, work, project1
  09:00: 09:30, hackernews, procrastination
    It helped me tremendously to reduce the amount of wasted time. The key is to be absolutely, brutally honest in this table.

  3254. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-18 01:59:06 spenrose
    I really liked this practical approach to working with bad habits:

      http://www.vox.com/2016/3/4/11147432/immunity-to-change
    In short, it's a technique for identifying what semi-conscious goal that procrastination (etc) serves, so you can address it consciously.

  3255. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-18 02:08:47 egypturnash
    The "Pomodoro Technique" works for me. http://pomodorotechnique.com/get-started/#how

    I don't do all the extra stuff with time-tracking that the full method goes into; I just sit for a bit and make a little list of a few Things I'd Like To Do Today, with 6-8 checkboxes (for the total list, not each task) next to them, each representing a 25-minute block of work. Then I take the timer sitting on my desk (it's shaped like a cute ladybug, and has had everything after the 25 minute mark painted over, whimsey is important), wind it up, and start working on one of those things. When it dings, I stop for a break. Get up and stretch, go to the bathroom, get more water. Maybe get right back to working on what I was doing, if it needs more work and I'm excited about it; maybe work on one of the other things because I need a break from that thing, maybe just fuck off and take a longer break for lunch/slacking off/whatever.

    There are ways to do this entirely in software, but I find I like the physicality of winding up the timer and having it sitting there on my desk ticking away.

    And all that said, (a) I haven't been doing this lately, (b) I've procrastinated on my taxes until the last minute. Which is pretty much today I guess, ugh.

  3256. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-18 03:06:47 smonff
    Wait... You should take a look to The Definitive Guide To Procrastination (involving a monkey, a monster and a darkwood) : http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastin...

    Part 1 gives you a reasonnable understanding of the issue. Part 2 include practical advices.

  3257. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-18 03:24:44 lisivka
    It is first sign of burnout: your brain need time to clean, repair or/and rewire your brain.

    Sleep well, exercise often, take long vacation, i.e. procrastinate well.

  3258. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-18 03:29:08 fossuser
    I think this has to do with a mixture of fear of failure, having "smart" be part of your identity and having somewhat of a fixed mindset instead of a growth mindset.

    The procrastination protects your self identity because you can discount failure as having not tried that hard.

    It's better to keep your identity small and value continually learning over "being smart".

  3259. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-18 03:34:04 9erdelta
    Now see, if not for procrastination, I may never have heard of this book.

  3260. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-18 03:56:31 amelius
    Perhaps his work is not rewarding as it was, say, 5 years ago. I can certainly relate that myself. When I was a kid, making new stuff (e.g. computer programs) and showing them to my family and friends was rewarding, and addictive in a certain way. But, of course, at a certain point hobby becomes work, and things are less exciting. Perhaps time to find more interesting work and/or hobby?

    Another explanation could be the anxiety that is involved in doing anything new. You have this great idea, but you are not sure if it will succeed once you start implementing it. So the mind figures it is better to just dream on a little (and imagine that what you want to do will work), rather than have anxious feelings while entering the code.

    The latter explanation, if true, makes me wonder if anti-anxiety drugs could help with procrastination.

  3261. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-18 03:58:54 Xcelerate
    Those points all have validity to them, but have you ever met an INTJ who procrastinates? I can't say I have. Look at Musk — he's essentially the embodiment of pure INTJ.

  3262. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-18 06:22:16 foxhop
    Great references:

    http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastin...

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=arj7oStGLkU

  3263. Ask HN: Can't concentrate to focus, until it's last minute or later 2016-04-18 09:34:10 saeranv
    Regular, long (60min) sessions of meditation has helped me a lot. Not only will it increase your ability to concentrate on one idea for a longer period of time, it also provides a conceptual framework to get rid of the anxieties, and fears that are causing you to procrastinate in the first place.

    The biggest problem is that it is difficult, and it's quite easy to find yourself 'resetting' to your baseline if you miss a couple of days.

  3264. Develop the three great virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris 2016-04-18 10:33:00 Retra
    The article is talking about lazy evaluation, not lazy programmers. And thus it's not talking about impatience or hubris either, because it's not talking about that quote at all, just using it because it contains the word 'lazy' in a programming context.

    Lazy evaluation is probably better named "deferred evaluation", and is more analogous to procrastination, not laziness.

  3265. Browse Hacker News Like a Haxor 2016-04-18 21:09:59 monsieurbanana
    I use emacs' built-in browser (eww) when I want to procrastinate in peace.

  3266. Ask HN: How would Leonardo Da Vinci be using the internet? 2016-04-20 13:53:33 sixQuarks
    There would be no Da Vinci. His attention span would be so shot by constantly procrastinating and chasing click-bait articles, he wouldn't have time to delve deep into anything.

  3267. ‘Utopia for Realists?’ – a review 2016-04-20 19:20:06 varjag
    There's an upper bound to how efficiently say elementary school kids can learn unsupervised, and if you discard the outliers it's not very impressive. School teachers are not just doing busywork sent down by bureaucrats; much of it is still teaching in the class, checking student's progress, grading the homework and so on.

    As to the working in bursts I used to think of it as a manifestation of creativity and talent in heroic stunts. Years later I see it differently: if you do one hour of actual work in a week, you are procrastinating/slacking for the other 39 hours. Even, predictable pace of work is a hallmark of professionalism. At least now I try hard to keep my progress steady and predictable.

  3268. Why your brain loves procrastination 2016-04-21 09:05:34 kenthorvath
    It's not procrastination - it's just lazy evaluation.

  3269. ELIZA: Program for the Study of Natural Language Communication (1966) [pdf] 2016-04-21 09:52:52 striking
    I just tested it out (I'm procrastinating writing a term paper). Eliza helped me pep myself up!

    (Although it's probably a side-effect of my optimism. And the caffeine.)

  3270. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 06:15:57 shmageggy
    Kind of painful to read such an accurate account of my own psychological failings while currently carrying out such failings (procrastinating by reading this article)

  3271. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 06:39:45 seangrogg
    > If progress on a task can take many forms, procrastination is the absence of progress.

    Oh, well... I guess I can't call myself a procrastinator anymore. Now to ponder what I should refer to myself as...

  3272. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 06:43:33 seizethecheese
    For those who would rather try to use procrastination to their advantage than fight against it: http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

  3273. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 06:49:53 hacker_9
    Labels are dangerous, and labelling yourself as a procrastinator will just make you even less likely to do the work you need to do. I think I get a lot of work done (solo game dev on my own), but I also re-organise my task list about every week too, does that make me a procrastinator? If I get stuck on a hard problem, I'll often browse the internet mindlessly, then come back and solve it. Does that make me a procrastinator? If I take a week off, am I a procrastinator!?

    Just because we made up a word for 'not doing work' doesn't make it real, or a problem. 'chronic procrastination'? Give me a break.

    I think the real problem is people don't like doing things that are hard, which work generally is (nothing worth doing is easy after all!), and it's easy to just not do something and not have to suffer through the stress of it, anxiety of it and so on.

    If you're still reading, my solution for all this is exercise, specifically Yoga. I have a mat laid out in my house, and when I'm stressed I just do poses, stretching and breathing, and all the 'bad feelings' go away. then I can work in a relaxed state and end up being very productive. A biologist would probably tell you that you release chemicals that combat the stress chemicals and so on, but I just know it works.

  3274. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 08:08:12 Terr_
    Phew, I feel like the author of this article has been snooping in my diary. (That is, if I didn't procrastinate writing entries in it.) Quotes that really stand out:

    > “It really has nothing to do with time-management,” he says. “As I tell people, to tell the chronic procrastinator to just do it would be like saying to a clinically depressed person, cheer up.”

    > “The chronic procrastinator, the person who does this as a lifestyle, would rather have other people think that they lack effort than lacking ability,” says Ferrari. “It’s a maladaptive lifestyle.”

    > “The future self becomes the beast of burden for procrastination,” says Sirois. “We’re trying to regulate our current mood and thinking our future self will be in a better state. They’ll be better able to handle feelings of insecurity or frustration with the task. That somehow we’ll develop these miraculous coping skills to deal with these emotions that we just can’t deal with right now.”

    > But while the tough love approach might work for couples, the best personal remedy for procrastination might actually be self-forgiveness.

  3275. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 08:42:04 zwegner
    > I think I get a lot of work done (solo game dev on my own), but I also re-organise my task list about every week too, does that make me a procrastinator? If I get stuck on a hard problem, I'll often browse the internet mindlessly, then come back and solve it. Does that make me a procrastinator? If I take a week off, am I a procrastinator!?

    No, that behavior seems pretty rational, not like what is described in the article. You're not consistently putting off a painful task, you're taking breaks.

    > Just because we made up a word for 'not doing work' doesn't make it real, or a problem.

    Call it what you will, but procrastination has been a serious problem for me. The negative effects on my life are far too plentiful to mention, but an easy example is that I dropped out of college because I didn't want to write a paper. I tried to write it, couldn't make progress, stopped going to the class, and then didn't sign up for any more classes. There are just some tasks that are very stressful to think about, and for better or worse, my instinctual response is to simply not think about them at all. Unless you've experienced this, and seen relationships, jobs, personal projects, etc fall apart right in front of you, over and over again, I don't think you can say procrastination is not a problem.

    I do a fair amount of Yoga, and indeed it helps with relaxation, but that's rather beside the point: it's quite susceptible to the same mental flinch as any other task. If I'm procrastinating on something, it's not any easier to decide to do Yoga to help make progress on it, than it is to just not procrastinate in the first place.

  3276. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 09:16:23 33degrees
    "The idea is that procrastinators comfort themselves in the present with the false belief that they’ll be more emotionally equipped to handle a task in the future." This pretty much sums it up for me, and explains why the time management based approaches haven't helped me all that much.

  3277. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 09:22:03 eldude
    Procrastination is a lack of motivation, which itself is a combination of self-interest + self-efficacy (expected probability of success).

    I overcame procrastination / lack of motivation when I read this article[1], effectively summarizing the above through a study of the study habits of successful (non-procrastinating) children. Now, when I procrastinate, I ask myself, what is my selfish motivation for completing this, and do I believe I will be successful? If I don't have a self-interest, I create one. If I don't believe I will be successful, I find a way to ensure success or sufficiently increase my confidence in my ability to achieve success.

    [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dont-delay/201601/ill-d...

  3278. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 09:28:30 huevosabio
    Jon Kleinberg has a very useful graph theoretical model for procrastination:

    http://uwtv.org/series/2015-computer-science-engineering-col...

  3279. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 09:39:22 mirimir
    > Procrastinators might chop up tasks into smaller pieces so they can work through a more manageable series of assignments.

    This was a key insight for me. Knowing that I can finish just this one piece in one sitting makes it doable.

  3280. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 09:59:41 hartator
    I think you know you have an issue when you delay your own current tasks by reading an article about procrastination, fully agree with it, then procrastinate more by posting a comment on HN.

  3281. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 10:36:45 heimatau
    >...labeling yourself as a procrastinator will just make you even less likely to do the work...

    I only started reading this article and it doesn't seem you're talking about what the article is talking about.

    Quote from article: “What I’ve found is that while everybody may procrastinate, not everyone is a procrastinator,” says APS Fellow Joseph Ferrari, a professor of psychology at DePaul University."

    Edit: After reading the article. It seems hacker_'s advice is what they are advocating for. Emotional regulation. Since procrastinator's have a self-defeating internal voice. Calming oneself could be beneficial but the science is merky.

  3282. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 10:56:19 aab0
    Relevant: http://lesswrong.com/lw/3w3/how_to_beat_procrastination/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/jyg/outline_summary_the_procrastinat... http://www.amazon.com/The-Procrastination-Equation-Putting-G...

  3283. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 11:09:03 heimatau
    TL;DR; The science is merky but researchers have noticed self-forgiveness, seeing tasks as fun (or rewarding), and changing the perspective of procrastinators have been beneficial. Emotions also play a role.

    Since many may skim this article here are some highlights with direct excerpts:

    - (defining proc) What I’ve found is that while everybody may procrastinate, not everyone is a procrastinator,” says APS Fellow Joseph Ferrari, a professor of psychology at DePaul University.

    - (regarding a research social experiment) As it happened, chronic procrastinators only delayed practice on the puzzle when it was described as a cognitive evaluation. When it was described as fun, they behaved no differently from non-procrastinators.

    - (proc is self-defeating) In an issue of the Journal of Research in Personality from 2000, Tice and Ferrari concluded that procrastination is really a self-defeating behavior — with procrastinators trying to undermine their own best efforts.

    - (defining procrastinators) The idea is that procrastinators calculate the fluctuating utility of certain activities: pleasurable ones have more value early on, and tough tasks become more important as a deadline approaches.

    - (link between proc and emotions) “Emotional regulation, to me, is the real story around procrastination, because to the extent that I can deal with my emotions, I can stay on task,” says Pychyl. “When you say task-aversiveness, that’s another word for lack of enjoyment. Those are feeling states — those aren’t states of which [task] has more utility.”

    - (on the Neuropsychology) Rabin, the study suggests that procrastination might be an “expression of subtle executive dysfunction” in people who are otherwise neuropsychologically healthy.

    - (Solutions?) Sirois believes the best way to eliminate the need for short-term mood fixes is to find something positive or worthwhile about the task itself.

    - (Solutions?) Ferrari...would like to see a general cultural shift from punishing lateness to rewarding the early bird.

    - (Solutions?) But while the tough love approach might work for couples [references to not doing a spouse's stack of dishes], the best personal remedy for procrastination might actually be self-forgiveness.

    - (Solutions?) The research team, led by Michael Wohl, reported in a 2010 issue of Personality and Individual Differences that students who forgave themselves after procrastinating on the first exam were less likely to delay studying for the second one.

  3284. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 11:27:40 hashberry
    I am a remote worker and suffer from chronic procrastination. This is a great article but I believe procrastination is an addiction. At times I feel like a compulsive alcoholic who sneaks off to do fun things all day instead of working. I have procrastinated as a student and my entire career and have always gotten away with it. I've been rewarded with praise of my great work, higher paying positions, and bonuses. I find myself enjoying waiting until the last minute and then using stress to help me succeed. It is a vicious cycle. I want to stop procrastinating but at the same time I like doing it.

  3285. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 11:45:36 heimatau
    I wish research would look into high IQ procrastinators because they'd be an outlier to their data. Since the bad consequences tend to miss high IQ people. But according to the article, researchers wouldn't call that procrastination, since the consequences haven't been experienced. Many of the same stressors are experienced between people who complete tasks (I've been calling them high IQ but could be anyone), last minute, and those that miss their deadlines (proc).

    I think your 'issue' is similar to mine. We find ourselves unchallenged. Therefore we wait, to increase the challenge. And when we win, the victory is oh so sweet.

  3286. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 12:01:26 eldude
    To be fair, sometimes self-interest merely means bribing myself, like for instance with a new Macbook Pro in exchange for seeing a contract through to completion, or maybe an expensive bottle of whiskey.

    The self-efficacy portion is harder, but most of the failure of procrastinators is due to the self-created problem of not having enough time. Fortunately, focusing on increasing self-efficacy leads one to start making progress right away (i.e., not procrastinating).

    Have you ever tried increasing your self-efficacy (belief in your potential for success)?

  3287. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 12:37:53 albemuth
    You should read this: http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastin...

    It's the most accurate and empathetic description I've read.

  3288. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 13:59:12 mirimir
    I get what you say. Blaming oneself for procrastinating (or for anything else) for sure doesn't help. But awareness of the issue is essential. And doing something to address it. Exercise is always a good thing. Naps are good too. Or reading. Or ...

    But the most effective thing that I've found is getting some piece of the work done. Maybe just a tiny piece. That puts me on an upward spiral, and so it's easier to get more done. And so on.

  3289. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 14:17:42 rizzin
    >Just do your work if you want the results.

    Quote from the article: "As I tell people, to tell the chronic procrastinator to just do it would be like saying to a clinically depressed person, cheer up."

  3290. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 14:45:35 kristiandupont
    I think this applies to many with a certain level of intellectual skills: they've been taught through many years of school that procrastination works because they could get away with it.

  3291. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 14:56:02 scotty79
    > Tice and colleagues reported that students didn’t procrastinate before an intelligence test when primed to believe their mood was fixed. In contrast, when they thought their mood could change (and particularly when they were in a bad mood), they delayed practice until about the final minute. The findings suggested that self-control only succumbs to temptation when present emotions can be improved as a result.

    That's very interesting observation. That explains why procrastinators eventually get to things when they hit the rock bottom of tiredness and self loathing.

  3292. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 16:09:56 maruhan2
    The irony of procrastinating by reading about procrastination

  3293. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 17:21:27 jo909
    You are clearly not a procrastinator, and chronic procrastination seems so far away from your own mental state and experiences that you might not relate and emphasize even remotely with it. I don't mean that in a bad way, it is likely just not been part of your reality which makes it very very hard to understand what affected people feel like and what their reasons could be.

    (Please excuse me if I'm putting words in your mouth here. It's an interpretation on my behalf, and I'm just as likely to also completely fail to understand how you feel like and what your reasons are.)

    "Procrastination" is a simple word to describe a complex and large range of behaviors. Each behavior on it's own might be something very normal that everybody does once in a while, but that is just one end of the spectrum. On the other end of the spectrum it is a massive problem, controlling every part of the affected persons life and likely mixed with other mental and emotional problems as a result of it. Of course the number of people on that extreme end are rare, it's somewhere in between for most.

    But I would say that by definition people that identify with that "label" recognize how it is (has been) hurting them again and again, and how hard it is to control those behaviors.

    It is a very important first step to admit to yourself that you have a problem, and to learn about your "condition" so you can understand what is actually happening. There are many strategies that helped many people, most base on first recognizing and understanding your own (harmful) patterns and their deeper roots, in order to change them.

    Dismissing that this is actually a real problem and that people should just snap out of it is surely not helping affected people.

  3294. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 17:23:32 majewsky
    > The idea is that procrastinators calculate the fluctuating utility of certain activities: pleasurable ones have more value early on, and tough tasks become more important as a deadline approaches.

    This sounds like a definition (sort of) for rational judgment. When you have a hard task, most of the time it's a good idea to procrastinate it for a while because

    a) requirements may change, so that work spent early on could be useless (or even the whole task could turn out to be unnecessary), or

    b) you might acquire more knowledge in the meantime which enables you to solve the task more effectively or more efficiently.

    The distinction between a procrastinator and a rationalist would then be that the procrastinator also procrastinates tasks for which the outlook of these two things happening is bleak.

  3295. Show HN: A Chrome extension to remind you why you opened Facebook 2016-04-22 17:36:25 welanes
    On the problem of wasting time browsing - I stick to a rough Pomodoro style principle. Coffee in the morning while I spend 20 minutes gorging on the sweet sweet stream of fresh info from HN/Reddit/Feedly/Twitter that surfaced while I slept.

    Anything that looks interesting but requires more than a few minutes to chew on (like this, today: FBI Paid More Than $1M to Hack San Bernardino iPhone) I bookmark.

    Throughout the day I take 10mins break for each 50mins of work, I don't go to these sites again, I just work through what I picked out in that first 20 minutes.

    Gets the thirst for news out of the way and allows you to procrastinate, in a sense, "productively".

  3296. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 18:17:56 azazqadir
    Sometime people want take their mind off of work for few minutes to get relaxed. That does not make it procrastination. It's called taking a break.

  3297. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 19:02:16 wprapido
    i'm also a procrastinator with clinical depression (F33.2) and i think our set of issues is entirely different

  3298. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 20:45:37 ivanhoe
    Just like with many other disorders, as long as it's a mild problem you can use a number of ad hoc remedies, but it just won't work for people with real issues. Telling a junky to just do yoga and stay away from drugs is a valid suggestion, but in real-life it's just not enough. Real procrastinator will not do yoga when procrastinating, simply because most of the time you are not even aware that you're procrastinating at the moment. Or if you are you don't have a mental strength to fight the urge to do it. I know this is very hard to grasp for someone who have never experienced it, but the act of procrastination is actually a kind of reality distortion where your own brain tricks you into not really noticing what you are doing. It's a bit like when magician diverts your attention so that you don't notice when he hides the card in a sleeve. You know it will happen, but you aren't aware of it in the moment it happens and you just can't stop him from shifting your focus away from cards. That is, at least, my impression how it happens to me when procrastinating, simply at some point my subconscious gets bored and jumps to another track without consulting the rationale me about it. Half an hour later you realise you've been reading an article about skeletons of giant sloths found in China instead of working or whatever you've planned to do.

  3299. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 21:29:27 capote
    So what's your solution then? What if I agree with you and say: fine, it's impossible for procrastinators to do their work. Is this the end? Do we all just agree that procrastinators can't do their work and sit around not doing work?

    What's the solution, if not somehow, some way, gathering the willpower and forcing yourself to do the work? Is there another way around it?

  3300. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 21:35:18 capote
    That's a frustrating parallel you draw. I wouldn't tell a depressed person to cheer up. I've been depressed.

    And I wouldn't tell an addict to just stop. I have friends who are addicts.

    But I know that at the end of the day, if you want to fix either of these issues, you are the only person who can do something about it. It's difficult, but possible. Nobody else can stop drinking for you, or fix your depression for you. Sure you can try rehab and antidepressants, but at the end of the day you have to do it.

    Same with procrastination. Except there's no pill for it, you just have to do it. I wouldn't say it in such a crude way to a friend, but the fact is, the friend is the only one who can fix his problem.

  3301. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-22 22:38:50 tmbsundar
    This article is right on many points. But, I think it does not do justice in characterizing the application of Temporal Motivation Theory (TMT), Expectancy Theory, Cumulative Prospect Theory to procrastination - by Steel and others at various points in time - as "Time management" in one broad stroke.

    The behavioral economic school of thought clearly implies -explicitly and indirectly - the role of emotions and moods in procrastination.

    Take for instance, in the TMT equation,[1][2] the concept of

    - "Value": This is more of how much you see value in that activity, how interesting or engaging that is to "you", how pleasurable it is, How rewarding that activity is, etc., The selection of the activity is heavily influenced by what looks pleasurable and rewarding to you.

    - "Impulsiveness": This is similar to the "Emotional regulation" or "self-control" in the psychologists' approach. If you are in a good and/or stable mood, chances are that, you would have more control over your Emotions and thus less distraction.

    The "economic theory", apart from the "Temporal" aspect, also stresses on the "impulsive" and "pleasure" components in the equation.

    Also, in the analysis, the analysts from the behavioral economic point of view also recommend "to break the activities into smaller chunks", "have conquerable smaller activities with local deadlines" etc., similar to the psychologists' approach.

    I think that the psychologists' point of view is well taken, with the "mood control"/"emotional regulation" point being emphasized. But, at the same time, the behavioral economic point view is not only about "Time Management".

    [1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/3w3/how_to_beat_procrastination/ [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_motivation_theory

  3302. Show HN: A Chrome extension to remind you why you opened Facebook 2016-04-22 22:44:13 noobie
    HN already has an in-built anti-procrastination feature.

  3303. Why Wait? the Science Behind Procrastination 2016-04-23 07:40:39 ywecur
    The solution is to view will power as a muscle and treat it as such: Use minor interventions regularly and strengthen it.

    Saying just buckle up to a procrastinator is like telling a very weak guy to just squat 150 KG.

  3304. William Shakespeare, Playwright and Poet, Is Dead at 52 2016-04-24 11:41:53 hackuser
    Much of what he writes about requires, I think, experience in the 'real world' in order to understand and relate to te play. In high school I couldn't understand why Hamlet dithers; what kind of hero feigns insanity and procrastinates? Heroes, everyone knows, charge right at the Death Star and the only question is whether he'll use the battle computer or the Force.

    Sometimes I wondered, are these just random ravings of a lunatic? I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

    Now I understand it and his genius is a a pleasure, an education in humanity, and a wonder to behold. But perhaps it's wasted in high school. Another problem is that there are so few good films of his plays, so people don't have a chance to see well-done versions of them. Some of the films are so poorly produced and such wooden film-making that I'm afraid they will scare people away.

  3305. Why There Are More Consumer Goods Than Ever 2016-04-26 04:06:12 JoeAltmaier
    Maybe a case of increasing expectation. Owning your own movie or game was never all that cool - what with losing them, or scratching the CD, or the platform changing so they didn't run any more. Steam beats all that, at a cost of course.

    The chaotic state of shows and songs is another story. My outlet (e.g. Netflix) has shifting contracts and terms that are opaque to me. So I miss out by procrastinating. Still its better than broadcast TV ever was! That was somebody else deciding every night what I would watch.

    I'm an old grump too. But really, I should just have more patience when my phone won't connect. Its going to space after all!

  3306. Programming blogs 2016-04-26 04:25:44 gjolund
    I write A LOT of javascript.

    I would not discourage you from learning it at all, in fact I highly encourage it if you are starting out.

    HOWEVER...

    You really need to understand the limitations of the language.

    It is poorly designed. It is infuriating to work with.

    As far as the js ecosystem is concerned:

    The community is fragmented and largely unreliable. The workplace is becoming increasingly saturated.

    At the end of the day you should just learn what you want to learn, and like you said "fuck the haters". That's why I started learning Haskell a few months back and I'm really enjoying it.

    The longer you blame ridicule and others opinions for your procrastination, the longer you will regret not learning to code.

  3307. Ask HN: What's your greatest weakness? 2016-04-26 06:32:14 jwilk
    I'm a master of procrastination.

  3308. Do not talk about pricing 2016-04-26 13:55:23 corysama
    The difference is uncertainty. With pizza, you know pretty well what you are going to get. With an app, 90% are crap, 9% are ok but not what you personally prefer, 1% are great. So, gambling $2 with a seemingly 1% chance of greatness feels like an app costs $200. The reality is not that bad. But, it's all about how it feels.

    On top of that, it's not even really about the money. You don't want to feel bad about getting tricked into paying for a crap app. You'd feel like a sucker. It would be frustrating. People do all kinds of mental gymnastics to avoid feeling embarrassment and frustration --to the point that it's dangerous to call out a scammer because they are likely to get geniunely indignant and angry to avoid feeling the embarrassment of their obvious lie. Procrastination to avoid possible frustration is very, very common.

  3309. Apply HN: Make HN social – follow users, topics, and get notified about replies 2016-04-28 01:20:51 stared
    Thank you - you made my "valuable interactions on HN"/"procrastination on HN" ratio much higher! :)

  3310. The real reasons you procrastinate – and how to stop 2016-04-28 13:08:55 saeranv
    Well in context it's slightly better, there are in fact two strategies they suggest:

    - Forgive yourself for procrastinating b/c procrastination is linked to negative feelings

    - recognize you don't have to be in a good mood to do a certain task, just ignore how you feel and get started

    But I agree that is not very useful. However I think the answer lies in a section earlier in the article:

    "Pychyl discusses the idea of the "monkey mind" — that our thoughts are constantly darting all over the place, preventing us from concentrating. And psychologists agree that the problem with procrastinators is that they are tempted to give in to instant gratification, which brings people the kind of instant relief psychologists call "hedonic pleasure," rather than staying focused on the long-term goal."

    This is important! There are concrete methods that have been proven to rewire your brain to lengthen your focus and concentration. One is long distance running. The other is mindful meditation. If you suffer from procrastination, try them, it will make a difference in your ability to concentrate, and thereby allow you to make better long-term decisions.

  3311. The real reasons you procrastinate – and how to stop 2016-04-28 14:22:53 kseistrup
    While I haven't tried long-distance running, I've been meditating for the past 25+ years and I'm probably just as procrastinating now as then – if not more.

  3312. The real reasons you procrastinate – and how to stop 2016-04-28 15:07:17 kseistrup
    Obviously meditation is not a static thing – some days I'm able to maintain focus, other days I'm not. My longest meditation in one sitting was more than 8 hours, but I aim at 2 × 30 minutes a day (or 45 minutes in a single sitting if I'm unable to do 2 sittings for some reason).

    My general equanimity has definitely increased throughout the years, but I can't say meditation has decreased my procrastination (it has increased my general acceptance of procrastination, though).

  3313. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-29 22:45:03 willcodeforfoo
    Oh the irony. I came across this here, while procrastinating, and decided this was too long so I sent it to Instapaper, where I will probably never read it...

  3314. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-29 22:48:45 drb311
    2 ways to deal with procrastination:

    1. Don't worry about it. We all procrastinate and most of the time it works out OK. Our instincts know what they're doing.

    2. Break tough tasks down into very, very laughably small tasks. Don't even worry about doing them. Once the first task in the list is small enough you'll think "sod it" and do it right away.

    If you try to improve your self control you will fail. Go with the grain -- either stop worrying, or find a chunk of the task so is tiny and easy that it becomes instantly gratifying to do it.

  3315. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-29 22:57:39 domusliber
    I didn't even click the article (the pain of reading it seemed too large) so I came directly to the comments.

    Awesome tips! "Our instincts know what they're doing" is very true. I tend to procrastinate when two conditions are fulfilled 1) the task is boring/painful, and 2) in the back of my mind, I've already calculated out the time and I can afford to push it until later. Trying to force myself just increases my expected pain of the task, so I should just go with it.

    (And look, I'm procrastinating so much I made a HN account so I could comment about procrastination!)

  3316. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-29 23:03:34 ghaff
    Both those ideas appear is some form in David Allen's GTD (Getting Things Done). I'm not a particularly big fan overall--I don't much care for systems. But some of his individual ideas include:

    - the idea that, if you can do something in 5 minutes or so, just do it rather than keep putting it on to do lists.

    - breaking down complex projects into discrete small concrete tasks.

    Both are good ideas which do help me.

    One thing about procrastination that often seems to be overlooked though is procrastinating about things that really do need to get done sooner or later (If I don't do the expense report, no one else is going to do it for me.) versus procrastinating about doing some project or making some plans because there's a voice questioning whether you really need to or want to do this project at all.

    Now, I suppose in the latter case, a hyper-organized person would create an action item to "get more information" or something along those lines. But sometimes letting ideas just sit and percolate in a future projects queue works OK too.

  3317. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-29 23:07:20 cylinder
    Isn't procrastination a way of converting painfully boring tasks into fun adrenaline rushes? It seems like a pretty good evolutionary adaption: I perform better when all my senses are elevated, so why not?

    Problem arises when you don't have a hard deadline (I.e., you are only accountable to yourself).

  3318. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-29 23:09:00 Derbasti
    This is more or less a copy of http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/03/procrastination-matrix.html. I recommend reading that instead.

  3319. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-29 23:20:33 xufi
    I always procrastinate when I want o learn something new. In this case. relearning web technologies and whatnot. The best way I see is to force myself to think up of something that I would find interesting to do.

    This is a interesting read for sure

  3320. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-29 23:20:53 simonebrunozzi
    "The real, final, ultimate reason why you procrastinate, and how to stop": https://medium.com/simone-brunozzi/the-real-final-ultimate-r...

    (note: I wrote it, and please take it with a grain of humor)

  3321. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-29 23:22:02 kpmah
    Something I've noticed with my own procrastination is that it often has a strong emotional component. For example, I'll often procrastinate with anything to do with taxes because, even though I know I HAVE to pay it on an intellectual level, it's emotionally difficult for me to part with money.

    Often when I've rationally examined the underlying anxiety it becomes much easier to accomplish things.

  3322. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-29 23:23:46 ddt_Osprey
    The real reason I procrastinate is because I hate my life, and I'd be better off dead.

  3323. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-29 23:31:16 otoburb
    Adrenaline junkies injecting excitement into boring tasks makes a lot of intuitive sense for some of my own selectively chronic procrastination.

  3324. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-29 23:32:29 bobwaycott
    And a great thing to put the next 14 minutes into if you're struggling for procrastination ideas. :)

  3325. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-29 23:34:25 codezero
    I try to say this whenever the subject comes up, procrastination is a form of anxiety and is a real mental health issue. You should talk to a professional about it if it's affecting your life.

  3326. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-29 23:40:07 johnchristopher
    Well. How do we deal with that ? Procrastination is a symptom for many different things. Depression being one of the worst of them.

    How do we differentiate healthy procrastination from fear or depressive thoughts pattern ?

  3327. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-29 23:41:57 reirob
    I like the procrastinator's matrix:

    https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://...

    Will print it and stick to my wall... Next time when I need to procrastinate.

  3328. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-29 23:42:52 ratsmack
    I would have to say that my problem has more to do with too many easily available distractions, instead of procrastination. I made a point that while at work my browser was never used for anything except work and email was only to be read and answered at specific points during the day, and sometimes only at the end of the day. In addition, I discouraged anyone from sending me personal email to my work address so any personal items were addressed when I got home. All of this seemed to cure my "procrastination" problem.

  3329. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 00:09:29 Eleopteryx
    I feel like I can attribute my procrastination to a few things

    1. choice paralysis I'm fairly certain I have a cavity in one of my teeth, I can basically see it when I look in the mirror, in addition to sensitivity to temperature. So I need to find a dentist a) in my area b) that accepts my insurance. There are multiple options. I want to know who the optimal dentist is; I want the one who can pull off a painless root canal if need be, but I definitely don't want the one who will cause agony or perform a procedure incorrectly. I think, maybe I'll Google them and see if I can find any reviews or other indications that one dentist is better than the next. Confronted by 20 options, I spend more time on the whole thing than I need to, optimizing the odds that I get distracted along the way.

    2. various forms of anxiety, mostly social anxiety I really don't want to call and talk to a stranger on the phone to schedule that appointment. I'm not even that bad at talking to people, and yet it makes my heart race. I'm afraid to drive to places that I've never been, to awkwardly enter an unfamiliar building trying to figure out where to go. I'm afraid of not being able to find a parking space. I'm afraid of a lot of stupid things that don't matter.

    3. extreme lethargy Is something I've been trying to overcome for literally years. Inadequate nutrition is the main factor in this. I am mentally and physically tired almost all of the time, to varying degrees, which slows me down, and makes it harder to focus on something. I don't eat right, sometimes eating but a single meal in a day. Sometimes I will eat nothing substantial for an entire day. I recently tried "Mealsquares" (basically Soylent in solid form) as means to ensure I get all the nutrients I need. I've yet to be able to eat more than 2 in a day (usually just 1), which would equate to 400-800 calories at most. At 6' height, a target weight of a 170lbs requires me to consume an excess of 2000 calories per day, so imagine getting 1/4-1/2 of that on average per day. I don't even know how I get through the days as well as I do, what is my body running on? I actually know how to prepare multiple meals, I just don't. Instead of hunger making me voracious, it makes me feel lazy and depressed. If hiring a full-time cook were affordable, I would do it.

    At the end of the day, nothing is getting done if I simply don't have the fuel to power my body to do it.

    Procrastination feels like a pattern, a vicious cycle that feeds on itself, a loop from which I'm trying to break free. I'm trying to reverse it and emerge on top, and it sounds like something that can be turned around in a week, but I feel like it's been an upward battle for most of my adulthood.

  3330. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 00:11:45 visarga
    Some people call it procrastination, other people call it thinking. A little bit of procrastination is correlated with increased creativity. When people procrastinate too little or too much, they are less creative, but when they procrastinate just enough to get away from the problem but not too far away, then new perspectives pop up.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/opinion/sunday/why-i-taugh...

  3331. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 00:14:11 abalone
    That title sure promises a lot. I read all the way to the end and this is their solution:

    1. Forgive yourself

    2. Ignore your feelings about whether you're in the mood to work on it

    3. Break it down into small steps

    I would say #2 is easier said than done for an extreme procrastinator. But, decent article. Sometimes it's good just to hear that change is possible.

    I would add to it that once you adopt new patterns they can set in and make productivity easier. It's sort of like drinking or other chronic problems.. It's rooted in your DNA and you do have to watch out for it creeping up on you, but the more successful you are the easier it gets.

    In my case, making really granular todo lists and then crossing things off helped establish a rhythm. It showed me I could in fact accomplish a lot. It does take time to make and prioritize the list, but good prioritization is really important and totally worth it. Wunderlist helped a lot. Made it super easy to add things, prioritize in free moments, and constantly check it and "live by the list".

    I would still let some high priority stuff live on top of the list for weeks sometimes, but I could forgive myself for those lapses more readily because I could see how overall better I was doing. And that vastly increased my chances of eventually tackling those big scary tasks as opposed to spiraling into a negative feedback loop.

    As the article notes, it really is about emotional management. Todo lists would be useless without structuring them in a way that lets you build up emotional gratification and self confidence.

  3332. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 00:15:13 clentaminator
    The real reason you procrastinate: You fundamentally don't want to be doing whatever task it is that you're avoiding, and while it might be the logically "correct" thing to do, that doesn't mean you want to do it. What we want and what we are pushed into doing are not always aligned. News at ten.

  3333. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 00:17:48 dceddia
    It comes and goes, for me. I notice I'm much more susceptible to falling into a procrastination/unhappiness loop if I haven't done any exercise for a while. Energy starts to wane, and if I trip into procrastination, it kind of builds on itself and gets worse.

    Procrastinate -> Feel Bad -> What's the point -> So far behind -> Procrastinate...

  3334. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 00:24:34 partycoder
    The irony is that if you read this during work hours it becomes procrastination.

  3335. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 00:49:18 55acdda48ab5
    I procrastinate a lot and will never stop because in so many cases it makes perfect sense and works out well. I can't tell you how many times it turned out I didn't even need to do something I was procrastinating on, or a far easier way to proceed came up.

    It's so easy to wind up with an infinite list of chores. Continually pushing a lot of them off as late as possible works rather well, in my experience.

  3336. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 00:51:49 tmrmn
    >Isn't procrastination a way of converting painfully boring tasks into fun adrenaline rushes?

    must be one of my new favourite quotes. Thanks for this gem

  3337. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 01:11:23 deepnet
    My procrastination has a single task buffer. I find a worse task, put that at the top of a list - then procrastinate this decoy task with the real to do list.

  3338. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 01:26:01 corysama
    It's been mentioned elsewhere in the comments here, but this is directly relevant to your comment.

    http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastin...

  3339. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 01:40:41 dgreensp
    I have to laugh whenever "hedonic pleasure" is brought into the discussion.

    If avoiding your thesis by emptying the dishwasher is "giving into pleasure," why is there so little pleasure involved, and is it hedonism again when the next day you feel inspired and give into the pleasure of writing your thesis? At the same time, the very fact that your levels of motivation, courage, and anxiety fluctuate all the time invalidates the advice, "You're never going to feel like doing it (so just do it)." This is a form of motivational advice where you take a truth and wrap it in a lie. Another example is, "Nobody enjoys their job." Plenty of people enjoy their jobs, so what is really being said? Basically that the current discomforts are to be expected and should not cause distress. It's emotional invalidation in a digestible pill, though it may trigger an adverse reaction.

    We are emotional animals with many emotional needs and colorful emotional states. We should learn to be aware of our own needs, and practice recognizing and tolerating our emotional states. For example, acting with courage involves being able to tolerate the fear state, which is a skill that takes practice. With awareness of your emotions, you can absolutely increase happiness and pleasure in your life, by doing activities you enjoy and hopefully going into a line of work you take some pleasure in. Arrange your life to make your inner animal happy. Acknowledge when your needs are not being met.

    Whenever I see the term "hedonic pleasure" used, it is surrounded by a useless caricature of the human emotional life. In this caricature, all positive emotions are equivalent; all negative emotions are equivalent; and avoiding a negative emotion is equivalent to seeking a positive emotion. Never mind what's causing the emotions in the first place!

    Hedonism is about the morality of sensual pleasure. Imagine you have enough money in the bank that you never have to work again, and in fact you can live a life of some luxury. What should you devote your life to now? Maximizing your personal pleasure? Or should you invest in your personal relationships, or try to make the world a better place? What's the most good or "moral" path? Obviously, the society we live in frowns on the hedonistic choice. All of this has nothing to do with procrastination, except by a very strained analogy. If in procrastination, we feel that our "voice of reason" is being drowned out by other voices representing baser drives, we can smear these other voices by portraying them as mindless pleasure-seekers — supporters of the Pleasure Party — and make our opposition to this party into a moral or philosophical issue. Meanwhile, the truth could be that the "voice of reason" is an echo of your parents insisting you need a PhD using tactics of shame and fear, while among your "baser drives" is the desire to feel a sense of your own worth as a person.

    Humans don't "seek" emotions, anyway, we feel them. When you think about your homework, that thought triggers an emotional cascade. The trick is altering that emotional response over time. When you play a video game level, you aren't "seeking" the hit of completing the level; you are actually feeling a positive emotion throughout the whole level of being engaged with making progress towards a goal. When you even think about going to play video games, you get some of that feeling. This feeling is a hugely positive thing, but like all emotions, you need to be on decent terms with it so you can reason with it, so hear it out; feel it; and then recruit some other voices to the conversation.

  3340. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 02:10:21 smelterdemon
    Depression is a know cause of adhd type symptoms, which include procrastination. Find a good shrink (I know it's hard and you probably won't listen to me, but on the off chance you are looking for advice just try)

  3341. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 02:32:11 Nano2rad
    Procrastination is a symptom cr character of ADHD I am pretty sure about that because I heard from a specialist. If procrastination is part of mental illness, recovery is only possible by treating the condition.

  3342. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 02:41:30 kafkaesq
    Without labeling it as a form of ADHD (or anything else), necessarily, but simply recognizing that the impulse to procrastinate is probably tied to the brain's short-term reward cycles (dopamine-based or otherwise) in some way or another -- and hence, that it might legitimately be thought as a kind of micro-addiction, like the tendency to grab for tasty foods or clever-sounding news bites every 10 minutes -- was a big help to me in getting a handle on it.

    And teaching me that, at least once in a while, I can, in fact, "just say no" -- and try to get things done for the sake of a much large, multi-faced, and legitimately nourishing neurohormone

  3343. Infosec's Jerk Problem (2013) 2016-04-30 03:21:39 kazinator
    > most developers would love to have the time to make sure their code is secure and well tested

    I'm suspect not.

    No matter how much time you have, it's more exciting to work on something new than going through testing. Time is not all equal. Even if you have an unlimited supply of time (everlasting life), you cannot somehow use a time block that occurs 1000 years from now, in order to displace the boredom you feel from what you're doing now.

    If anything, unlimited time will increase procrastination. "If this isn't debugged for another 500 years, that's okay; I will live long enough to see it debugged.".

    Thus, I suspect, most developers would actually love to have a vast army of other people with unlimited time to do the QA to make sure their code is secure and well-tested. :)

  3344. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 03:52:45 dhimes
    I read this yesterday, and I didn't realize this before: Procrastination is an emotional issue. To control it you have to control your emotions. That changed how I fundamentally look at the problem.

  3345. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 04:00:30 padobson
    Yes! It's incredible how many things we think we need to do that we don't actually need to do.

    1) Finding a better solution and 2) Finding out you didn't need to do it at all are two great outcomes from procrastinating.

  3346. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 05:06:40 heimatau
    I was thinking about this article and feel it 'clicked' for me. Especially since HN had another article about procrastination recently [1]. I know abalone is saying it's all about emotional management but...I feel the writer of the article was confused since they quote 'you don't tell a depressed person to be less apathetic' yet the author seems like they are encouraging emotional management.

    My big takeaway from this article and the last [1] is that two major ideas are being seen in the research:

    1. Forgive yourself. 2. Be kind to your future self.

    #1 can be done with some mental tricks, if someone is having difficulty. Namely, thinking about 'what if my friend did x [something i just did], what would be my response to them'. This answer is generally positive and procrastinators tend to be hard on themselves, so...looking at how we would treat others would be a mental hack, for us to treat ourselves better.

    #2 is where I feel something just 'clicked' for me just now. In some ways, it's developing on the idea of 'a procrastinator would be nice to someone else, so be nice to yourself'. Since this 'someone else' is your future you.

    Self control, emotional regulation, yadda yadda. I think all of those can help but don't help everyone. They didn't help me.

    These two beliefs and mental hacks have given me insight to my behavior. I hope the next time this issue comes up on HN, that we can have more research into the procrastinator's disassociation between time and self. Because to me, that's the problem, not self-control nor emotional regulation.

    [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11541675

  3347. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 05:34:36 justsaysmthng
    Just procrastinated for 10-15 minutes setting up Instapaper on my machine and on my iPhone and testing it out. Looks good. Now I can procrastinate more efficiently :)

  3348. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 05:40:19 justsaysmthng
    I disagree. I often procrastinate on the things that I really really want to do.

    My explanation for that is not the fundamental lack of interest in the project, but the hidden fear of failure that accompanies every project that I work on.

    I've worked on so many failed projects that I've kind of lost hope of actually producing something that won't be forgotten immediately.

    (Mind that this is not necessarily true - some of my work (as a comedian/writer/actor) has been viewed millions of times, while some of the code I've written is being executed by millions of machines every day, but I still feel like I've failed at everything, because that was just "blind luck" ).

    If all this effort results in disappointment and depression, why bother waste energy on it now - this is the kind of hidden thought process that's going on in my head and I guess in many other's people's heads too.

    Paradoxically, this is the thought process that also disarms you a little bit every day, until the task becomes painful and not worth pursuing and once again you've failed to accomplished what you've set out to.

    It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, but also hard to break since it's not happening on a "rational" level, but on a lower "fight or flight" subconscious level, which is very hard to control.

  3349. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 05:40:47 maxxxxx
    Your advice sounds a little like telling lonely people go out more and everything will be fine. It's not so simple for a lot of people. I have serious procrastination issues in some areas (anything that involves paperwork) and it's causing me a lot of stress despite having followed your advice many times.

    Advice is good if it helps people but you have to resist the urge to generalize.

  3350. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 06:24:25 patmcguire
    The great benefit of procrastination is that it saves a lot of work. Future you isn't going to have to do it in two months, because no one is going to have to do it. Something will come along and tableflip everyone's plans and then you'll have done the original thing and the new thing too.

  3351. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 08:11:15 gerbilly
    I find I procrastinate to undertake hard or frustrating tasks because, and it sounds lame to admit it, that I'm afraid of the negative emotions I will experience if things go wrong.

  3352. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 09:24:04 abalone
    > I feel the writer of the article was confused since they quote 'you don't tell a depressed person to be less apathetic' yet the author seems like they are encouraging emotional management

    Those are not in conflict. A clearer analogy would be, you don't tell an alcoholic to just stop drinking. You focus on judgement-free emotional support systems. You go to meetings, you get a chip for making it 24 hours sober, 1 month, etc.

    I'm glad you didn't need something like that to overcoming procrastination. But a lot of people don't need full-on Alcoholics Anonymous to get their drinking in control either. Hardcore procrastinators probably need more.

  3353. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 11:09:18 knivets
    I think procrastination has to do with mental award system — we tend to choose tasks which will bring the award as quickly as possible. But those tasks are usually not very productive, while those that are productive require significant time investments. Basically, it is about instant/delayed gratification. So the answer, I think, is to pick jobs/tasks that are more balanced (average time to achieve gratification, average productivity). I think this is what "job you enjoy doing" should look like.

  3354. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 11:16:35 lackbeard
    There is nothing I procrastinate on more than breaking a large task down into smaller tasks. Seriously.

  3355. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 11:50:15 PerfectElement
    Breaking things into small pieces works great when you know what to do. The tasks that I find myself procrastinating the most are the ones that are hard to break down. For example, right now I need to implement a feature that will touch many parts of a software. I don't know how to do it yet, and figuring out the best way to do it will require a lot of mental effort, because I need to take several technical and business variables into consideration.

  3356. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 13:46:40 tonmoy
    Pondering about the task isn't really procrastination. In fact some of the most productive people I have seen in my life do exactly that.

  3357. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 16:16:53 ghaff
    Yes, but there's a fine line between pondering a task or doing "research" and procrastination. I do a lot of writing of various sorts and an editor of mine had the saying that "writing is discovery." By which he meant that, to a significant degree, you have to just get into some tasks before you can know how to complete them.

  3358. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 16:43:25 mryan
    > It is very difficult if you are in the circumstance of having to learn things as you go and having to prodding at things and trying things to figure out how things work.

    With respect, it sounds like you are describing a problem caused by not knowing the technology/tooling well enough to begin completing the task, rather than a problem directly caused by procrastination.

    That being said, one can easily procrastinate the task of learning too :-)

    In cases like this, the first item on the to-do list could be a time-limited R&D task where the goal is to learn enough so that you can compose a more concrete plan.

  3359. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 16:46:12 mryan
    The idea of a book that could solve your procrastination problems sitting unread on a shelf is an amusing irony. And I say this as someone who has multiple procrastination books on my shelves. :-)

  3360. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 16:46:14 ycosynot
    For me, the 2 reasons are 1) forced labor, we're too proud to submit fully and blindly to the system, we're meant to be free, or at least trust the government more, and 2) all the superhero movies and games stuff which make us worried about not being as exceptional as we should, so we need an excuse not to be exceptional, and that's procrastination. I couldn't be a hero, because I have this mysterious disease which stops me from trying, blocking my potential.

  3361. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-04-30 16:58:35 mryan
    I use a modified version of the pomodoro technique in combination with David Seah's Emergent Task Planner [0].

    The problem you describe is familiar to me - once I am in the zone I can continue there for hours, and taking enforced breaks every 20 minutes would force this streak to end early.

    To work around this I just made the breaks optional, and use blocks of 15 minutes (as described in the Emergent Task Planner).

    So, my timer goes off every 15 minutes. This breaks my concentration for a couple of seconds so I can reset my timer and tick a box to show I have completed another 15 minute block, and then I jump immediately back in to my task. A couple of seconds is not enough to take me out of the zone, but it lets me keep track of my progress on tasks and see where my time has been spent throughout the day.

    Personally speaking, my biggest procrastination problems arise when I lack clarity about exactly what I should be working on at this precise moment, or when I finish a task and need to think of what to do next.

    My bastardised pomodoro technique solves this problem for me by always making it clear what I should be doing right now. If my mind wanders for a moment, or I get distracted by an urgent task, this list allows me to immediately refocus without any mental effort. When a task is complete I might take 5 minutes as a break, and then jump on to the next task.

    If my procrastination problems sound familiar I highly recommend the ETP approach. Print out five of them, grab a timer set to 15 minutes, and give it a try for a week. Make it part of your morning routine - plan out what you want to achieve for the day, write it down, and start the timer!

    0: http://davidseah.com/productivity-tools/

  3362. Taskwarrior – intelligent TODO list 2016-04-30 23:29:34 mbrock
    They don't have any causal power to make you actually do the things you set out to or should do, but they can be a useful way to organize and keep track of your tasks and deadlines if you have more than a handful of them.

    My personal life outside mostly consists of eating, sleeping, having fun, and the occasional visit to the dentist, so I don't need a computer program to manage it.

    Procrastination trivially circumvents any system by simply ignoring it, and it's possible to go overboard with micromanaging yourself to the extent that you spend more time fiddling with your "Getting Things Done" setup than you do actually doing things...

    But for example, with the very small business I own with my brother, setting up a Trello board and using it to keep track of various bureaucratic errands very clearly improved our efficiency.

  3363. Taskwarrior – intelligent TODO list 2016-05-01 00:09:53 maaku
    I am without exaggeration an order of magnitude more productive in my life and in my work because of proper task management. And because I use a comprehensive system like GTD, I typically don't let things slip through the cracks either. Beyond testimonials, the psychology is pretty clear: the human mind is not built to efficiently keep track of responsibilities and commitments in a way that keeps us maximally productive. Externalizing parts of that system have clear psychological benefit.

    But your own issue sounds like it is more rooted in procrastination. "The NOW habit" by Niel Fiore might help you out.

  3364. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-05-01 01:59:36 heimatau
    It again seems like you didn't read the article.

    > [i]Tim Urban points out that the typical advice for procrastinators — essentially, to stop what they’re doing and get down to work, is ridiculous, because procrastination isn’t something that extreme procrastinators feel as though they can control.

    > “While we’re here, let’s make sure obese people avoid overeating, depressed people avoid apathy, and someone please tell beached whales that they should avoid being out of the ocean,” Urban writes.[/i]

    That's a direct quote from the article.

    The research supports judgement-free internal thought life. Not support systems. AA isn't a solid comparison but it's close. But apples to oranges doesn't help when the problem is apples. Let's stay focused on what the research says.

    Also, I'd consider myself a hardcore procrastinator. My issue could be a symptom of ADHD or something else but I fall in the 'hardcore' category. And it's something that I still struggle with but 'sucking it up' or 'just stop procrastinating with social support' won't change my situation, something deeper needs to occur, which is why I mention the beliefs. Our beliefs affect our behavior.

  3365. Research into the reasons for procrastination and how to stop 2016-05-01 23:15:11 nojvek
    I do agree on the fear of failure part. I've really procrastinated hitting the gym because I saw very little gains the last few months I went hard.

  3366. OpenSSL Security Advisory 2016-05-04 00:02:22 kbenson
    I think the problem is partly with unsafe equipment, and partly with people that in seeking to go just a little faster, or get a little more of a thrill, make things quite a bit less safe for all those around them. To some degree, we all do this in different parts of our lives. People tend to vastly overestimate their ability to sustain high output, if not in one area (defensive coding) then in others (driving, procrastination, etc). Some of these affect the people around you more than others.

    To clarify my original comment somewhat, I was talking less about general speeding of a few miles over the speed limit, and more about those people that are going significantly faster than surrounding traffic and weaving in and out of it to advance (puddle jumping). I do not enjoy having my chance of an accident increased my many orders of magnitude because of someone else's (impossible!) sense of competency, and I think that's very relevant in these discussions.

  3367. Medical error is third biggest cause of death in the US, experts say 2016-05-05 02:51:18 fokinsean
    Currently my reason for procrastinating on getting my wisdom teeth pulled. I freaked myself out by reading many stories of things going wrong. Ugh.

  3368. Misperceiving Bullshit as Profound 2016-05-05 21:22:13 wbillingsley
    There's some rather more fundamental issues with the paper.

    Let's do a little bit of a dive...

    1. The "BSR" is 10 questions on a Likert scale with extraordinarily vague labels. So, what's the difference between "somewhat profound" and "fairly profound"? How confident are you that different populations (eg lib v con) will have similar views on the difference between "somewhat" versus "fairly"?

    2. Liberal/conservatism meanwhile is a single question on a Likert scale. 1 to 7, how conservative are you? So, self-image not actual conservatism. And given 109 participants rated themselves on the liberal side versus 46 on the conservative side, it's going to be dominated by "just how extreme do you think your liberalism is?"

    3. But best fun of all -

    On the left, we have 1 = liberal 1 = not at all profound 1 = not at all favourable

    On the right side of their questions we have 7 = conservative 5 = very profound 5 = very favourable

    109 participants were Liberal (less than 4 on lib/con Likert item) 46 participants were Conservative (above 4 on lib/con Likert item)

    So, just the factor of "how much do you like to tick the extreme boxes on a Likert scale" would give a correlation like the one they get.

    More likely to pick a 1 than a 2 on a Likert item? You'll rank as both more liberal and less receptive to bullshit then... Like to leave a radio box on the left so you don't feel extreme? That'll register you slightly more conservative and slightly more receptive then...

    And as the participant pool is 2:1 liberal:conservatism, then that extremeness factor will produce candidate correlations like the ones they get too. (More extreme-tickers are likely to be going for 1s on lib, 1 not profound, 1 not favourable of Republicans, and 5s on favourability of Democrats. Middle-of-the-road tickers are likely to be going 2s for lib, 2s for profound, 2s for Reps, and 4s for Dems they like. Higher score for bullshit receptivity, less liberal, less favourable of Dems, and more favourable (less unfavourable) of Republicans.

    MeanMundane is bang on the middle (3.1 mean), neatly unaffected by "extremeness" factor, whereas MeanBullshit isn't (2.6), so extremeness will push out the "controlled" correlations neatly too.

    (Yes, I'm procrastinating, and had a brief back-of-the-envelope poke around their CSV of data...)

  3369. “We're considering banning domains that require users to disable ad blockers” 2016-05-09 20:57:16 S_A_P
    Ive actually implemented this locally. I reached a breaking point with some of the intrusive ads, so I block ads. If a site(such as Wired) asks me to turn that off, I add it to simple blocker and dont go back. The funny thing is a) I have a print subscription to wired but I cant access the site without turning off ad blocking, and b) I dont miss the online version. If Im just being honest with myself, its doing me a favor by preventing procrastination.

  3370. The Independent Discovery of TCP/IP, by Ants 2016-05-10 02:36:11 dTal
    Yeah I thought that as I was typing it, but I was procrastinating and didn't have time to fully flesh it out so I hit submit anyway!

  3371. Camille Paglia: The Modern Campus Has Declared War on Free Speech 2016-05-11 00:12:14 arstin
    Well, I really don't feel like working at the moment so I'll bite!

    The article, of course, doesn't just give an opinion. It tells an historical story---partly from her own experience as a social justice activist---and makes an argument that a wrong turn was taken. You could well disagree with her conclusion, some premises, or think she left out key facts, but I think her grounds are a bit less flimsy than whatever biases she happened to inherit.

    FWIW, I didn't know who this person was, but I googled out of curiosity and she appears to identify as trans herself? (but, sure, this doesn't matter inside this dialectic since she could still have "cis privilege").

    One of her recent criticisms seemed to be parents subjecting their children to sex reassignment surgery before they are old enough to give informed consent. And that the explanation for this---obviously, right?---involves the prominence of gender and sexuality in our cultural zeitgeist and as technologies for self-identification. She also points out that sex change is now being misleadingly presented as a solution to deeper problems that would really remain unaddressed.

    A Twitter-inflaming interview had some interesting remarks on a connection between sexuality and cultural decadence---which she has apparently written a book on the history of---but she seems to be actually well read and was working with a much more complex structure than bloggers picked up on ("decadence" is used as a technical term, the link isn't causal, a richer concept of self-identity is assumed, the objectification of bodies is placed in a more complex network, etc).

    But again, this is just my impression from procrastinating for a bit!

  3372. Firefox Test Pilot 2016-05-11 14:42:08 simula67
    > 120 tabs open at any given time

    Are you exaggerating ? If not, may I suggest an alternative way to browse the web ?

    I use multiple virtual desktops. Each desktop logically caters to one task. Each browser window is logically grouped under one activity.

    For example my desktop may look like this :

    Virtual Desktop 1 ( Communications ):

    * Outlook

    * Lync

    * Flowdock etc

    Virtual Desktop 2 ( Development ):

    * ConEmu/ Command prompt

    * Intellij

    * Browser Window with multiple tabs for referring stuff

    Virtual Desktop 3 ( Procrastination ):

    Browser Window 1:

    * Various pages opened from HN

    Browser Window 2:

    * Various pages concerning World War 2

    * Various pages investigating different investment strategies.

    The advantage of this approach is that once you are done you can close browser windows and tabs. Done with researching World War 2 ? Close that window, all associated tabs close automatically. If you accidentally close a tab, you can always bring it back with Ctrl + Shift + T. If you want to refer to a previously opened window, you can always do a simple search in browser history.

    Keeps your system responsive and makes it easy to find things.

  3373. Ask HN: I am turning 20 today.Got some advice?(as an entrepreneur or a developer) 2016-05-11 17:52:02 max_
    Beat Procastination!!!

    http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/11/how-to-beat-procrastination.ht...

  3374. Ask HN: I am turning 20 today.Got some advice?(as an entrepreneur or a developer) 2016-05-11 19:00:42 pvsukale1
    :) procrastination is a major issue

  3375. Ask HN: What helps you to be productive? 2016-05-11 20:07:50 echolima
    For some it may help to understand the root cause of procrastination, but that in itself can lead to procrastination by trying to understand...procrastination. So don't.

    First off, don't reward yourself. What I mean by this is don't make a good cup of coffee to settle in and get the work done. Start the work with a set timer, say 15 to 30 minutes. Once the timer goes off, then get the coffee. You may find yourself in a groove and go past the time. This is good. Second, remove your distractions. This is easy to say, but it is much harder to achieve. Turn the phone off, lock off the social media. Set yourself up with a schedule to check your email. Turn off notifications.

    Sounds help, but don't let the need to find the right one turn into procrastination. I like http://rainycafe.com/ as it drowns out office noise, or at least mutes it a little. Here is an interesting article on this topic: https://medium.com/life-learning/how-music-affects-your-prod...

    Curious to see what others put here. This will be my procrastination today :)

  3376. Ask HN: What helps you to be productive? 2016-05-11 22:06:47 MikeTV
    It took me a long time to realize that procrastination, not work, is what's been draining me. The Pomodoro Technique is what really brought it to light: I noticed that on days when I complete 6+ pomodoros (25-minute work sessions) I'm energized to hack on stuff when I get home; when I only get 4 or fewer done, it's a struggle.

    I use a little desktop application [0] that pops up whenever a work session or break is finished. Just that little prod is usually enough motivation to switch before I start feeling worn out.

    [0] Tomighty (http://www.tomighty.org/)

  3377. New Sublime Text update 2016-05-13 12:13:20 Scarbutt
    I don't uset ST but the procrastinator in me checked their home page, the download button defaults to ST 3.

  3378. Who Pays Writers? 2016-05-13 23:50:26 greedo
    My tech writing was pretty lucrative since I was pretty fluent in the content. I spent more time coordinating review units, generating good photos (when PR provided imagery wasn't suitable), and dealing with editors. I could write 2-3k words in a day after having mentally written it in my mind over the previous weak. If the subject matter was something that I was unfamiliar with, the time investment to be able to discuss it consumed more. I was always better when I procrastinated anyways; pressure would require me to distill my writing down to the core essentials.

  3379. Who Pays Writers? 2016-05-14 09:45:41 greedo
    "throwing away the whole introduction the next day."

    Too true! My wife always talked about how much I was paid per word; not understanding that I might write 5000 words for a 2k article. I got much better over time, but that was due to honing my skills at procrastination more than anything else.

  3380. Updating classic workplace sabotage techniques 2016-05-16 07:39:03 sedachv
    > The open plan office itseld is slightly prolonged and has long "corridor" areas cutting through it. I can only guess why they want to maximize the number of developers whose backs and monitors are turned towards everyone who passes by.

    I remember watching a video about Pivotal's offices and work routine. The distinct impression I got is that Pivotal is a very regimented sweatshop with rigid working hours - everyone is expected to show up at 8am for breakfast, and pair-programming and a "panopticon" style open office layout are there mostly to prevent procrastination and force people to at least try to code. The good part is that the developers there have a set 8 hour workday and leave earlier in the afternoon. It obviously works for them because they can just churn out sort-of working apps and let some other suckers deal with maintenance/rewrites later.

  3381. Updating classic workplace sabotage techniques 2016-05-16 08:34:01 johnmaguire2013
    I think this may largely depend on facts like whether you are naturally introverted/extroverted, and how you grew up, or learned to program.

    For me, I learned to program as a hobby, from ages 10-18, for fun at home. I mostly worked alone. Learning to work on a team took some time, but even now I often times wish I could work remote. I don't mind getting pinged about things people need, but the constant noise and movement of the office makes me far less productive than I would otherwise be.

    However, sometimes it offers me the focus I need to actually work, if I'm in a procrastinating mood. And I think some people probably struggle with this more often than I do.

  3382. Updating classic workplace sabotage techniques 2016-05-16 13:31:00 parasubvert
    "very regimented sweatshop ... The good part is that the developers there have a set 8 hour workday and leave earlier in the afternoon"

    You use the term sweatshop, and then say everyone goes home early. Really?

    " rigid working hours"

    Business hours are not for everyone, but they are for a lot of people, and they help foster collaboration.

    "everyone is expected to show up at 8am for breakfast"

    Not mandatory (it's an incentive to come in on time), but it is free.. As is lunch. Not dissimilar from most SV companies.

    "mostly to prevent procrastination and force people to at least try to code"

    So, it's a sweatshop because people are encouraged to work, and not browse Facebook behind a closed door?

    There are lots of opportunities to take a break, from Xbox to ping-pong.

    "It obviously works for them because they can just churn out sort-of working apps and let some other suckers deal with maintenance/rewrites later."

    This is quite a conclusion to draw from a video.

    You do realize that outside of R&D, most Labs teams are balanced customer/Pivotal pairs? There is no belief in handing over to a maintenance team, let alone doing the development by ourselves. You build it, you run it, is the mantra.

    The whole business model is to build products while teaching companies a culture (open, Devops, collaborative but high discipline) and process (XP, CD) and tools (PaaS, open source) of how to build software productively.

  3383. How to use feature flags without technical debt 2016-05-18 04:06:04 barrkel
    Hmm. This is a different kind of feature flag than I've used, to solve a different kind of problem.

    If the feature you're writing takes several man years of effort, you can't have a feature branch living for several months; continuously keeping it up to date with the trunk is expensive and easy to procrastinate.

    Migrations are expensive and you want to front load them to make turning the feature on less stressful. And you may want to let customers use the feature on a beta basis for a few months before committing to it, and then it may take a year or more before all customers have moved.

    For a big feature that cuts across large segments of a big app, I don't think there's an alternative to if statements.

    Different apps, different business models, etc.

  3384. Why Apple Music is So Bad When the iPhone is so Good 2016-05-18 11:24:22 sosborn
    > I keep meaning to write a replacement that just operates mostly the way it did until iOS 6 or 7.

    We should partner up and procrastinate together.

  3385. Why Apple Music is So Bad When the iPhone is so Good 2016-05-18 12:18:35 MaysonL
    > We should partner up and procrastinate together

    I would join that club.

  3386. Why Apple Music is So Bad When the iPhone is so Good 2016-05-18 17:07:43 cannam
    > We should partner up and procrastinate together.

    "Displacement Activity Swap Shop" http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Displacement_20Activity_20Swa...

  3387. Ask HN: Do you spend more time coding or debugging? 2016-05-19 22:34:32 koolba
    Neither. I spend most of my time procrastinating and/or day dreaming.

  3388. Stealth Research and Theranos: Reflections and Update 1 Year Later 2016-05-21 08:55:40 radnam
    "The problem that some patients do not have tests performed when they genuinely need them is also real but probably of lesser magnitude." Anecdotally speaking, I have seen many instances when testing was procrastinated only to reveal a chronic condition (hypothyroidism, pre-diabetic sugar levels) needing immediate attention sometimes with medications.

    I am genetically disposed to hyperlipidemia and like to watch my cholesterol level as a tangible indicator/reward for my life style changes.

    "Better financing and organization of health care and, perhaps, reduction of the profit margin could markedly decrease testing cost, even if very old (but appropriately validated) diagnostic technologies are used."

    Reduced pricing was a hype created by Theranos. When we started working in this area, we found that if one is willing to pay out of pocket some labs will offer pricing very close to Theranos.

  3389. The pressure to publish pushes down quality 2016-05-21 17:49:22 gexla
    Pressure is a good thing. Pressure does affect quality. We never have enough time to ship things. There are always improvements that we can make.

    Pressure is always there. It's one of those things which expands to take up whatever space which we are given. More time (shipping less) doesn't necessarily mean better quality. There are days when I can get twice as much done just because my task list has twice as much things. Then there are days when simple things on a short task list seems to take me forever. I feel I have more time so maybe I'm more susceptible to going down rabbit holes. Or maybe I procrastinate until I have enough time that I know the task will really take.

    I wonder if people would really improve the quality if given the time to do so. Maybe the issue is that they don't have the tools to improve the quality in the first place. At a certain point your brain calls the task done and you aren't going to do anything more to it. Give more time to a developer writing spaghetti code and you'll probably just get more spaghetti code. To really improve, the developer would have to go through some big personal change (a steady diet of code reviews, reading good code and using other resources for improvement).

    Maybe it's best to improve the processes. In software we can ship something with a beta label and expect problems. Then we can iterate on the software to improve it.

    And is publishing less a solution to drowning in noise? That seems to be a separate problem to be solved using different tools. There will always be a growing volume and with volume comes noise.

  3390. “Eat, sleep, code, repeat” is such bullshit 2016-05-22 01:55:28 welanes
    They were all sold out of “Eat, sleep, code, travel, meet friends, shop, shower, jog, date, travel, watch GoT, procrastinate on HN, repeat” t-shirts.

  3391. Peter Thiel on the Global Economy, Technology, Artificial Intelligence [video] 2016-05-25 20:28:32 codingmyway
    Peter mentions Robert Gordon and his theory that all the good innovation is done but the one I'm looking forward to is the coming revolution in brain research.

    Wait until procrastination, anxiety, depression and fatigue can be turned off by a device behind your ear that controls your amygdala and instantly puts you in the zone.

    See see how much productivity goes up when everyone has the energy and motivation of the Richard Bransons of the world.

  3392. Ask HN: How long should I spend every day reading news? 2016-05-25 22:01:26 zacha411
    It depends on your procrastination profile. I usually do it in the beginning of the day, but after all urgent things are done.

  3393. Show HN: Automatic private time tracking for OS X 2016-05-27 00:51:29 spoinkaroo
    I'm going to compare the app to tracking with pen and paper also. Maybe having to physically write down when I'm not working more will make me procrastinate less.

  3394. Show HN: Automatic private time tracking for OS X 2016-05-27 01:47:23 ivm
    Yes, I used it for a while to see what kinds of trackers exist on OS X. But I rarely need to know the path or track a specific project. Productivity of sites and chats is more important for me since I want to know stats of my procrastination.

  3395. Blocklist of all Facebook domains 2016-05-28 19:22:40 bbcbasic
    Procrastination perhaps?

  3396. Blocklist of all Facebook domains 2016-05-28 19:31:11 apancik
    I discovered that using https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/waitblock/kcnjfepp... to add a delay before opening the time-wasting website actually works better when trying to procrastinate less. Waiting 60 seconds before Fb loads gives you enough time to think about whether you want to visit it, but is also not so inconveniencing that it would make you disable it straight away when you actually want to visit the site.

  3397. Ask HN: What do you want to learn in 2016? 2016-05-28 23:08:39 moepstar
    I seriously want to stop procrastinating and finally learn some RoR (and not just stop at learning, but actually writing something useful).

  3398. Ask HN: What do you want to learn in 2016? 2016-05-28 23:48:01 MaulingMonkey
    Electronics: "Object in Space" baited me into thinking "Huh, I could do that" - bought an Arduino, assembled some basic circuits, and plan to make at least one USB controller.

    "Proper" Woodcrafting: All the better to mount said electronics. Might branch out into making my own arcade cabinet, pinball machine, computer desk, etc. - I've only done basic assembly with boards, saws, nails, screws, etc.

    Commercial Failure: I intend to write the gold standard for unit testing tools (at least within game development), and try to make a buck off of it.

    Killing Procrastination: I should hit [add comment] and get back to coding...

  3399. Affiliate links on Reddit 2016-05-29 08:00:12 ben_jones
    I'm assuming the conditions currently occurring at Reddit would make any investor dissatisfied. Stemming from a mix of seemingly negative public opinion, seemingly rushed or short-sighted monetization strategies, and technical challenges.

    Articles like this [1] seem to indicate tension between the board and leadership. I assume when any such tensions become public that they are larger in reality then they first appear, because normally such tensions remain private. Though in this case it may just be Wong's and Reddit's board's personality to be more open about such things.

    It's pretty liberal for me to make these assumptions, granted. And I've made like a dozen comments on this thread mostly because:

    A) my procrastination is terrible today and

    B) I'm a rabid Reddit user and usually speak up whenever it comes up on Hacker News, I'm not be trying to gun down the company's throat I promise, just trying to engage in a critical discussion.

    I would change extremely dissatisfied to dissatisfied though, but the edit option isn't appearing to me right now (time limit or "tree-weight" I guess).

    [1]:http://gawker.com/former-reddit-ceo-youre-all-screwed-171790...

  3400. Ask HN: What do you want to learn in 2016? 2016-05-29 13:00:27 brown-dragon
    I've had this feeling for a while that unit testing tools are ripe for 'disruption'. The main problem I see is relating the test cases "back" to features and broken/flaky tests.

    For procrastination, the thing that works for me is timeboxing (setting a timer for as little as 10/20 minutes and just getting started). See if that works for you.

  3401. Startup Reading List 2016-05-30 01:57:00 n72
    The great majority of people shouldn't read these — not because they're not good books or don't increase one's chances of startup success (they may or may not — I have no clue), but because the great majority of people will think they're doing startup stuff by reading them. It's confusing activity for accomplishment. If you do read these, keep in mind the entire time you're reading these you're not working on your startup. In other words, be very cognizant of the fact that you may very well be procrastinating.

  3402. Observing Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays with Smartphones (2014) 2016-05-30 06:03:07 cozzyd
    Speaking of radar, many phones have FM radio receivers, which could conceivably look for radio signatures of cosmic rays. No idea to what extent the hardware is made available to software, but I just found another reason to procrastinate.

    Also kudos on actually going through and doing something with this; I remember talking about using cell phone ccd's as detectors a few years ago with other grad students, but of course it never got past the chit-chat stage (I remember wanting a dosimeter in my pants to ring at me if I got too close to one of my radioactive sources).

  3403. Startup Reading List 2016-05-30 17:57:47 n72
    It is indisputable that more knowledge is a good thing. My point is merely that "in a complimentary matter" so very often becomes "instead of", because of the insidious nature of procrastination.

  3404. Quitting your job to pursue your passion is a privilege 2016-05-31 04:32:27 alex82398
    It is not bullshit. I quit my job, and it worked fairly well, 6 figures in remote job, I even got on stage with Google vice-president.

    The problem is that you need to give it 100%. Otherwise you are just replacing one job with another. It is not good idea to 'travel the world' while building next startup. Best thing is to lock yourself in cheap basement, work 12 hours day, take regular walks, eat and sleep.

    What killed my passion was toxic marriage. I filled time I would spend at work, with another task. And my passion was still on side track.

    And author himself admits, he quit for other problems, following his passion was sidetrack.

    Anyway just one warning: it takes lot of dedication and self-control. If you are struggling with procrastination etc, dont even think about it!

    disclaimer: I am drunk

  3405. Why Procrastinators Procrastinate (2013) 2016-06-01 02:00:41 visarga
    I have long been following this topic. Here are the most promising explanations I have found so far. Why do Procrastinators Procrastinate?

    - perfectionism: when the person is not satisfied with anything she makes

    - fear of success: because success can bring about unpleasant attention and undesired comparisons

    - temporal discounting: gaining 200 in one year is worth less than spending the 100 right now

    - impulsivity: I feel an urge to run away from work and I allow it to rule me every time

    - bad odds for success: sometimes it's smarter to give up, when the probability of success becomes too small

    - overwhelmed: trying to do too much, having too many balls in the air is stressful

    - seeking more creativity: sometimes procrastination is in fact thinking time and searching for inspiration

  3406. 85 percent of Facebook video is watched without sound 2016-06-02 04:37:11 prawn
    I will do it while watching a movie, except I'll often pause the movie to check a couple of sites (that I've already checked within the last 30 minutes) and before long it's taken me 6 hours across 2-3 nights to watch a 2 hour movie.

    It's pretty stupid behaviour. Procrastinating even while relaxing.

  3407. How a good night's sleep became a status symbol 2016-06-02 20:30:46 elorant
    The problem with working from home is that it's very easy to procrastinate or just jerk off with the gazillion of things that attract your attention.

  3408. How a good night's sleep became a status symbol 2016-06-02 20:55:52 kranner
    In other words, an opportunity to understand why you procrastinate and build good working habits.

  3409. Show HN: ProfilePicture.ninja – Gravatar for Facebook 2016-06-05 05:35:02 musHo_sk
    Thank you Juraj, please keep procrastinate :)

  3410. ASUS delivers BIOS/UEFI auto-updates over HTTP with no verification 2016-06-06 04:14:07 userbinator
    To some extent it also reduces the pre-ship software verification costs -- potential damage from a bug slipped is greatly reduced.

    It also encourages reducing effort spent in fixing bugs before release, which is why I absolutely loathe this "update culture": the "we can always fix it sometime later" mentality is like procrastination, and leads to barely-working products being released.

    It is true that before easy field-updateability, products did ship with unfixable bugs, but I feel like it has only gotten worse from there.

  3411. Bullet journal: A simple productivity system that just uses pen and paper 2016-06-08 14:18:52 igravious
    What if you're a pathologically disorganised absent-minded procrastinator? What then Ryder?

    :)

    I like your system. Maybe it will be my life-saver.

  3412. Coursera shuts access to old platform courses 2016-06-12 00:04:12 mattfrommars
    I have to blame my procrastination and never having the habit to complete or start any of the courses I had 'enrolled' in. Now coursera shutting down, I'm leaving all my hopes to the knight of the internet to archive these. Will download and hopefully get back.

  3413. Natural Language for Developers 2016-06-13 13:24:07 elcapitan
    Sounds like the algorithm was trained by someone with heavy procrastination problems.

  3414. Ask HN: I don't enjoy being a CTO. Now what? 2016-06-14 01:21:19 embwbam
    I had a similar experience. I'm a great coder with good communication and leadership skills. In 2009 I co-founded a hip startup in the TV space. I had experience as a senior / architect prior to this, but this was my first time as CTO, let alone any management position.

    I LOVED the first year. I was solving difficult problems, working productively, coding like crazy, learning a lot about business and startups. But it was just me and a contractor or two.

    In the second year we were growing and I started to recruit. I didn't really like finding people, but I loved creating a great culture and productive environment, so it wasn't bad. I found some great people to hire and continued to be the lead dev. I started to experiment with process and getting teams to run themselves.

    By year three we had 12 devs, and multiple teams. I was spending a lot of time cleaning up after unwise decisions and trying to implement process to keep us productive. Our apps and team got big. I loved being in flow and coding so much, I would drop the ball on management tasks to finish features I was shipping. I was involved in too many things: product decisions, partner deals, traveling, and our customer development research (we were floundering and making the wrong product at this point).

    I hated it. Every time I procrastinated something I got more stressed and depressed. I tried changing my role to lead dev, but it was a mess and I left.

    After wandering around and experimenting with different things for years, I think I've figured some things out. I'm contracting with multiple long-term clients. The skills and network I earned doing my startup have been great for finding work. I only take projects where I can have a high level of ownership and creativity (no team to deal with). I have been able to work with fun technology across multiple disciplines (in the last year: React, Haskell, Elm, iOS, Swift, Clojure, among others).

    I do mess around with my own ideas sometimes, but I realized that what I really love is to create products, and I don't like management, or selling things I've created. So I'm most effective creating products with/for other people who are taking the business risk.

    Not sure if there's anything in there you can use, but good luck! Figure out what you love to do, keep experimenting. I hated being a CTO too. There's no shame in figuring out it's not right for you, but it IS hard to allow yourself to go down in status. For me it was this big ego thing holding me back. Don't make that mistake :)

  3415. Ask HN: Been in dead end job for too long. Quit without offer in hand? 2016-06-14 20:36:28 sharemywin
    as for the procrastination try just 15 minute blocks. usually its several hours later before you stop working on it. just setting the environment up is a huge accomplishment. the try compiling someone else's code. you could try hiring a contractor. I found a guy that codes for $8/hr part time. I pay him to do the crapping stuff so I can focus on the fun parts. I know paying out money seems crazy but if it accomplishes your goals who cares it's better than blowing it on crap.

  3416. Steps to Turn Off the Nagging Self-Doubt in Your Head 2016-06-15 03:07:26 taurath
    In my experience, I've known people to take the techniques of positive reinforcement much too far. They do not acknowledge negative emotions and constantly try to stay as positive as possible which alienates them from people reacting to negative events (and can also make those people feel terrible because they're not as 'positive' as the other person). You can take anything too far, and I think the risk of positive psychology is being too happy in inappropriate times.

    That said, for someone who is prone to depression, moodiness, rumination and anxiety training ones self to dig rails for positivity is incredibly important and necessary. I tend to think of my thinking and mood as either a snowball effect or like a very deep groove thats been built over time. Thats what causes even small negative experiences to drop me deep into depression - the depression is like a groove with somewhat high walls, easy to fall into. Digging an equally deep positive groove requires what the OP's article suggests, and can eventually help to move more easily between them.

    I've noticed that procrastination seems to follow the exact same pattern - if I start my morning with news and trivia then its far more difficult to move off of it later.

  3417. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-18 20:58:06 cpplinuxdude
    Yet another article to beat procrastination. I like the idea of rewiring the limbic system though.

  3418. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-18 23:09:25 xyzzy4
    I completely agree with this. I find the best way to fight procrastination is to put all my willpower into just doing one task, no matter how small, towards the goal. That often puts me into a state of mind of doing many more tasks without needing willpower.

  3419. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-19 00:05:45 scarlac
    Great to-the-point article.

    To add from personal experience, a similar method can be applied for daunting tasks. To give an example: If your todo-list seems overwhelming you may end up procrastinating or stressing out. The solution can be a variant of what's described in the article: Write a new list with only 3-5/fewer items and focus on those.

  3420. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-19 00:13:18 tedsuo
    Good tip, though I always feel a pang of irony when I learn something like this while procrastinating.

  3421. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-19 00:30:39 Hoasi
    > to beat procrastination, a simple trick is to imagine starting the task as opposed to finishing it

    You could also just start the task, basically accomplishing the same thing. Skip the imagining part if it is a distraction.

  3422. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-19 00:47:05 brudgers
    A great tip.

    Yet I'm keeping in mind that it isn't doesn't guaranteed to work for me. Everyone is wired different. I'm fallible and perfectly capable of misidentifying something as procrastination. I'm uncomfortable with "procrastination"s connotation of moral failing. One person's procrastination is another's Just in Time execution.

  3423. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-19 01:31:42 lj3
    I prefer the 'dark playground'[0] explanation. It's more useful at understanding and coming up with different ways of dealing with it when those listed in the shyal article fail.

    [0]: http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastin...

  3424. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-19 02:26:40 drawkbox
    Similar to the 15 minutes starting trick. If you don't feel like doing it, just do 15 minutes of it and you can stop. Typically you keep on going and it starts it up.

    Another trick is leave a simple tasks or error (syntax error) in the last place you were working the previous day/night. You'll jump right back in and get up and in production mode the next day, easy task to knock out and get coding.

    Sometimes having another fun project that you can work on while procrastinating or thinking about your main project is helpful to keep in production mode. Procrastination sometimes is a battle of how to implement something and you should switch to a prototype mode and try them rather than overthinking the possible solutions.

    Sometimes all those fail and you need something like Rescuetime but that also makes the blocked sites more desirable.

  3425. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-19 02:47:23 codezero
    I say this on most threads about procrastination, but it's important to remember that chronic procrastination can be an indication of anxiety, not just a temporary state of mind. If you suffer from this kind of anxiety and not just a moment of distraction, you should see a professional, they really can help fix things long term and improve your quality of life.

  3426. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-19 03:21:01 codezero
    A lot of people are unable to recognize anxiety when they have it, even chronically. I'm not saying you do, everyone is different, but it takes a professional to give such a diagnosis, so if you find yourself procrastinating very often it probably wouldn't hurt to get a professional opinion.

  3427. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-19 03:25:30 shubb
    I can see what this guy means because i basically procrastinated myself out of a degree once.

    Sitting down to do study my worst subjects reminded me of how much less I knew than I needed to - so I procrastinated by studying my best ones instead.

    That was definitely an anxiety thing, and some well time counseling might have been life changing. It's a different thing to your laundry though, which is probably more about wanting to keep doing reddit than wanting not do laundry...

  3428. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-19 03:58:45 nu2ycombinator
    "tldr: to beat procrastination, a simple trick is to imagine starting the task as opposed to finishing it"

    - Isn't mean not to plan ahead of what do, which means not able to finish the task effectively. Of course it is better than postponing the task.

  3429. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-19 04:03:40 nu2ycombinator
    On similar topic, following video is very informational and entertaining. Especially last part the life calendar. Sometimes this life calendar motivates me procrastinate the procrastination :)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arj7oStGLkU&feature=youtu.be.

  3430. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-19 04:05:48 white-flame
    As a procrastinator, I can tell you that mine has NOTHING to do with anxiety, or the fear of failure, or the scope of the task at hand. There is similar projection in this article, that anybody dealing with procrastination is struggling with overcoming fear.

    While I can certainly force myself into doing things better as I'm older and sick of the failures that procrastination leads to, I've not heard much useful advice for plain ol' (non-anxiety related) procrastination, where the person simply has inertia at rest and is disinterested at all levels from disrupting that. Stuff like the pomodoro method is probably the most relevant.

  3431. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-19 04:10:08 codezero
    Yep, I made the comment to call out anxiety as a factor many people are unaware of. It does not mean everyone who procrastinates has clinical anxiety, but if one finds themselves often unable to make progress or having a decreased quality of life from failures, it doesn't hurt to get a professional opinion.

  3432. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-19 04:18:48 white-flame
    Well, the statement "but it's important to remember that procrastination is a form of anxiety" is much more absolute than that. Putting people under broad umbrella terms certainly can be counterproductive to dealing with individual issues.

  3433. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-19 04:32:54 white-flame
    As a pedantic as I am :-), editing "procrastination" into "chronic procrastination" while leaving it absolute simply gets into the technical definitions of the terms (especially "anxiety"), and how agreeable the formal psych terms are to the common populace.

    In general lay terms, "anxiety" is associated with fear-type responses, not disinterest. A lack of stress indicators would tend to indicate a lack of anxiety. A begrudging compliance when breaking through procrastination is not overcoming anxiety, but overcoming disinterest. A post-response to getting something done being "Fine, it's done, did I really have to do that?" is not indicative of overcoming fear or anxiety, because fear and anxiety are about future unknowns and would be relieved ex post facto, while procrastination still is disgruntled at having had to do it. I would present all of these as informal disagreements to blanketly equating even chronic procrastination with anxiety, as the latter tends to be understood.

    Of course, that's in full acknowledgement that behavioral medicine tends to use ridiculously broad terms that tend to lead to overdiagnosis and overmedication issues we're currently dealing with (especially in schools), and they might use "anxiety" far more broadly than I am above.

  3434. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-19 04:42:54 codezero
    Regardless of the semantics of how procrastination is defined, any behavior that affects your quality of life is one which is worth discussing with a professional to get actionable third party advice.

  3435. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-19 05:55:18 redmaverick
    Mindfulness (for 45 mins to 1 hr) helps a lot in combating procrastination. The catch is that if you are a procrastinator, you will procrastinate on trying to meditate also.

  3436. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-19 05:58:27 fabled_giraffe
    Beyond procrastination, for those of us that have trouble focusing, this sort of thing is no joke.

    In 30 seconds, we can go from fully intending to do something that we should do to better ourselves to reading HN submissions and commenting on them.

  3437. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-19 06:08:02 onion2k
    It is impossible to procrastinate if you practice mindfulness meditation for 45 mins to 1 hr.

    There's plenty of good research in to the benefits of mindfulness meditation, but I've never seen anything go quite that far.

  3438. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-19 06:46:06 redmaverick
    Edited it. Basically, for me at least, meditation creates a bias towards action. I feel procrastination relates to biochemistry (serotonin, dopamine etc) and somehow meditation kind of "fixes" the issue temporarily. If I stop meditating, I quickly revert back to the old me.

  3439. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-19 10:30:03 mhomde
    Anyone have the problem that instead of procrastination you start adding new features because that's more interesting/challenging than the drudge work that remains. So you're constantly doing a little drudge work and a little adding features and you get stuck in a Zeno's paradox of never finishing? :)

  3440. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-19 11:02:19 salemh
    That's like myself and fiction writing. Easier to transcribe written notes, or re-read and edit, vs just plowing into new chapters and necessary dialogue builds, etc.

    Definitely a different sort of procrastination.

  3441. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-19 14:30:08 metasean
    AKA "Productive Procrastination", a method that has helped many through history - http://chronicle.com/article/Productive-Procrastination/4493...

  3442. Imagine yourself starting, not finishing 2016-06-20 20:31:42 Hoasi
    Not quite. Granted, the act of starting to work on a task requires some effort. But assuming a procrastinator's task is within reach, it is in the realm his or her capabilities. The point is that if starting is the hardest part, you might as well start right away since you'll have to anyway. The earlier you start the less you'll suffer later. Starting right away could save yourself from having regrets. Like rushing a job, missing a deadline, doing a poorer job etc. Whereas you might not be able to control depression on your own with a single action or decision.

  3443. Drowning in a Sea of Information 2016-06-21 03:13:57 TeMPOraL
    I've read "Deep Work" a month ago and by now it's single highest ROI on a HN-recommended book I've ever gotten. Not joking.

    I know three weeks is not enough for the habit to make itself permanent, but those last three weeks were for me one of the most productive periods in the last several years. Something must have clicked for me in that book.

    In particular, I finally stopped being afraid of the calendar - I now follow the idea of "scheduling every minute of your life", but treating that schedule only as a guideline - i.e. tasks you pre-plan to be doing, but can rearrange at any moment if you see the need. And at least for the last three weeks, that process alone pretty much single-handedly solved most of my procrastination issues :).

    (Time to go off HN, btw., my break slot is coming to an end ;).)

    The second point that helped me tremendously was on cutting out distractions. After reading the book I've made a resolution to unsubscribe from every newsletter that comes across my mailbox and to turn off any but most important push notifications. With my daily load of e-mail coming down from a hundred to just a few, I feel much less distracted and pretty much got over compulsive checking of the mailbox.

    I've also went ahead and read Cal's other book, "So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work". I also recommend it strongly, it has some really good (and come to think of it, obvious) points about approach to work life.

  3444. Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today 2016-06-21 04:09:12 gkya
    I guess in the use of technology one faces a process rather similar to natural selection, in which the better the user's ability to restrict his use to what he has to do, the more likely the survival, i.e. the user will not procrastinate and get distracted. The use of computers for entertainment is unstoppable, it's nearly impossible to not allow the kids find and play those games, chat with friends on WhatsApp, and be exploited otherwise by companies that make money from that sort of exploitation, even though that's at the cost of their psychological health and future success. People spend every single second of the day connected and distracted, and this seems irreversible. I wonder if you have any practical thought on how this can be remedied.

  3445. Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today 2016-06-21 21:13:01 gkya
    > Bottom line: children need to learn how to use the 21st century, or there's a good chance they will lose the 21st century.

    Most children meet entertainment technology as early as before the first birthday, though. Many pre-teens that I see around possess smartphones and/or tablets. Most of the early teenagers possess multiple devices. None of these will be able to judge what's is beneficial to their future and well-being, and opt for it rather than what is immediately fun and pleasing. Just like most of them will live on chocolate bars and crisps if let to do so. The burden falls on the parents, a burden they don't take.

    I myself can't think of a future other than one full of device addicts, and a small bunch that managed to liberate themselves from perennial procrastination and pseudo-socialisation only in their twenties. And while my country can prohibit certain products (food, etc.) from import and production within its own borders (e.g. genetically modified, chemically engineered to be consumed greedily), this can't be done with websites, because (a) it's technically impossible and (b) it 'contradicts freedom of speech'. I'll ask the reader to philosophise over (b), because neither the founding fathers of the US nor the pioneers of the french revolution, nor most of the libertarian, freedom-bringing revolutionists had a Facebook to tag their friends' faces.

    (edit: I don't want to get into a debate over freedom of speech, and don't support any form of cencuring of it, tho I don't want freedom of speech at the cost of exploitation of generations and generations by some companies that use it as a shelter for themselves.)

  3446. Ask HN: What is holding your startup back? 2016-06-21 23:03:13 CommanderData
    My day job. If I leave I worry about excessive procrastination. Procrastination is good in small amounts. Finding a balance is something that always troubles me.

  3447. Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today 2016-06-22 00:35:48 internaut
    > Kay: children need to learn how to use the 21st century, or there's a good chance they will lose the 21st century.

    > Gkya: I myself can't think of a future other than one full of device addicts, and a small bunch that managed to liberate themselves from perennial procrastination and pseudo-socialisation only in their twenties.

    As a infovore this worries me. If we cannot control ourselves and come up with better solutions for self control then the authoritarian minded are likely to do it for us.

    The Net is addictive and all those people pretending it ain't so are kidding themselves.

    It's easy to imagine anti-Net campaigners in the same way as we see anti-globalization activists today.

    I myself have seen the effects of good diet, exercise and meditation on a group of people, and it is quite remarkable how changed for the better people are. So there is hope!

    I believe that social change, example: phubbing being widely regarded as taboo, isn't fast enough to keep with the Net's evolution. By the time a moral stance against phubbing is established mobile phones probably won't exist. For this I think we need a technological solution which is as adaptive as an immune system, but also one which people can opt in to. Otherwise eventually people will demand governments do things like turn off the Net at certain times during the day or ban email after 6pm and so on.

  3448. An overview of gradient descent optimization algorithms 2016-06-22 04:29:15 choosername
    I have a theorie that submissions like this get to the frontpage because there are a lot of procrastinators who will always upvote to save for later reading, and they never actually read the articles so they keep saving them. I admit I do.

  3449. The Rule of 72 (2007) 2016-06-24 01:46:44 superuser2
    People go under on credit cards because they can't stomach the ascetic lifestyles their (newly worsened) financial situations demand, and credit lets them hold on to their standard of living a little while longer.

    I don't think better education about how badly it harms them would help much. We see present upside much more strongly than long-term future downside (see: procrastination), even if we are familiar with the nature of that downside.

    Emergency funds probably would.

  3450. Why we challenge Microsoft’s battery test 2016-06-24 03:01:43 sbov
    Sure, but then my browser with native procrastination protection will beat the pants off both: when you type in a url it just renders "get back to work, maggot."

    It even works without a network connection.

  3451. Boring but possibly interesting audio for going to sleep 2016-06-24 05:02:27 tedkx
    "The article somewhat misses the point about the Sleep with Me podcast: it's not boring content; it is boring by design." I have not yet tried the Sleep with Me podcast, but based on what I've read, it is its "by design" part that got me more interested in trying the author's methods.

    I could instantly relate when I read that "I need to convince myself that I’m doing something meaningful in order to finally disengage". Many people go to bed with a feeling of not deserving their rest, of having a debt to themselves because they missed opportunities or procrastinated heavily during the day, a debt that can be repaid by using their last minutes of the day to do something meaningful to compensate for the wasted time. Presidential speeches, old radio shows, financial crisis analysis, all these create the illusion that you take full advantage of your time, keeping your brain active and broadening your knowledge. Them being boring is an added bonus.

    On the other hand, actively trying to get myself bored would most probably get me anxious, wondering exactly how wisely I am spending my time, which is not really what you want when trying to fall asleep.

  3452. A Scenario Where Brexit Does Not Actually Happen 2016-06-26 22:01:19 YeGoblynQueenne
    Here's why BoJo's face, sad or smiley, doesn't matter one bit:

    The foreign ministers of the EU’s six founding members, however, demanded Britain start proceedings “as soon as possible” to avoid a long and potentially damaging period of uncertainty.

    The Dutch foreign minister, Bert Koenders, told the Volkskrant: “We can’t have the kind of dithering Boris Johnson is suggesting. Everyone wants clarity: people, businesses, financial markets.”

    France’s foreign minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, urged Cameron to step down soon, saying: “A new prime minister must be designated – that will take a few days. But there is a certain urgency.” He added: “We have to give a new sense to Europe, otherwise populism will fill the gap.”

    The rest of the EU is not going to take this shit lightly when it is bad for business and it's also threatening to overturn the status quo and give a run for power to the Farages of the continent. If Boris, or whoever becomes the next PM, decides to procrastinate, the result will only be even more pain in the disengagement talks.

    [1] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/26/eu-founding-...

  3453. Why Continuing to Work Is Good for a Man’s Health 2016-07-01 13:35:25 maroonblazer
    My problem is similar but different.

    The last couple of vacations I've taken have been staycations. Even though I have many hobbies and interests - several musical instruments, writing music, drawing, dabbling in code, reading - not having the structure of a job and expectations of others weighing on me to 'be productive' I procrastinated quite a lot. I frequently felt anxious and unfulfilled. I took this experience as a glimpse into what retirement might be like.

    In retirement I think I'll need to create a schedule for myself that includes having others depending on me to 'show up'. E.g. doing volunteer teaching, etc.

  3454. Why you should aim for 100 rejections a year 2016-07-01 21:59:54 iokevins
    I wish the article included an image of this desk : )

    "While procrastinating on writing my MFA thesis, I found an ancient wooden desk on the street, pulled it into my apartment, and started shellacking it with hard-earned rejection slips. It became my writing desk."

  3455. Fatigue Is a Brain-Derived Emotion that Regulates to Ensure Protection (2012) 2016-07-04 15:10:30 known
    Is it same for procrastination?

  3456. Fatigue Is a Brain-Derived Emotion that Regulates to Ensure Protection (2012) 2016-07-04 17:26:44 vidarh
    I hate cardio with a vengeance, and the most effective way I've found of getting past that was to make use of meditation techniques: Fix my mind on my breathing, and keep it there. Not allow myself to pay attention to anything else. First time I did that, I ran twice as long as what I'd one previously. It works great for activities you can do "automatically", whether the reason you want to stop normally is because they're physically demanding, or boring (like cleaning the house).

    Another approach is to set a goal, but keep moving the goal posts.

    "Tricking yourself" that way can be surprisingly easy - I first consciously tried that (though I'm sure we've all done it without thinking about it) after thinking about how easily we trick ourselves into continuing pleasurable activities that way, or procrastinating ("only 10 more minutes, then I'll start working"); it works quite well for me as a means to continuing exercise or work too.

    What'd be incredibly intimidating as a goal at the outset suddenly seems a lot more achievable if you set a more modest goal to start with.

  3457. Ways to get motivated when you don’t feel like working 2016-07-05 00:07:26 omginternets
    I wonder to what extent motivation is the culprit. I, for one, have experienced intense motivation and intense procrastination at the same time.

    I have every reason, internal and external, to get the thing done, but I sometimes have trouble starting. This is particularly true of tasks where premature optimisation is possible, as I quite enjoy the analytical/planning part of the work. It's just that it takes on a life of it's own and the actual/quali-mechanical act of starting keeps getting pushed further back.

    Surely I'm not alone...

  3458. Ways to get motivated when you don’t feel like working 2016-07-05 00:20:10 fridek
    I've found my best chance at tricking myself into working is using my procrastination as a tool. Whenever I feel like not coding I go and write some documentation, work on some design or groom tickets. This is my equivalent of students cleaning their dorms instead of learning for exams.

    I've seen this technique somewhere exploited even further, by tricking yourself into working in "forced mode" on something completely secondary, while resting when working on the important stuff.

  3459. Ways to get motivated when you don’t feel like working 2016-07-05 01:08:31 ZenoArrow
    On the "intense motivation and intense procrastination at the same time" thing, I've found it's possible to turn that to your own advantage, especially when you're not working towards tight deadlines.

    What I find is there's often something "I know" I have to do, as well as other things that interest me at the time. So long as the thing you know you have to do doesn't have an imminent deadline, you can find other things to "distract" yourself with that end up working out for the best in the long run. For example, I've had times when I was finding it hard to concentrate on a piece of work, but found something technical (like a programming language) that I wanted to explore. By going with it, you end up improving your skills, and if you can chip away at the "must do" task on the side, you find that when you're ready to look at it again you've already laid the ground work.

    That's one of the approaches that works for me. Have you experienced something similar?

  3460. Ways to get motivated when you don’t feel like working 2016-07-05 02:45:58 lllorddino
    Give yourself a goal to accomplish within a specific amount of time. It's easy to procrastinate when you have all the time in the world. It's hard when there's a due date.

  3461. Ways to get motivated when you don’t feel like working 2016-07-05 04:12:51 gdubs
    Just finished reading "The Power of Habit" [1], which was eye-opening. It makes a strong case that we're really a collection of habits. We can't eliminate habits from our brains, but we can override them with new ones over time. There are also Keystone Habits which tend to positively impact all areas of peoples' lives – exercise tends to be one, for example. In the corporate setting, he uses the example of Alcoa focusing on worker safety, and how that became a keystone habit that completely transformed all aspects of the business.

    Also, say you have a habit of opening Facebook (or Hacker News :) when you're at your computer instead of opening up your IDE. By figuring out what reward you get out of those diversions, and being able to identify the trigger, you may be able over time to replace that 'bad' habit with a 'good' one – perhaps stretching, or talking a 5 min walk. The result might be a less fragmented day.

    I really buy into this theory, in part because anecdotally it seems to align with examples of successful people; they have good work habits. Great writers, for instance, talk about simply sitting down at the typewriter every day. Same with comedians, painters, etc. Procrastination is a hard thing to crack, because so often we're fighting against deeply ingrained habits – by becoming mindful of them, we can potentially reshape them into habits that make us feel accomplished.

    1: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12609433-the-power-of-hab...

  3462. Fatigue Is a Brain-Derived Emotion that Regulates to Ensure Protection (2012) 2016-07-05 04:43:15 cpncrunch
    Possibly this might explain procrastination:

    https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maarten_Boksem/publicat...

    It seems to involve the same brain regions that Noakes identified as being involved in physical fatigue. However rather than protecting against damage, its function appears to be to protect against unnecessary expenditure of energy.

  3463. Fitness Isn’t a Lifestyle Anymore, Sometimes It’s a Cult 2016-07-05 04:52:13 nradov
    Part of it is mental motivation. Sure I could do a lot of exercises at home and even have some equipment there. But at home there are also many distractions and it's easy to procrastinate. Whereas once i show up at the gym all I can do is exercise.

    Running and biking are great, I do those, too. But they don't deliver the strength I need for other activities. If you're a typical sedentary office worker you've got to do at least some resistance or weight training to keep your muscles from wasting away.

  3464. Fatigue Is a Brain-Derived Emotion that Regulates to Ensure Protection (2012) 2016-07-05 15:51:10 cel1ne
    You assume merely logical work in the pre-frontal cortex. As soon as emotions come to play the body get's involved because heart-rate, body-temperature etc. is influenced.

    And I don't mean emotions like anger, but less visible ones like disgust, which seem to be triggered during procrastinating.

  3465. Ways to get motivated when you don’t feel like working 2016-07-05 20:29:56 GoToRO
    For me, it will give me a slight inflammation to my head, which translates into procrastination.

    Also a bike is a really eficient way to travel, so if you are like me you either will not do much effort or you get an inflammation. I've noticed that walking to do some shopping is better. Plus you kill two birds with one stone.

    Sometimes I do bike slowly to a park but I don't count it as physical effort. It's just travel.

    Edit: It might count for you. The takeaway should be: listen to your body. When you procrastinate something is not good with your brain. Look back in time and see what you did that might be the cause. When you are in "the zone" do the same: look back in time and see what you did and do more of that :).

  3466. Ask HN: Question to self employed developers.Whats your gig? 2016-07-07 04:34:47 waronham
    I live in the UK and do freelance work for a mix of UK/US clients, though for the past 8 months I've only really worked for a couple of clients on an ongoing basis.

    I do web & mobile dev, mainly the latter these days.

    Annually bringing in around £160k - but that's a recent thing - good few years of £10-30k before I really found my feet.

    Hard to really gauge the pros/cons with regard to FTE as I was never much use as an employee, I did little and was paid less (went full time freelance when my first side job earned me 6 months wages). I am naturally lazy and can procrastinate for days sometimes (before going on a mad streak) but I'm getting better at that. Don't think I could ever go back to working for someone else.

  3467. In a nutshell, why do a lot of developers dislike Agile? 2016-07-09 23:04:38 InclinedPlane
    Agile is just a collection of stuff that people put together in order to ensure useful productivity from arbitrary teams. Often it's misapplied and misused, usually in order to micromanage.

    The roots of agile come from the bad old days when the typical software project was a consulting gig with an elaborate negotiated spec and schedule and a huge disconnect between the buyers and the developers, let alone the users. And when the "software crisis" was in full swing, and many software projects failed to deliver anything of use, at all. Back in the days when even using source control wasn't common, and when regular builds and smoke tests were even rarer.

    Agile ensures a few things:

    It ensures that you use an incremental development strategy: start with something simple that works, then iteratively add to it over the course of short periods of work to move it closer to the desired state of functionality and capability. Because you routinely have workable builds this means you will always have something to show for your work at the end, because you have a pattern of having something working all the time.

    It pushes the team toward continuous integration and regular builds with testing. Which avoids building up invisible technical debt due to undone integration work as the project progresses. Agile avoids the "big bang integration" problem.

    It pushes the team toward visibility and interaction, so they get to know what everyone else is working on and it forces collaboration related to integration ASAP, all of which helps increase team cohesion and leads to higher code quality. People get to see the products of other's work routinely, making it easier to see what they're good at (and not) and aiding team mates in learning from one another.

    It avoids unnecessary over-complications and the tendency to procrastinate, such as the notorious "second system effect". It ensures that people stay concentrated on real milestones and real work not pie in the sky perfect systems with schedule estimates off by orders of magnitude or not even feasibly possible.

    It gives the "stakeholders" more visibility into the work. The product itself becomes the ground truth for the product, rather than a spec or a memo or a contract. If those folks have concerns they can be addressed and taken care of before it is extremely costly to fix. And if they want to make changes to the design relative to their initial thoughts, that too can be done fairly easily, resulting in an end product that is more suitable than would be the case otherwise.

    And it ensures that sprint by sprint, work gets done, the product moves forward. With good teams this isn't a problem, but in the "enterprise trenches" with demotivated teams of average or below average coders this can be a real problem. It can be difficult to get anything done, let alone anything more than just spinning their wheels.

    All of these things are for the most part good things, and they are the reason why the concept of agile has become so pervasive. The problem is that today a lot of the agile basics just go without saying (continuous integration, routine builds and testing, iterative development, short sprints for work, and so on) while some of the other aspects end up being applied in a cargo cult manner with no comprehension for why they were used as well as when they are warranted and when not.

    Even if agile practices were being used correctly most of the time, which they aren't, it still would not be a good one size fits all practice for all circumstances. Moreover, the modern perversions of agile have done a lot of damage. Removing opportunities for use of initiative, creativity, and expertise by many coders, taking responsibility for even the tiniest decision out of their hands and transforming them into children. In some ways agile is like a remedial course in software engineering, but a lot of high caliber developers are finding themselves stuck with it even though it is restrictive and harmful, because management is thoughtless.

  3468. Ask HN: How do you escape Google? 2016-07-10 03:08:02 Zelmor
    Not too long ago, I thought like you:

    "Let's host my own physical server. Virtualize different servers for different services: web, mail, owncloud storage, torrentbox, flac streaming service to mobile and web client. Let's run Cyanogenmod without Google services on my old 2012 Nexus 7! Surely K-9 can do the job just as well as Gmail! What else would I need a tablet for? OpenStreetMap wooo! My own Calendar instance! Stuff like that."

    Spent days architecting the bloody server thing.. Looking into security, virtualization, database isolation, shit like that.

    However, I am 30, making a career change, sick and tired of pushing someone else's agenda 8 hours a day. I want to build my own ideas and share it with people. Maybe make a living off of what I make. Build a farm. When not working or studying, I'd rather strike the earth and take care of my vegetable garden, play with the cat, hike with the wife. This helps me to have a more full experience.

    Your time is precious. That is the only thing you will never get back. Read the book Walden instead. The only thing the writer truly treasured was his time. Throw in some taoist and buddhist literature as well, might help. Those will teach you not to care for other people's games (big data, small implication). Be more aware of the psychology of manipulation, triggers and getting you to sign up/pay/subscribe. Mastering your own mind is more important than keeping your mail from automated google scripts. Do you eat well? Do you sit all day? Do you know what's in your food, water, air? How are your bad habits, smoking, procrastination, drinking or onania problems going to be solved?

    Not by not using Google service, I tell you. When you die, your privacy will be of no concern to you. How you live hold greater value.

    My current proposal is as follows:

    1. Care less. Not about security and privacy, but about Google following you. Pay more attention to what is keeping you from living A Better Life, however you define that. Do you have financial planning for retirement? Do you have a goal in life?

    2. Have a trusted person or lawyer to follow set instructions on deleting all your online presence when you die. Have them burn your diaries if you keep any. Keep in mind, many literary people asked loved ones to do this, who then proceeded to publish their letters and unfinished work anyway. Maybe have two people for this, unknowing of each other's responsibilities.

    3. Keep separate Google and Gmail accounts for your work life and your personal life. Employers should not be able to find you based on your work-related email address. Sometimes it's a hassle, but I manage them.

    4. Disable what data tracking you can, and avoid using services for which there is a feasible alternative. For me, Drive, Maps and Keep are just way too comfy, and the alternatives are either poor, take time to set up properly or are another SaaS solution. Consider proper backups, not simply using external drives that fail or can be stolen along with your PC or laptop. Secure, off-site, automated, possibly offline solutions. Can you do that? Should you? What do you win? What is the return on investment here?

    5. Also, if you wish, move to a country where data privacy laws are firm and governments to a large degree respect their citizens (Switzerland comes to mind).

  3469. Ask HN: How do you create productive habits? 2016-07-11 03:25:58 icc97
    Ok here's an obvious list of things that should be useful. Obviously you agree (as I do) with the Leo Babuta concept of 'habits' versus 'discipline' [0]. I'd say these are just the basis - but I believe all of them will help if you can apply them consistently. But I'd also say that there's not much point in trying other techniques until you feel you've consistently tried these for a year or more (potentially I'd say up to a life time of trying).

    1. Headspace (daily meditation) [1] - helps with focus

    2. Wait But Why on procrastination [2]

    3. 4 Ways to get motivated [3] - I like the second one about a 'pre-game routine' doing the same physical activity just before starting work. I do the yoga 'sun salutation' twice (takes about 5 minutes, helps with back problems)

    4. Leo Babuta's free 'Focus' book [4]

      [0]: http://zenhabits.net/discipline/
  [1]: https://headspace.com
  [2]: http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastinate.html
  [3]: http://plan.io/blog/post/146892730063/4-ways-to-get-motivated-when-you-dont-feel-like
  [4]: http://focusmanifesto.com/

  3470. Ask HN: How do you create productive habits? 2016-07-11 06:00:45 muse900
    Personally speaking, no apps helped me beat procrastination. What actually helped me a lot is figuring out that I am unhappy and depressed in my life and why is that. Once I figured that out I set for big changes, and stopped caring a lot for things that made me unhappy. I appreciated things I got, I started going on trips around the world and met my wife. After being happy in life I found my self in a very positive mood and very keen to explore things and not just sit in-front of a computer browsing youtube or other things that didn't help me in life.

    Another thing that helped me a lot, although am a software engineer and I write code for a living, I said I'll only use computers, phones and whatsoever while I am at work. When am off work I am completely off tech, including TV. That forces me to enjoy time with my wife and go out do things, workout etc. Now of course this might not work if your goal is to make research or I don't know create app's per se or your own company. Although making sure that your hobby, goals, work whatever that is only takes part of your time a day and not the whole day tends to help into having a balanced life.

    Good luck.

    Edit: also something I forgot to mention those apps you mentioned might work for some people that like task specific programs etc, personally I find it that I couldn't program my life at all, I'd rather having it in a natural flow than having appointments with life, but thats just me, I see people that are quite happy with having a schedule.

  3471. Ask HN: How do you create productive habits? 2016-07-11 07:09:17 zoom6628
    For me to do lists are waste of time. I use Wunderlist to keep lists of things that i might do/read/work on sometime in future. I use my calendar for things that must happen.

    None of this is a way to 'solve' procrastination. The best way to overcome it is to do something. Anything. 5 minutes on 'the task' is better than 5 minutes wasted on something unrelated. Find a method to get yourself to do something. Even 60 seconds is enough because it is more than nothing. As you do that regularly you will overcome your procrastination.

    As other posters have mentioned though you do sooner or later need to find the root cause. It could be one of many things, but only finding that will help you to make real progress.

    Wish you all the best.

  3472. Ask HN: How do you create productive habits? 2016-07-11 07:16:49 rimantas
    Check out "How we learn" course on Coursera. It deals with procrastination among other things.

  3473. Ask HN: How do you create productive habits? 2016-07-11 07:19:37 nokya
    If you were able to defeat procrastination with a todo list, you were not a procrastinator.

    You just needed some organisation in your daily activities :)

  3474. Ask HN: How do you create productive habits? 2016-07-11 07:27:49 er_d0s
    I find that my procrastination comes from tasks that my brain thinks are too hard, so what I do is I make todo lists, I break the task down into smaller more manageable tasks until they're small enough to digest easily. The more tired/cbf/bored I am, the smaller I make the tasks.

    Also, for avoiding distractions I usually keep a piece of paper on my desk titled "distractions", if my mind wanders, I write down the thing it wandered to, if it happens again I put a dot next to that thing, surprisingly I never get more than a few dots before it's completely out of my mind for the day.

    I kind of feel like this is somewhat related to the whole concept of mindfulness, rather than being stuck in your own distractions you observe them and move on... These two things help me immensely.

  3475. Ask HN: How do you create productive habits? 2016-07-11 09:12:03 baccheion
    What helps with procrastination is Adrafinil (precursor to Modafinil that doesn't require a prescription), Memantine, PhenylPiracetam Hydrazide, working on things that are interesting, and filing away (or having someone/something else do) whatever you don't like doing.

  3476. Ask HN: How do you create productive habits? 2016-07-11 13:53:09 atlih
    What we are dealing with here is what the author Steven Pressfield calls "Resistance". He has two great books on the subject that helped me a lot and you should check out: The War of Art (2002) and Do The Work (2011)

    Procrastination is basically a consequence of letting resistance run amok and by dismantling the resistance, all the wind goes out of the procrastination.

    Looking for an app or some cutting edge new way to deal with a 10.000 year old problem (that was also solved 10.000 years ago) is pretty much just putting a band-aid on it.

  3477. Ask HN: How do you create productive habits? 2016-07-11 15:44:19 Ultimatt
    My solution is to embrace procrastination. Just makesure your procrastination tasks are worth doing. If its the TV or reddit thats bad. If it's housework thats a step up. If it's a side project you would otherwise procrastinate starting thats actually perfect. Ive been my most productive when I was procrastinating trying to avoid writing my PhD thesis. I ended up with more research I had to write about which was the main danger!

  3478. Ask HN: How do you create productive habits? 2016-07-11 16:00:09 cel1ne
    The following applies to all methods:

    1. Keep in mind that "forcing" yourself to do something takes considerable energy.

    You can imagine a second inner you, that's, for one reason or another, actively sabotaging your efforts to get something done. Now you can barter with that second you and get it to agree to work, but if you push it too far it will relapse.

    So: It's important to get a feeling for your motivational energy. If you managed to overcome procrastination successfully yesterday, don't expect the same today.

    Just like in sports, give yourself a rest when needed and be realistic about your daily potential.

    2. Not all work is created equal. There is more creative and more repetitive work. If you don't feel productive, do the chores.

  3479. Ask HN: How do you create productive habits? 2016-07-11 17:26:55 majewsky
    The 3 Best Clickbait Titles for Procrastinators.

  3480. “Write Every Day” Is Bad Advice: Hacking the Psychology of Big Projects 2016-07-11 21:49:29 munificent
    > By being far easier to pull off

    If that were true, I suppose that would be a good argument in favor of a different cadence. But I don't see that the author presents a compelling case for that.

    > less prone to slipping and demotivation?

    As others here noted, having a rigid work schedule isn't about motivation, it's about discipline. Motivation is easy. Every aspiring writer has piles of it. J. K. Rowling is beloved by almost the entire world and is a billionaire. Few roles are held in esteem as much as being a successful published writer, and many dream of an idealized full-time writing life of quietly sitting next to the window with their typewriter/laptop/pen and paper sipping tea while they craft their next opus.

    What's hard is discipline—the willpower to translate that motivation into the grinding work of carving out sentences for hours on end. A schedule helps with that.

    I'm personally not convinced that a longer schedule cadence makes discipline easy. My experience is that it tends towards the opposite. A longer period of reckoning gives you more time to procrastinate and get out of the habit of doing the work.

    A day might be too short for many—it is hard to keep up—but I think a week might be too long for even more.

    > Quantitative changes often lead to qualitative differences

    Yes, I totally agree. However, the author doesn't seem to realize that's what he was arguing.

  3481. “Write Every Day” Is Bad Advice: Hacking the Psychology of Big Projects 2016-07-11 22:47:15 cmdr2
    Disclaimer: I'm a work-in-progress like everyone else. What's written below may seem obvious to most folks here, but it still is a daily battle for me, and will likely be for the rest of my life.

    --

    Quote: "Here’s what happens when you resolve to write every day: you soon slip up."

    Quote: "the brain does not necessarily distinguish between your .. abstract goal, to write a novel, and the accompanying specific plan, to write every day"

    Quote: "When the specific plan fails, the resulting lack of motivation infects the general goal as well"

    --

    I'd rather address this behavior of the brain, instead of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Strategically, it makes more sense to simply shrug off every failed day, and trying to write again the next day, as if nothing happened. Don't even bother to reflect on it (in order to learn) - you've already absorbed some lessons subconsciously. Keep the for..loop light.

    Even if you've failed for the past 1000 days, why not attempt to write today?

    Even if you fail to write today, why not try to write again tomorrow? Taking these failures as a personal judgment ("Oh I'm a procrastinator", "Oh I'm always going to keep procrastinating and failing, what's the point?") is the real problem. Life is chaotic, stuff happens. Managing that emotional response, and simply coming back in every day and trying seems optimal. A bit like a mostly-dumb but relentless bull.

    What do you have to lose? The worst case is you'll fail at the goal, but the default state of any goal is failure - only by working at it do you reduce the odds of it failing. So just going back in each day and trying, and not taking failed days as personal judgments seems optimal. We tend to forgive others, but not ourselves. If a close friend of yours was failing each day but really wanted to accomplish the goal, what would you advise them?

  3482. Ask HN: How do you create productive habits? 2016-07-11 23:04:08 freek4iphone
    Agree with you, one of the first thing for me to beat procrastination was to stop wasting time on useless things like checking facebook/twitter every 5 mins and getting rid of the FOMO completely, this is easier said that done, but feels great once achieved. i removed facebook and twitter from my phone, put your phone to Do not disturb and suddenly i have all the time in the world. I use this time to think/plan and create efficient habits/methodologies to beat procrastination.

  3483. Ask HN: How do you create productive habits? 2016-07-12 02:28:48 chatmasta
    The best takeaway from that book is the "cycle" of habit: cue -> routine -> reward. The message of the book is that if you have a bad habit, e.g. smoking, there is a "cue" that causes you to engage in the "routine" of smoking, for the "reward" of nicotine. Unfortunately, these cycles are hard wired into our brain, so once they're fully established, we can't change them. The author offers the solution: keep the "cue" and the "reward," but change the "routine." The first step is recognizing the cue. Once you know what it is, you can replace the "routine" with something more benign, that also leads to a reward.

    So for procrastination, maybe the "cue" is your code compiling, and the "routine" is typing "n -> down -> enter" into your address bar to get to hacker news, and the reward is some sort of stimulus. You can fix this habit by recognizing the "cue" of code compiling, and swapping it out for a new routine, like 30 pushups, to get a stimulus reward of energy.

  3484. I Hate Puzzles: Am I Still a Programmer? (2011) 2016-07-12 04:08:17 blastrat
    This topic always comes back, and it attracts a bunch of people from one side of the issue who come out of the "would work" (on real problems only, ha ha) to disclaim puzzle solving as a measure of anything. I think it's because of the natural human tendency to wish to discount any criticism of one's self, and they perceive this type of aptitude used as a metric to be an implied criticism. Also, it's hard to see what you can't see, so it's hard to see the value of it too for people who can't see it.

    So, to argue the other side but still make a fresh, pleasing, and palatable comment, I will defend the side that says "puzzle solving is a rare and useful skill" but I will include a criticism of my side so you can all join in and say "see, your side does suck!" and everybody will be happy.

    I love solving puzzles, real or artificial, I'm really good at it, and there are plenty of real world problems that use the same skills (in my case I'm particularly "spatial", I conceptual the birthday problem as graphs of the attributes of the numbers), and elements of the same graphs occur in hashing algorithms, joins, simplex method, discrete math digital filters, modular arithmetic, sieves...

    The problem with being me is, I'm so attracted to puzzles, I can get distracted from the task at hand if it does not involve a puzzle. I will insert or find puzzles to solve where perhaps none exist. I will procrastinate a lot of the "uninteresting" (to me) but necessary parts of a project in favor of puzzle solving.

    Thankfully, projects tend to include a mix of people with different skillsets. But it can be annoying to have one's own skillset discounted as valuable, which is what you do to me when you say "I don't have this tendency and I'm a good worker" and what "they" are doing to you when they say "you don't have this tendency so you don't get the job."

  3485. Ask HN: How do you create productive habits? 2016-07-12 12:01:51 ksikka
    Thanks for sharing that blog post! I really liked this aspect of it:

    "You finish a thing by starting it until it’s done."

    I read another blog post whose thesis was "To avoid procrastinating, think about starting instead of finishing". That helped me a lot too. Once you start, work isn't as bad as it seemed.

  3486. Ask HN: What is the emerging state of the art in fuzzing techniques? 2016-07-13 00:33:00 Zardus
    It's impressive how many resources you threw at problem! We (Shellphish) had very similar results by using AFL [4] for fuzzing and angr [5] for symbolic execution (we published our approach at NDSS in February [1]) on around 300 cores. Of course, we procrastinated pretty heavily, ended up hacking our CRS together in three weeks, and it was absurdly rough around the edges and didn't get anywhere near your crash numbers during the qualifying event itself. As we discuss in the paper, our experiments with the impressive numbers were carried out afterwards, in less chaotic conditions.

    It's interesting that the approaches taken by us [1], you [2], and ForAllSecure [3] for the CQE (at least on the exploitation side) were so similar. I've talked with two other teams that had an analogous setup (as well as two other teams, who did quite well, that took a very different route). I guess some great minds think alike!

    As a side note, in the ToB blog post, you talk about wanting to join up with another team to be able to play in the final event. Did you guys end up finding a partner? It'd be interesting to face your CRS again next month :-)

    [1] https://www.internetsociety.org/sites/default/files/blogs-me... [2] https://blog.trailofbits.com/2015/07/15/how-we-fared-in-the-... [3] https://blog.forallsecure.com/2016/02/09/unleashing-mayhem/ [4] http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/ [5] http://angr.io

  3487. Blind-tested soloists unable to tell Stradivarius from modern violins 2016-07-15 02:05:31 yolesaber
    I was in a music store six months ago buying strings for my old squire electric. I was planning on actually sitting down and learning guitar -finally- after years of procrastination. As I approached the register I saw an old Danelectro convertible from 1966 hanging by the counter. Now I hadn't really any chops at all, I could bang on G C F progressions but not much else. But when I picked up that guitar I immediately played a beautiful country twanging melody and I was able to ride it into a nice satisfying ending. The guy behind the desk was surprised and starting asking me if I played in any bands / made musician small talk. I didn't know what to say, but I bought that guitar and have been playing on it so much since. Before that, I had been unable to concentrate and maintain a practice regimen past two weeks.

    A poor craftsman might blame his tools, but the best tools do have history and lineage to them.

  3488. Interviewing my mother, a mainframe COBOL programmer 2016-07-15 20:21:15 TeMPOraL
    Personally I do mind, not because of fear someone catches me procrastinating on Hacker News (most people in my company wouldn't even know what it is) - I simply can't focus with other people close behind me. It's a weird kind of stress.

  3489. Interviewing my mother, a mainframe COBOL programmer 2016-07-15 21:29:01 strictfp
    I actually like this, since it stops me from procrastinating, as does working in a team.

  3490. Google deletes artist’s blog, a decade of his work 2016-07-15 21:33:26 smonff
    I started deleting my emails and I feel really better that this big stack of crap is erased forever. The whole concept of archiving mail is disgusting. Everybody is concerned by climate change, but seriously, storing all these data is crazy and dirty, a datacenter is everything but clean.

    No backups to deal with and no procrastination-until-the-end-of-your-life. Save the planet and get away from your past.

  3491. Google deletes artist’s blog, a decade of his work 2016-07-15 23:25:38 arundelo
    I've had my own domain for quite a while and have been meaning to start using an email address on that domain. The main reason I haven't is that I'm procrastinating the initial trouble of setting it up, but I'm also a bit scared from hearing stories of people who do this and then occasionally have email to them or from them bounce or disappear. (Maybe this is not as common a problem as I get the impression it is.)

    Edit: I'm not even considering running my own email server; I know that's a full-time job. Just something like forwarding my custom email to my Gmail address, which is the type of thing I've heard the aforementioned scary stories about (though a quick web search isn't turning up many such stories).

  3492. What ever happened to Wordstar? 2016-07-18 22:52:15 ralfd
    Hackers, sure … we know the real reason is he doesn't get to procrastinate on the internet.

  3493. Become a 10x Programmer by Managing Your Time Better 2016-07-19 00:40:56 btbuildem
    Another advantage of a standing desk is that.. you're standing, not relaxing. Once at my desk, I don't want to procrastinate - I'm here to work.

  3494. Become a 10x Programmer by Managing Your Time Better 2016-07-19 00:44:48 616c
    I see others asking for advice. I am skeptical and embarassed to ask here, but I feel like many like-minded lurkers are here. So I think this follow-up on M4v3R's inquiry is worth a shot.

    I have multiple study interests. Many of them are beyond my comfort zone, by design and with intent, and I have no way of knowing when or if I can absorb them with a timetable. How do you schedule?

    I am currently enrolled in a few Coursera courses:

    Algorithms Crypto I Scala

    They all have deadlines. I am 1-3 weeks behind in each, respectively. I have been an off and on again convert to programming and open source. I desire to really get back to computing, after a kind of numbing support career. I love the machines, but I cannot force their theory to love me.

    I can watch lectures over and over and take notes. This takes time. But when it comes to assignments, I cannot connect the dots.

    Solutions:

    - Review the material AGAIN

    - Switch up assignments to reduce load; all of them are equally rigorous, so this backfires, it still takes time

    - I try reading supporting material (the Crypto101 book for Crytpo I for example, and it might be helping as of this week), but this takes time, and my choices can be invested wisely or unsound

    This is not to mention wanting to study for more infosec certs, building a lab to strengthen that effort, and move to working on personal projects in a more focused way by building VM and containers using all the cool kid tools, boosting career prospects and increasing discipline.

    I lost a lot of weight, and maintain with exercise (sometimes twice a day now) to stave off depression. I have lot of very dramatic personal drama with a relationship that consumes my spare cycles.

    Someone, give me advice! I burn out frequently, watching TV streaming when I can, and reading sites like this.

    This would not bother me so bad if NOT for HN. I procrastinate with you all, for sure, but this website exposes me to a very unique subset of computing culture and counterpoints I need as I live abroad with limited community engagement. You all fill me with rage and jealousy, as there are so many brilliant programmers exposing me to great people pushing the bounds of their curiosity.

    What if HN backfires? It pushes on me, but without that push, where the hell does the inspiration come from?

  3495. Become a 10x Programmer by Managing Your Time Better 2016-07-19 01:30:45 Raphmedia
    Yes, HN's built-in anti-procrastination features make it so that I don't mind having it out of this hostfile.

  3496. Ask HN: Considerations when asked to write a book? 2016-07-19 16:42:21 dansanderson
    Lots of great advice in these comments. Adding a few bits based on my limited experience writing for O'Reilly:

    E-books are important. They're more than half the unit sales in my case. Look for good e-book royalty rates. Someone mentioned 50% and I have no idea if that's realistic for tech books, but it should certainly be much higher than print. Some tech publishers participate in all-access online libraries, and you get royalties from these too when anyone accesses your book.

    Toolchain is important. MS Word intake may mean you'll have less control over quality in post production. O'Reilly can do DocBook/AsciiDoc end to end, and can even push author-submitted ebook updates after launch. Of course if you prefer MS Word and staying hands off in post then great. But I'm always grateful for text markup in a git repo, enough that I'd consider it a big plus when picking from multiple publishers.

    When you pick a publisher, make sure that you like their books and would be proud to have a year or two of your own work sitting next to them. Based on stories I've heard from author friends, there seems to be a correlation between production values and author happiness. Typesetting, paper quality, error rates, etc. are all things I care about anyway, and they're also a proxy for other parts of the experience like editorial and technical support. There are big publishers I wouldn't even consider because their catalog is so poor.

    Once you start writing, don't stop. Find a steady pace and stick to it. Treat each chapter like a magazine article that's due at the end of the month. The biggest pain for my first book was writing for five months, pausing for two (weekends went to the day job for a bit), then feeling guilty about pausing, procrastinating, and nearly burning out from the stress. The work won't burn you out, the guilt will, so manage the guilt.

    My editors were all good people willing to chat, answer questions, and connect me with resources. None of my editors gave me writing feedback. I don't know what's typical in this regard, but I felt quite on my own when it came to drafting and editing. I had mixed feelings about this at first: I was hoping to learn more about writing from an opinionated editor, as with magazine writing or fiction (I imagine). My editors were all good about pestering me for new material on a regular basis, which is a valuable contribution, and we had some good project planning discussions at the beginning.

    Keep expectations very low for marketing help from the publisher, especially for niche titles, beyond the publisher brand itself and the occasional full-catalog ebook sale. Ask about marketing channels run by the publisher, such as companion videos, live streaming events, and publisher booths at conferences. Plan to self-promote online, and don't be shy about it. You're writing this book so people will read it, and they can't read it if they don't know about it.

    Not sure if this is controversial, but personally I would trade some or all of the advance for a higher royalty. The advance doesn't come close to paying for my time, which means it doesn't shift the risk or up-front production costs to the publisher in a meaningful way. The case where I deliver a completed manuscript but the advance doesn't pay out is one I want to avoid: I want as many people as possible to read my book! If it's a failed investment for the publisher, it's a failed investment for me, even with the advance. One not insignificant advantage of an advance is that it usually pays based on drafting milestones, so it's a nice motivator, but that's merely psychological.

  3497. Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life 2016-07-22 22:02:30 dotsamuelswan
    Grain of salt / what works for others won't work for you / etc.

    Don't leap back to school without carefully vetting whatever program has caught your attention. A lot of hoop jumping, and a lot of curriculum that's a decade out of date (or more) out there these days. I've tried to go back a few times, and it's been a complete waste of time/money.

    Read Pressfield's "The War of Art." It's cheap, it's short, and it's helpful. There are a few passages that don't quit hit home, but it does one thing really well. It gives you the kind of internal vocabulary you need to get out of the "I'll do it tomorrow" sort of procrastination. "Tomorrow" is really dangerous thinking when there's not an actual deadline. You'll be saying tomorrow for years at a time, without actually moving the needle.

    Move the needle every day. Do -something- that counts as forward progress. Momentum goes a long way. Track what you're doing. "What gets measured gets improved" sort of thing.

    Be honest with yourself. What have you done that makes you think you should be more than just another office peon? Put in the work. Stop wishing. Earn it.

  3498. Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life 2016-07-23 07:21:26 msutherl
    This doesn't work for everyone, but my approach this is to ask: what is the intersection of my unique strengths and the most important problems to address in the world? In answering this, you quickly discover you need a philosophy, an idea of what future you'd like to see for humanity, and you need to leverage experiences you've had. A few things I can recommend for starting this journey:

    - Spend some time familiarizing yourself with your historical context, the political and economic systems you operate within, and ethics generally

    - Do a broad survey of every single project you can find within your interest areas. If you're into non-profits, check out the http://foundationcenter.org/ library/database. If you're into startups, spend hours on Crunchbase / Angelist researching startups. Ask around. Google a lot. Make lists!

    - Consider thinking through a cause prioritization framework. I have some mostly related to the Effective Altruism community collected here: https://www.are.na/morgan-sutherland/cause-prioritization. Bret Victor put together an amazing article re: climate change: http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/. You can probably find other meta-level analyses. When you start to narrow in, you search for various industry reports, check out bls.gov, etc. and start getting used to looking for gaps and opportunities at that kind of meta-level. Note: this information is hard to find and being familiar with it is one of the main strategic advantages that good leaders have!

    - Spend a good long time, multiple engagements of an hour or so, writing down what you think your unique strengths and skills are? Ask yourself: what do I do when I'm procrastinating? What do I find myself doing a lot but that feels very easy to me? Also ask people you know: "what am I good at?"

    - Don't underestimate serendipity. Reconnect with people from your past. Go to meetups and networking events (but don't waste your time – scan the list before and introduce yourself to the people that matter i.e. the organizers). Explore online communities. Ask your friends if they know people that they think you should know and get the intro.

    Ultimately: take a structured approach to solving this problem. Eventually you'll uncover and opportunity that you can't turn down. But don't forget the research you've done because soon enough you'll be back at square one! Welcome to the future!

  3499. Ask HN: Why don't companies hire programmers for fewer hours per day? 2016-07-26 11:09:14 delinka
    "...hire programmers for fewer hours per day"

    It takes time for me to get my head around the problem my employer wants solved. They can't plan to the tiniest detail the precise class hierarchy that I should produce, the exact procedure I should write. If they could, they'd only need a typist. They need someone who can comprehend the problem, formulate a solution, and then slice that solution thin enough to implement each layer in code. This process is necessarily creative and often does not involve producing code. Why don't they hire for fewer hours? Because they'd get less 'productivity' out of me.

    Further, as a company grows, it takes time to communicate, to get everyone headed toward the same goal. Just because the founder said "protect data" doesn't mean that everyone automatically comes to the same conclusions about how that should be done. So there are meetings for communicating verbally, followed by documentation to solidify understanding of the problem and the solution, followed by more meetings to clarify intent in the documents...

    After all that communicating, when I get time to focus on creating solutions, I've got to take the time to reconstruct state in my head so that I can be productive.

    "...programming makes us tired and stressed, how often we spend hours and hours per day just procrastinating or being completely unproductive while still trying to be."

    All those meetings make me tired and stressed. But more to your point, I'm not unproductive while I'm defocussed. While writing part of the solution, I hit a wall - how do I implement this so that it's readable, so that when I come back to this part of the code in six months I'll still be able to understand wtf I was thinking? This operation isn't permitted, so what's another way to solve the problem without creating a security issue? So I defocus - walk the floor; walk the block; look out the window; operate the flippers on the pinball machine - and let my subconscious work it out.

    Between attempting to understand the problem, interruptions for communication and time required to find an acceptable solution, I'm left with little time as it is to actually implement the code that solves the problem. I'm already averaging about two hours of "programming time" per day. Any less and I probably can't even write the code.

  3500. Ask HN: Why don't companies hire programmers for fewer hours per day? 2016-07-26 13:17:38 ne01
    Most managers don't understand that a company is a group of people (employees). for it to succeed you have to make sure employees are happy and productive.

    If you are not productive (tend to procrastinate) it's because you don't have enough incentive to work.

    People you hire have feelings, hopes, and dreams too. Like you, they want to become extremely successful (and if they don’t you have hired the wrong people). Embrace other people’s feelings and help them fulfill their life with happiness.

    How? Simple.

    Instead of hiring 3 people and pay them average wage or god forbid minimum wage — hire 1 person and pay her 3 times more.

    When you fulfill someones dream and help them achieve happiness you have no idea how much they become more productive and it requires zero effort to manage them.

    Most managers run their company like dictators.

    When my startup gets to a point where I have to hire someone besides hitting the right person I'll make sure I have the resources to fulfill his dream life and I'm sure he will be more productive than 3 programmes (just like me) and would never submit a question like this on HN

  3501. Ask HN: Why don't companies hire programmers for fewer hours per day? 2016-07-26 17:39:48 axx
    I basically do the same. I work 4 days a week and I feel that I'm not really less productive. The fact that I have one day per week off, gives me a reason to procrastinate less and do more with the time I have.

    I remember the time from an old job, were most employees did nearly nothing on Friday afternoons. They were burned out from the week and waited until the time was up to finally go home.

    I work 4-day weeks for a few years now and I can say that I don't want to change this anytime soon. Having more time for friends and family makes me much more happy than a bit more money. And of course, I feel much more relaxed on Mondays since every weekend is a "long weekend".

  3502. Ask HN: Why don't companies hire programmers for fewer hours per day? 2016-07-26 23:08:33 beat
    Just because I'm procrastinating doesn't mean I'm being unproductive. Quite often, my brain needs to shove problems back into asynchronous batch processing in the back end.

    Or, as someone once told me, "That's not programming. That's just typing!"

  3503. Let's Encrypt now fully supports IPv6 2016-07-27 02:38:39 jo909
    Of course, so am I. But pretty much the same reasons we can bring up why IPv6 was not super important for LE are the reasons everybody else has to procrastinate on that. It's just a statement of overall sadness that accompanies my personal ~15 year wait for IPv6 adoption.

  3504. The Rust Platform 2016-07-28 07:36:22 Ericson2314
    IMO the root problem is that the Haskell Platform is both a set of curated packages and a bandaid for the fact that so many things Haskell are hard to build/install for no-good reason.

    On the first front I guess it's alright (but stackage is better) and on the second front it's totally inadequate—maybe even harmful in that it probably made the problem just less painful enough to spur procrastination.

    I think most of this lesson doesn't apply to rust, but still good to be aware. It certainly gave me a strong eversion to course-grained dependency management as a bandaid.

  3505. GitHub was down 2016-07-28 13:29:42 fagnerbrack
    Time to procrastinate.

  3506. Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment? 2016-07-30 02:58:45 johndevor
    This may sound simple, but what's worked well for me is to "boomerang" (i.e. return this email again tomorrow morning) myself an email every morning reminding me to meditate for 20 minutes.

    It works well with my procrastinating mindset because, even if I miss a day, I never do not boomerang the email to myself. It's important to learn to forgive yourself if you miss a day, which is why it works for me.

    I also always zero my inbox which means I can't miss the email.

  3507. Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment? 2016-07-30 03:32:59 dotsamuelswan
    After a single week of using a physical daily planner, I realized I'd accomplished more in the previous week than I had in the past 6 months. No looking back.

    Every Sunday I write down a single thing to accomplish for each day of the next week: Read a chapter of a book, Write a post about a specific topic, etc.

    Procrastination is super dangerous when there isn't a deadline. Way too easy for "tomorrow" to turn into never. Professional/Personal development stuff seems to fall into that trap pretty frequently.

    I tried tracking things with all sorts of different software, but nothing clicked for me like pen and paper.

    (Field Notes 56-Week planner pairs well with a uni-ball 307 Gel Pen.)

  3508. Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment? 2016-07-30 05:10:53 rayalez
    HN has a fantastic no-procrastination mode(enabled in settings), it locks you out after 20 minutes of browsing, for the next 3 hours, it really helps. Since I don't feel like fb/twitter are adding anything to my life, I just blocked them in my router. I still end up there occassionally, but it's not an addiction. I still do spend too much time on reddit, but I'm trying avoid it as well. I'm getting better at it, but slowly. It's mostly a matter of my brain gradually comprehending that it's a pretty joyless activity that adds very little to my life.

    I don't have a designated time for reading, I'm just trying to avoid the "bad" kinds of information, and since my brain keeps craving it, audiobooks end up being the best way to satisfy it.

  3509. Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment? 2016-07-30 05:35:32 rashkov
    I've found that logging off of Twitter and Facebook make a difference for me. My password is in a password manager so that adds yet another step. Anything to break the "muscle memory" and habit of reaching for a procrastination fix.

  3510. Britain’s scientists are freaking out over Brexit 2016-07-31 22:20:31 jtrip
    That is assuming that the media, backed by recent and coming economic figures won't scaremonger and break away all the other popular arguments against Brexit, as 'no foreigners' wasn't the only argument. Not to mention that procrastination and fearful reports by the government will also help. The longer it takes the easier it will be to kill it.

    Of course, all of this assumes May's intention to not exit.

  3511. iPad-only is the new desktop Linux 2016-08-01 09:12:19 chatmasta
    There may be value in using an iPad as a dev machine simply because it provides a separate environment for only doing dev work. Given that habit (and thereby procrastination) depends greatly on environment, it's possible that using an iPad strictly as a dev machine could increase productivity by subconsciously associating the iPad environment with efficiency. That is, if you're on your iPad, you know you shouldn't be messing around, and you use it only for work. Whereas if you're on your laptop you might be tempted to lapse into time sinks that you already associate with your laptop.

  3512. AI is always less impressive than is claimed 2016-08-01 19:21:47 YeGoblynQueenne
    >> Instead the post attacks a straw man argument about "General intelligence", something that no AI researcher is claiming.

    Several of the Deep Learning people are on record making silly claims about the future of AI. I'll dig you up the links if you insist [1] but frex, Juergen Schmidhuber has made noises to the effect that deep nets have shown intuition and things like that. Jeoff Hinton has said similar things.

    The reason for that is that the original AI project started out to create strong AI in the first place, so if you could not show that your theory has some sort of chance to lead to strong AI people would scoff at it. There's still a bit of that in academia and in industry and parts of the press have not yet gotten the memo that things have changed now, so you'll still hear lots of people making these claims, or having such claims drawn out of them in interviews.

    But that's besides the point- which is that a lot of the very clearly stated goals of the industry require the development of systems with human-like intelligence. For instance, natural language processing. We have made some advances in recent years (for instance in things like part of speech tagging or even machine translation to an extent) but the parts of language that we really take for granted as humans, conveying meaning and being aware of some sort of context, those are completely outside our grasp for the time being.

    So when Google pretends it can just throw a ton of processing power at, say, machine translation between any two languages any time, and get it to work well, you know that's just its marketing people knowing they can claim anything they like and only their engineering team will be in a position to know how far it is from the truth.

    _______

    [1] please don't, I need to stop procrastinating.

  3513. The vanishing civility: The game of jerks, bozos and assholes 2016-08-02 12:08:03 overgard
    In a weird way, I think it was just a quirk of circumstances. We were a small team in a satellite office of a much larger company, which generally meant we were financially stable but otherwise disconnected from the rest of the company (no HR present or anything like that). So when someone misbehaved, it was sort of a "what happens in vegas stays in vegas" kind of thing, IE, as long as your shenanigans don't have ramifications outside of the group we'd keep things in the family.

    I think because it was such a tight knit group, there was more tolerance than there would be in a more detached professional setting. I think this guy also got a lot more slack than he deserved because he was young and talented, so people chalked it up to immaturity.

    That might be overcomplicating things though. I think when it came down to it, our boss was basically a nice person who didn't really want to fire anyone, and there was no pressure to, so he'd procrastinate it, and the rest of us didn't really want to see him fired, at least to the extent of outright advocating for it, and so it just sort of kept going until he finally left to do something else.

  3514. What’s Next for Multi-Process Firefox 2016-08-04 00:17:14 flushandforget
    That's a good point about tab/session history. That's another area that could see improvement. I frequently open a link in a new tab, so also having that web of history between tabs could be useful.

    I've been terribly unproductive today. Darting back and forth to sites. I have a tendency to close tabs if I can. But sometimes when distracted, open something back up, like a forum to see if there is change. And I may in truth have only opened it about 10 minutes earlier. Last visited/popular site list helper could be of use there. Or of course not procrastinating in the first place.

  3515. Show HN: Whoa Board – Make Electro-Luminescent Materials Touch Sensitive 2016-08-04 00:56:42 whoaboard
    Whoops, I locked myself out of the site using anti-procrastination settings :(.

    Anyway, this is josh, who created this board. I'm here to talk about the project and answer technical questions. This board is actually a pretty involved system, and I'm happy to give people a better sense of how it works!

    There's also a github link with the source for the demos if people want to look around: https://github.com/foolish-products/whoa-core-proto4

    We'll ship the code with a cleaned up library and everything, but wanted to share the current state of the world to provide:

    1. A behind the scenes look at an embedded system still forming.

    2. Demonstrate our intention of building an open source ecosystem on this device!

  3516. Ask HN: Technology stall 2016-08-08 05:54:32 benologist
    For me it helps to try and recognize that a constant state of procrastination, and distraction, are just like a constant state of learning when it comes to finishing the task at hand.

    The right tool for launching might be the one that requires the fewest trips to StackOverflow via Google, or maybe that idea is not an important optimization to your workflow.

  3517. Soylent Coffee: Nootropics, fat, carbs, protein 2016-08-10 01:06:17 matthewwiese
    I'm glad to hear Soylent has broadened their product category with this addition. It seems (to me at least) to be a perfect solution for a morning routine; when we usually have a cup of coffee with breakfast, why not just roll that into Soylent and "save some time" (negligible imo but still a consideration) not to mention it will hopefully improve the taste tenfold.

    Ever since I've heard about Soylent I've wanted the company to do well -- I love cooking but oftentimes when I'm hungry I hate having to do prep work and cleanup because it feels like I'm procrastinating the work I actually have to do (and I can't skip eating because being hungry while working just gives sub par performance).

    I can't afford Soylent consistently as a student and so have used soy milk and other [gross] concoctions in the past; but, I might have to use this news as inspiration (also taking note from u/sxates to stop by Trader Joes and give their concentrate a shot).

  3518. Facebook will force advertising on ad-blocking users 2016-08-10 05:46:30 bbradley406
    I'd like to mention News Feed Eradicator here - not only does what its name implies, but it adds a motivational quote in the empty space. The quotes are usually about goals, procrastination, etc and it's saved me a lot of (potentially) wasted time.

  3519. Show HN: FNSH – App that helps you focus and finish tasks 2016-08-10 14:46:39 emm_eye
    I am a designer trying to get my head around swift and I built this over two weekends.

    If used properly, this app can help you get your tasks done on time/quicker without procrastinations or distractions.

    Happy to hear your feedback and to see how I can make it better!

  3520. DEA regularly mines Americans' travel records to seize millions in cash 2016-08-12 01:23:14 throwaway_reply
    (Original poster, but my procrastination settings prevented me from responding)

    Generally, SCotUS approval of civil forfeiture falls into two categories:

    1) Assets involved in a crime you didn't commit (e.g. lending your car to someone who robs a bank and uses it as a getaway car).

    2) Assets involved in a crime where there is no access to, or evidence of the owner (e.g. a pile of money found with a pile of drugs, or the home of a criminal who has fled the country)

    The form of seizure mentioned in this article is quite clearly unconstitutional.

  3521. Bayesian Optimization for Collaborative Filtering with MLlib 2016-08-12 04:59:40 apathy
    This is fantastic. You should probably set the no procrastination feature on Hacker News or it'll suck away your writing time like it did mine.

    Thanks! Also go Big Red. ;-)

  3522. The Problems with Food and Exercise Studies 2016-08-13 01:14:41 CodeMage
    I know I can look those quotes up, but that endeavor will most likely end up ramifying into a lot more procrastination than I can afford right now. Could you post those quotes?

  3523. Happy 10th birthday pandoc 2016-08-13 01:22:10 j0e1
    Enough of procrastination. It's time to finally start learning Haskell!

  3524. RedHat is hiring to make Linux run better on laptops 2016-08-13 02:08:04 hinkley
    I have a lot of mixed emotions about RedHat and to what degree they are a net positive or negative, but I'm glad someone is taking this on.

    It was so frustrating for me that the 'Linux on the Desktop' effort started right after the numbers showed that everyone was trading in their desktops for laptops.

    I wanted to program ON my laptop, not program my laptop.

    After spending almost 18 months trying to get all of the hardware on my laptop to work with linux (this included swapping out the wifi card and learning ACPI scripting so I could cobble together partial fixes from four other sources, and learning Crusoe CPU registers to contribute a power saving fix back to Transmeta, both things I have absolutely no interest in whatsoever), I said screw it and bought a Macbook. I'm on my fourth now, and aside for some difficulty installing command line tools, it's entirely removed hardware as a source of stress and procrastination.

  3525. Ask HN: What keeps you from exercising? 2016-08-13 15:37:28 drakonka
    Procrastination and excuses - "I'm tired, I'll do it tomorrow, I have to do things x and y, this deliverable has taken all my energy out of me."

    What has helped me the most is going to the gym first thing in the morning, before work. If I just get up and focus on getting my workout out of the way before coffee or anything else I'm much less likely to put it off.

  3526. Ask HN: What self talk you do when starting a new habit ? 2016-08-16 02:19:19 usernamebias
    I may be able to help, I worked as a personal trainer before I found my calling .

    Sounds like you're giving yourself a chore, your body will do what comes natural. Procrastinate. And Hey, I've been there, cold yet warm morning bed, its more restricting than handcuffs.

    Try this. Lower your expectations. Seriously. A big reason why most people don't follow through on diet/exercise goals is they become disillusioned when they do not see results or their own bodies seems to have its own agenda. Don't make plans of grandeur. Set your alarm to your preferred time, get plenty of sleep if possible. As soon as that buzz goes off, jump out of bed and go take a shower. Now that you're awake, you can work out. Do this enough and your body will take a hint.

  3527. This Is Your Life in Silicon Valley 2016-08-16 19:23:59 Ezhik
    Man, stuff like this makes me wonder what my life will even be like when I graduate.

    Went here because dude, Silicon Valley! Then ended up spending a year depressed and just burning out on the whole thing because as it turns out changing your entire life down to the language you speak doesn't really remove the fact that you're a huge introvert and procrastinator.

  3528. Optimism 2016-08-17 03:24:01 unabst
    The thing we tend to overlook about our inner dialog is that we actually have very little control over our thoughts. You know you have a problem when they become suicidal, because healthy minds simply do not have them.

    But even healthy minds will be pessimistic or optimistic from day to day. The author suggests the explanations we think of dictate our mood, which is true, but also our mood already dictates those thoughts. Our explanations tend to be negative when we're feeling negative. You're just sad already.

    The question is this: Is your explanation an objective description of truth, or is it an honest expression of your mood? And it's almost always both. Most explicit negative or positive explanations are also implicit expressions of your mood. Our inner dialog is always emotional, so when we reason with ourselves, we're already reasoning with our emotions, except, they have already happened.

    And here is how it works. Intellectual people are capable of coming up with an infinite number of reasons. Give it enough thought and you'll find yourself cataloging reason after reason. The sleight of hand happens when we choose the reason to go with. If you let your gut choose, you'll go with the one that most closely aligns with how you feel, because it will physically feel right. It just clicks. So we reason because of our mood, and further towards that mood. And if you have a working brain, you are an intellectual person.

    And here is the common misconception. A reason does not have to be subjective or false to be emotional. All your reasons can be true. The problem is with your selection. Think misuse of statistics [1]. All your data can be true, but can be made to say whatever you want. Conclusions can be written first, then made true. If we can do it with statistics, we can certainly do it with our perception. And this article along with Dr. Martin Seligman methods basically covers the various ways in which we do just that.

    So whenever possible just make your mood explicit. Monitor your mood, and take hints from the implicit emotions in whatever thoughts that are about something else. If they're in any way negative or positive, then that's already a clue, because if you think about it, nature isn't inherently either. And if you're down, act on it, don't reason with it. Just hit mute, and physically do things that make you happy (I splurge on a hard root beer or a premium cup of coffee). If your body and mind are healthy, this will work every time. If nothing you do makes you happy, don't feel guilty, just go see a doctor.

    ---

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misuse_of_statistics

    (right when I try to block HN to concentrate on work, I find articles like these, and am heavily rewarded again for my procrastination :)

  3529. Show HN: Thyme, a simple CLI to measure human time and focus 2016-08-17 06:38:35 sscarduzio
    It is unbelievable how far procrastination can go: you wrote an entire productivity profiling tool!

  3530. Ask HN: What features on HN do you use the least? 2016-08-20 21:10:23 nicolas_t
    I use search about 10 times a week. I often remember the title of an article that I didn't have time to read and search for that. I still remember fondly searchyc.com

    I used to look at new more often and upvote interesting articles but haven't had time to in a while (or rather I've been procrastinating slightly less).

    I guess the only features I never use is the jobs section and the new hide link.

  3531. Why It Doesn't Pay to Be a People Pleaser 2016-08-21 21:11:12 avindroth
    I did the self-absorbed thing and looked at my comments, glad that my procrastination led to something useful!

  3532. What Transistors Will Look Like at 5nm 2016-08-22 15:31:54 cstejerean
    Or maybe most developers aren't worried about the scale you can push something too. Most projects never go anywhere. If one turns into a runaway success you can deal with performance later. Designing everything as if it is going to require Google scale infrastructure is a good way to get distracted by cool technology and procrastinate on actually solving any useful problems.

  3533. Everything I Am Afraid Might Happen If I Ask New Acquaintances to Get Coffee 2016-08-23 00:17:00 balabaster
    Why does it need to be a trick date? The key is to know this:

    Worrying about the outcome of this date/trick date/non-date probably isn't going to change the outcome of your conversation - it's probably not going to change her answer to your invitation. All it's going to do is worry you into not inviting her; and then what?

    If she thinks you're an interesting person, she'll come for coffee, if she doesn't think you're an interesting person, she's probably not going to come for coffee unless you're more interesting than whatever else she's got going on right now... like studying for that exam she's procrastinating about not studying for... and really, do you want to be the guy (or girl) she has coffee with only because you're a distraction from her current reality or would you rather be the cause of the distraction?

    The key isn't to appear interesting, it's to be interested and interesting. Start with the small talk, let her get onto a topic that fascinates her. Listen! Become invested in the conversation, find something you find fascinating about it. Offer insights you may have, walk, talk, get coffee and let life unfold.

    ... and if you don't mean it to be a date, why worry about it anyway? The outcome of whether or not she goes for coffee with you doesn't even make a difference. You may as well just say "hey, can we walk and talk? I'm not really finished with this conversation, but I need a coffee, perhaps we can walk in that direction" or if you're already walking perhaps "Hey, do you mind if we just stop in here so I can grab a coffee?" and then when you're paying say "hey, can I get you anything while we're here?"

    The key is to be invested in the conversation. When you're invested in the conversation - not just your part of the conversation, but theirs too, people want to be around you. Being engaging is a key ingredient of that thing that everyone calls charisma. People want to talk to you because you make them feel important, you make them feel like things matter (not only to you, but to them as well), but mostly you make them feel; and I can tell you this:

    A few days after, people may not even remember what you talked about, perhaps not even what you looked like, but they will always remember how you made them feel.

    I feel like someone important may have said this before, perhaps Maya Angelou. Though I've held to this for years, so I like to believe she ripped me off (I'm deluded, what can I say? :D)

    Often then you find that life will just unfold as you let it; and if you do find yourself in a position where you feel you have to make a leap, perhaps because you want it to become a date, or whatever, to rip a quote right out of a movie (We bought a zoo):

    "You know, sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage. Just literally twenty seconds of just embarrassing bravery. And I promise you, something great will come of it."

    Conversely - if you don't, where are you? You'll spend your life kicking yourself and asking "what if I had?"

  3534. Ask HN: Failed interview, feeling unemployable and depressed – what do I do? 2016-08-24 20:36:23 tiagotalbuquerq
    I've been through a sort of same situation. I became lead product manager of the #1 brazil's startup, 1 month after that, I was fired because I was too depressed and couldn't handle what I achieved.

    It's because I got burned-out (due to the trash tech culture).

    I felt like not recognizing myself as the guy who achieved the most vertical growth curve in the company. And I was sure I couldn't do it anymore in any place else.

    I was sad thinking about the past, "how good I was" and much more sad thinking about "how good I will never be again".

    Depressed people forget to live the present, they just think about past and future, it generates a lot of fear, avoidance, procrastination... you are simply putting all your energy where it can't help you.

    The present time is your life, live it! The Sun rises everyday. I remember what liberates me about fear was read the phrase:

    "Until now, you survived the worst days of your life."

    You are strong enough to keep surviving. And think, I know you really don't wanna die, it just seems the only way to reach peace, but it's not.

    I like to think the Ironborns:

    "What is dead, may never die!"

    You have only one life, you can always give up and try again every day. (you're already dead, huh?)

    This death thing I'm talking about it's like a germans like to think:

    "Don't take life so serious, you will not escape alive".

    Talk to your wife, be open, don't be afraid. If she doesn't understand your situation, what you suffering and doesn't support you, leave her. You deserve better.

    Try to remove fear from your life. Fear are ruining your career, your dreams, your relationship.

    Life is a miracle, don't waste your time, follow your dreams. It's real, you can believe you will succeed, you can believe you will fail, know what? What you believe will become true.

    Seems like some guru shit but it's true, I know, you will know.

    Live the now, fuck the rest.

    (sorry my bad english)

  3535. The Imposter's Handbook 2016-08-24 22:16:17 haylem
    > mostly here on HN

    Which may or may not be an accurate depiction (as we read personal accounts and thoughts of the commenters) of a quite marginal subset of real-life IT-professionals.

    I wouldn't worry too much about what's being said or not said on HN. There are great ideas and topics to be covered here for sure, but they're sprinkled on top of a giant cake made with 1-part self-loathing, 2-parts day-dreaming, and 1-part regular huff-and-puffing.

    It makes for good entertainment and procrastination.

    > No idea what they mean, this books sounds great to me

    That being said, not knowing Big-O while doing CS or IT work seems worrying. Sure, it's not absolutely necessary for most of the grunt work. But you should definitely have the same understanding of performance issues without knowing the fancy notation and terminology. Big-O is just a notation and a formalization of these concepts, and it helps with communication. I'd say it's still better to know it.

    So, indeed the book probably doesn't hurt.

  3536. Show HN: Make Me Work – a solution to procrastination 2016-08-27 01:51:41 geoelectric
    I think remote productivity coaching is a great idea. In particular, as an ADHD person, this sort of thing would be an excellent supplement for ADHD coaching. ADHD coaching generally includes productivity checkpointing, but it's considerably less frequent (weekly is common) than what you describe.

    I'm not at all sure what I'd pay for this, but I'll throw out there that a good 1:1 ADHD coach is ~$100/hr. I wouldn't pay that for this, to be absolutely clear, since the same level of responsibility as a therapeutic service wouldn't be there and there are things an ADHD coach does that this service would not, but that gives some idea as to value.

    Some random thoughts:

    * There'd have to be a clear value add demonstrated over a reminder program and more typical self-check procedures like Pomodoro. Accountability is one, I'm not sure it's enough of one. People need to see a vision as to how to make their life better immediately.

    * People with major procrastination issues for whatever reason do typically need a lot of handholding at the start to figure out how to organize to get past them. You mention this in your pitch on the site, but I can't emphasize enough that this is where the major value and challenge probably is.

    * I'd be very interested in the qualifications of whoever was doing this. A basic outsource PA would probably not be sufficient for what you describe in the sense of adding value past what automated solutions could do. If it were, people would probably just use them for that.

    * People who procrastinate also tend to wander off compliance with stuff like this. That may or may not hurt your bottom line (we also forget to cancel subscriptions :) ) but it might speak to the efficacy of your service. How would you address the core problem of keeping people engaged?

  3537. Show HN: Make Me Work – a solution to procrastination 2016-08-27 02:09:06 geoelectric
    Just make sure you know what you're getting into. The type of coaching you describe is something people typically get training for. It goes past simple project management skills since you're dealing 1:1 with their personalities and other life considerations as well.

    Even if you don't bring those into the conversation they'll play hell with the results--that may mean it's unavoidable to bring them into the conversation as "blockers" or "risks" and that potentially opens a can of worms.

    One suggestion I'd throw out is to do the market research to figure out how many people have severe enough procrastination issues to benefit from your services, but who are otherwise sufficiently well-adjusted to not be more than you could handle. How many people out there really do just need another pair of eyes and a nudge, but are sufficiently isolated that they would have to turn to this kind of service to get them?

    Otherwise you might find yourself in a non-existent niche between people who just needed a todo program and people who actually need serious help. If you don't screen out that second type somehow, assuming you're not set up to handle them, they'll potentially confound your scaling calculations by being exceedingly high maintenance and they'll have a bad experience as well.

  3538. An alarming number of scientific papers contain Excel errors 2016-08-27 16:45:24 Noseshine
    I read all my WP articles via right-click "Open link in incognito window".

    (OT now:) If anyone thinks that's cheating them out of money - the choices are not "read for free" and "read for the appropriate price", the choices are "read for free" or "don't read". The reason I read is to procrastinate, so the value I get out of it is actually negative (same with HN...). Even their occasionally excellent articles (like their series on asset forfeiture) is stuff I'm at most mildly interested in (as a foreigner) to distract myself. That's my issue with today's media, I don't actually feel "informed" as in "it this is good for my life that I know these things". I can't do anything about 99.99% of the stuff I read about anyway, nor is it a representative sample of reality but consists almost solely on reporting the outliers.

  3539. An alarming number of scientific papers contain Excel errors 2016-08-27 18:01:56 pbhjpbhj
    >The reason I read is to procrastinate, so the value I get out of it is actually negative (same with HN...). //

    Entertainment has value doesn't it? It's not a simple financial value like the simplistic use of opportunity cost as being the price you could bill those hours at, but it's a useful and functional part of being human.

    I don't have a problem with you reading something people broadcast to the public internet though.

  3540. An alarming number of scientific papers contain Excel errors 2016-08-27 18:56:33 Noseshine

        > Entertainment has value doesn't it?
    If it's procrastination the net value is negative. You may put any value you like on the "entertainment" - but what it displaces has higher value.

    If I delay my work (which I do, even now) the overall value of writing comments on HN or reading a WP article that talks about issues that don't directly concern me and that I cannot do anything about is negative, even to myself (and don't try to argue they may concern me indirectly because, well, everything does).

    It's like being addicted to drugs: Sure you can argue if the drugs (and let's assume those especially crazy and destructive ones) had no value to the person taking them they would not take them, but a more appropriate model than high school economics would be the neuroscience of addiction. But even if you decide to stick to using an economic model you would have to take a very narrow view - like picking exactly the period where a stock was rising to show how great a pick that company is - to argue the person gets a positive value from taking those drugs.

  3541. Scientists discover a Massive galaxy consists almost entirely of dark matter 2016-08-29 04:55:08 noobermin
    Of topic question, but I find that it is only when I am in a mode of extreme procrastination that I find myself even looking past page 2. And it's very rarely that I go past page 1. I wonder who else has time to review that many titles.

  3542. Hunter S. Thompson on Finding Your Purpose (1958) 2016-08-29 15:44:11 kosei
    My favorite passage from this:

    "a man who procrastinates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance."

    So very true.

  3543. How a Technical Co-Founder Spends His Time 2016-08-30 14:03:15 glossyscr
    I have also two types of days:

    - I am ultra productive or...

    - I am procrastinating the entire day

  3544. Google+ Redesigned 2016-08-31 10:08:39 ElijahLynn
    Argh, HN totally didn't honor my line breaks on this one and I have no way of editing it now. The anti-procrastination setting was successful in locking me out after I posted it. I came back now to edit it and it is too late.

  3545. Show HN: Use Peer Pressure to Accomplish Your Goals 2016-08-31 20:59:28 ErikVandeWater
    I noticed myself procrastinating and I wondered what I could do about it. So I created this to make it easier/more fun to get stuff done.

    The idea is that when we commit to something publicly, we are more likely to stick with it. Humans evolved in groups, which demanded members' words be consistent with their actions.

    Note on Signup: If you'd like to try it without a Facebook account, you can open up developer tools and unhide the hidden manual sign up div to sign up. I hid this because accounts with fake names were making the site look illegitimate, so please use something that looks reasonable, at least. :) Also, this website is best used with people you know after you've gotten a feel for it, IMHO.

  3546. Ask HN: How are credentials managed at your company? 2016-09-01 04:03:54 ruler88
    I feel like security is one of those things where no one cares about it, everyone procrastinates, and then companies invest a lot into it once something bad happens.

  3547. Ask HN: How Did You Escape 9 to 5? 2016-09-01 04:35:36 sehutson
    I quit my day job back in 2008 and it's probably the best thing I've ever done. The first year or so sucked in terms of work hours and financial security. I had to drop all my day job income to scale up the non-job income and my income and credit both took a hit in the short-run. Today, however, life is amazing.

    1. Security - Over the years, I've built up a nicely diversified stream of income. Sure, some of them slow down or disappear from time to time, but the odds of me losing even 50% of my income overnight are so low that if it happened, it would likely correspond with some kind of catastrophic societal collapse. On the other hand, I've watched several good friends (and my dad) lose their jobs with no notice this year - and often, no severance. If you're like most single people, losing your job = losing 90% or more of your income.

    2. Task flexibility - If I start to hate a part of what I'm doing, or if there's a segment of that income stream I don't like doing, I don't necessarily have to keep doing it. I might decide it's unpleasant but worthwhile, or I might decide to move in another direction or outsource the task. There's no boss to say I have to stick with it or personally complete it.

    3. The "work in your pajamas" factor - I usually don't, but it's not uncommon for me to work in a golf outfit, yoga pants, or a bikini/swimsuit coverup depending on what I intend to do that day. Depending on the dress code of your day job, you might also save a lot on work clothing.

    4. No artificial caps on income - Instead of relying on a boss or HR department to give you raises (often limited by what everyone else there is getting, or some annual percentage cap), I can work harder/smarter and increase it indefinitely. This has worked out very well.

    5. No coworkers - Some people would call this a drawback, but I love it. I'm an introvert, and I get more than enough social interaction by joining clubs or taking classes (and I've met a very diverse and interesting group of people in doing so).

    6. You can do things when it's most efficient - I do my shopping on weekdays, I drive mostly outside of rush hour, and I tend to vacation mostly in the off-season and shoulder seasons. In doing so, I save an incredible amount of time and money.

    7. Greater control over your priorities - Let's say something happens and if you don't take action RIGHT NOW, your company will probably lose money, a client, an opportunity, whatever. If you have a boss, that boss is going to want you to deal with it immediately. If you work for yourself, you can decide whether it's really that important, or if you'd rather enjoy your evening/vacation/etc. and let things fall where they may (and most things aren't as urgent as they seem, so it often works out anyway).

    8. Flexibility in terms of hours worked - Yes, some jobs really do offer this, but they're few and far between - and in many cases, a job billed as "flexible" just means the boss wants to be able to use you at any hour of the day. Similarly, most jobs do want you accountable and at a desk SOMEWHERE for at least 40 hours/week and some portion of the business day. Working for myself, I can get my work done in a few hours and then go do something else. Yes, there was a time in the beginning when I worked insane hours, and yes, I've had occasional bouts where procrastination allowed 3 hours of work to swallow an entire day - but on the whole I work much, much less than almost everyone I know (while earning more). Sometimes I feel guilty about it.

    9. So much free time - Working 40-60 hours/week, commuting, and getting ready for work takes up a lot of time (slightly more if you're female and you have to dress up). I sometimes go back home to the Midwest for weeks or months at a time and my grandma and I do tons of stuff together because my free time approaches that of a retired person. It's not automatic with self-employment, but it's certainly more possible than if you have a day job.

    I'm sure there are other pros I'm not thinking of at the moment, but I get bad feelings just thinking of what it was like to have a day job. It's not for everyone, but for me it's a night and day difference in terms of quality of life.

  3548. The king of smokers 2016-09-02 02:45:33 moftz
    I used to smoke just for the nicotine benefits. Then I realized that I stunk more than I thought so I quit that and picked up dip (smokeless tobacco). It provided a much more prolonged nicotine "buzz" and I could use it at my desk. The spit was gross but as long as no one was around, I could do it as often as needed and keep focused on my work. After a few months of doing it regularly, I noticed my front, lower gums were beginning to recede. I dropped that and went back to smoking every now and then but still hated the stink on my clothes, hands, face, etc. I bought a cheap ecig pen and liked the slight buzz I could get from the nicotine. After a few years, I've stepped up to larger devices to get a larger buzz. It's not the same as cigarettes or dip but I can use it with no mess or strong smell at my home desk.

    A few years ago, I got a diagnosis of ADHD and medication was a recommendation. Generic amphetamine salts are what I use now, both an extended (20mg) and quick release dose (10mg). They made more of a difference in my focus than I ever thought. Only problem is that my mind turns into a bullet, I do whatever work I start on with little to no distraction but I can easy end up wasting time if I get sidetracked right as the medication kicks in. Nicotine still has its place for me, I use it everyday to keep awake and alert for my work. Medication is strictly for days where I know I have don't have time for distractions.

    Coffee has a milder effect than the medication but it's a nice, quick boost in concentration and alertness that can get me through a class or meeting. I usually avoid drinking it on days I take medication as I tend to feel a very strained feeling, it's very unpleasant sensation and I become hyperactive and careless with my work. Nicotine and coffee have a complementary feel, they have different effects but they fit nicely together.

    I think stimulants are my favorite thing ever. I wouldn't be anywhere close to where I am now in my career without their help. Most of my weaknesses come from procrastination now instead of both procrastination and being easily distracted. I'm getting better at starting things on time now and with the boost of focus, I don't take as long getting my work done than in the past.

  3549. Wisdom is more of a state than a trait 2016-09-02 09:23:28 avindroth
    What I got out of this was that our intellectual state is more variable than we think.

    This is why I wholeheartedly embrace procrastinating your way to success. Given that you are procrastinating with something in the top ten priorities.

  3550. Ask HN: Where do you go for civil discussion on the Internet? 2016-09-03 05:56:52 uola
    I think (hope) people come here to procrastinate as it is a perfect fit. The groundhog day of Internet forums where every day things reset so you can reiterate your opinion like nothing happened.

  3551. To finish projects on time, start every single step as late as possible 2016-09-04 00:42:17 visakanv
    I seriously love Tiago's work. I don't know if anybody remembers, but I once wrote a post about procrastination that got to the frontpage of HN, a couple of years ago [1]. And since then, I've been basically reading everything relevant I've been able to get my hands on. (Here's a 'research review' of sorts: [2]).

    I'd put Tiago squarely in my top 3-5 list of 'People Who Get It'. I highly recommend reading the rest of his work on the subject. [3]

    __

    [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6468521

    [2] http://visakanv.com/1000/0333-procrastination-pt1/

    [3] http://www.fortelabs.co/blog

  3552. To finish projects on time, start every single step as late as possible 2016-09-04 01:15:48 woliveirajr
    Someone taught me, years ago, some technique (don't remember the name) where you would move all the tasks to begin in the last possible day.

    Then, study the critical path to exclude all those "extra fat" that everybody includes in each task, assuring that the critical path is really critical, without hiding days/hours that would lead to procrastination in the critical path. Save it to an "emergency buffer".

    Review if something else became the critical path. Repeat until stability arises.

    Now, manage it, use your buffer when required, always take care if something else becomes the critical path (as everything will begin in the last possible time).

    And, even if something becomes critical path and takes more time than required, you have some buffer...

  3553. I want to motivate you to keep trying to switch to Linux 2016-09-04 02:17:40 tajen
    There is some time I spend procrastinating, but during my year with Ubuntu at work I was really annoyed by everyday things, enough to suspend my task and fix my configuration, so I wouldn't describe it as procrastination. I didn't fix things I could work with (e.g. when I switched on, I would execute some commands in the shell to fix the mouse...).

    Anyway we can discuss for long, but in the end I believe if Linux OSes had the amount of money that Apple has to hire UX designers, marketers and devs who don't mind doing mundane bugfixing, at least one version on Linux would become perfect. It was supposed to be Ubuntu, but let's hope it's the next one.

  3554. To finish projects on time, start every single step as late as possible 2016-09-04 03:20:33 pretodor
    Here is the full text:

    1/ The key to finishing projects on time is to start every single step as late as possible (exactly the opposite of what most PMs do)

    2/ First, because only progress on the critical path matters for final delivery, therefore all other starts are distractions

    3/ It would be like spending hrs on a huge dinner prep by making all the side dishes, only to realize u forgot to pre-heat oven

    4/ Second, starting early doesn't mean you'll finish early. Parkinson's Law: the task simply expands to fill the extra space

    5/ Third, even if u do finish a step early, that gain will be wasted: next person won't be ready

    6/ Starting a step early actually has all sorts of negat conseq, which is why procrastination is evolutionarily & logically a good strategy

    7/ Starting early increases likelihood u don't have all info and prereqs, making rework likely (i.e. estimate blowout)

    8/ Starting early increases the surface area for interruption attacks (internal & external), since u "have plenty of time"

    9/ Starting early explodes the amt of lead time not spent actually working (i.e. Touch time)

    10/ 70-99% of task lead time is waiting time, queueing, pending confirmation, waiting on approval, learning, rampup, setup, etc

    11/ Ppl complain about estimation being hard, but it's not "uncertainty". It's them starting things early due to supposed uncertainty!

    12/ But maybe the worst effect of starting early is that ppl start late anyway. Who actually begins a step before they have to?

    13/ So you get worst of both worlds: a LONG plan with huge lead times, which are ignored as ppl do everything last minute. Vicious cycle

    14/Last reason early starts suck, is they give illusion of safety. But Murphy doesn't hit everywhere evenly, he concentrates chaos at 1 spot

    15/ Irony is this is self-reinforcing: did you hit the deadline because u executed well, or because you had excessive safety (100-200%)?

    16/ So person who adds the most excessive safety is rewarded for "hitting their estimate," as if estimating and executing are independent

    17/ Late starts fix all this: when the step is "released," they have barely enough time to finish if they go at full speed

    18/ This pressure helps them focus, get into flow, ignore distractions/interruptions, optimize for 1 thing, get it done!

    19/ Procrastination isn't an issue, because they're already behind, since u also cut their estimated lead time in half (oops!)

    20/ If they finish on time it's actually a cause for celebration, and the next person can actually take advantage of the time gained

    21/ The PM knows what to focus on, since u start with few steps (critical path ones) and only gradually begin new ones as late as possible

    22/ Another benefit: once crit path person passes hot potato, they're free! U don't assign them new work, that would be punishing perform.

    23/ Late starts also help with resource contentions (the same person doing 2 steps), esp important in cross-funct creative teams

    24/ Instead of "start everything NOW!" You're saying "U must not start anything until the last poss moment. Focus on the current task!"

    25/ This helps ppl not multitask, since they only have one task at any given time, and it's late!

    26/ Ppl are generally happier: focus + flow + roadrunner mode (only 2 speeds, 100% & 0%) + fast results = happiness for both emp & co

    27/ ANOTHER benefit of late starts: u have much better estimation data, since lead time now more closely approximates touch time

    28/ 3 main results of all this: throughout (output x sales) explodes, lead time per project plummets, and huge excess capacity is revealed

    29/ U read that right: earlier u start steps, the later u deliver projects, the more excess capacity you're likely to have

    30/ Why? Because the almost universal response to late projects is "we need more capacity!" False. U need to use what u have

    31/ The busier everyone in your co seems to be, the more confident I am that you have tremendous, double-digit excess capacity

    32/ To add insult to injury, emps in such companies also say they're "too busy to invest in productivity." Speed up the hamster wheel!

    33/ BUT to use late starts, u also need buffers. Bec some steps do in fact go late, just not as many and not as late as u think

    34/ And I don't mean buffers as a general concept, u need very precisely placed and sized buffers divided into zones, updated daily

    35/ There is a buffer for every purpose: project buffers, feeding buffers, iteration buffers, bottleneck buffers. Gotta know which 1 to use

    36/ The PM's job becomes easy: just watch the buffer penetrations. No need to do anything until it gets to Zone 3 or 2, all else is noise

    37/ If u want to know where all this comes from, Critical Chain Project Mgmt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_chain_project_managem...

  3555. To finish projects on time, start every single step as late as possible 2016-09-04 05:00:08 raldi
    And here it is reformatted into paragraphs:

    The key to finishing projects on time is to start every single step as late as possible (exactly the opposite of what most PMs do). First, because only progress on the critical path matters for final delivery, therefore all other starts are distractions. It would be like spending hrs on a huge dinner prep by making all the side dishes, only to realize u forgot to pre-heat oven.

    Second, starting early doesn't mean you'll finish early. Parkinson's Law: the task simply expands to fill the extra space. Third, even if u do finish a step early, that gain will be wasted: next person won't be ready. Starting a step early actually has all sorts of negat conseq, which is why procrastination is evolutionarily & logically a good strategy:

    * Starting early increases likelihood u don't have all info and prereqs, making rework likely (i.e. estimate blowout)

    * Starting early increases the surface area for interruption attacks (internal & external), since u "have plenty of time"

    * Starting early explodes the amt of lead time not spent actually working (i.e. Touch time)

    70-99% of task lead time is waiting time, queueing, pending confirmation, waiting on approval, learning, rampup, setup, etc. Ppl complain about estimation being hard, but it's not "uncertainty". It's them starting things early due to supposed uncertainty! But maybe the worst effect of starting early is that ppl start late anyway. Who actually begins a step before they have to? So you get worst of both worlds: a LONG plan with huge lead times, which are ignored as ppl do everything last minute. Vicious cycle.

    Last reason early starts suck, is they give illusion of safety. But Murphy doesn't hit everywhere evenly, he concentrates chaos at 1 spot. Irony is this is self-reinforcing: did you hit the deadline because u executed well, or because you had excessive safety (100-200%)? So person who adds the most excessive safety is rewarded for "hitting their estimate," as if estimating and executing are independent.

    Late starts fix all this: when the step is "released," they have barely enough time to finish if they go at full speed. This pressure helps them focus, get into flow, ignore distractions/interruptions, optimize for 1 thing, get it done!

    Procrastination isn't an issue, because they're already behind, since u also cut their estimated lead time in half (oops!). If they finish on time it's actually a cause for celebration, and the next person can actually take advantage of the time gained. The PM knows what to focus on, since u start with few steps (critical path ones) and only gradually begin new ones as late as possible.

    Another benefit: once crit path person passes hot potato, they're free! U don't assign them new work, that would be punishing perform. Late starts also help with resource contentions (the same person doing 2 steps), esp important in cross-funct creative teams. Instead of "start everything NOW!" You're saying "U must not start anything until the last poss moment. Focus on the current task!"

    This helps ppl not multitask, since they only have one task at any given time, and it's late! Ppl are generally happier: focus + flow + roadrunner mode (only 2 speeds, 100% & 0%) + fast results = happiness for both emp & co.

    ANOTHER benefit of late starts: u have much better estimation data, since lead time now more closely approximates touch time.

    3 main results of all this: throughout (output x sales) explodes, lead time per project plummets, and huge excess capacity is revealed. U read that right: earlier u start steps, the later u deliver projects, the more excess capacity you're likely to have. Why? Because the almost universal response to late projects is "we need more capacity!" False. U need to use what u have. The busier everyone in your co seems to be, the more confident I am that you have tremendous, double-digit excess capacity.

    To add insult to injury, emps in such companies also say they're "too busy to invest in productivity." Speed up the hamster wheel! BUT to use late starts, u also need buffers. Bec some steps do in fact go late, just not as many and not as late as u think. And I don't mean buffers as a general concept, u need very precisely placed and sized buffers divided into zones, updated daily. There is a buffer for every purpose: project buffers, feeding buffers, iteration buffers, bottleneck buffers. Gotta know which 1 to use. The PM's job becomes easy: just watch the buffer penetrations. No need to do anything until it gets to Zone 3 or 2, all else is noise 37/ If u want to know where all this comes from, Critical Chain Project Mgmt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_chain_project_managem...

  3556. To finish projects on time, start every single step as late as possible 2016-09-04 06:45:36 tychoman
    My experience has shown that this is actually a much less stressful way to work. You're asking ppl to give estimates, with the caveat that there will be no penalty for not hitting it. Because all overruns will be absorbed in the common pool of safety margin, the buffer. This removes all the politics from estimating - the grandstanding, the making others look bad, the not-so-subtle pressures, the over-inflating to avoid looking bad. Estimates become what they're supposed to be: just estimates.

    Also, notice that as hard as everyone says estimating is, they know EXACTLY when to start on that thing they're procrastinating on to finish it just before the deadline. Could it be this interesting phenomenon is a feature, not a bug?

  3557. Ask HN: What is the most surprising technical skill you possess? 2016-09-05 01:32:05 joshvm
    Laziness - though of course when hiring you would bill it as efficiency or "expertise in software automation". A PhD taught me that often the best way to do things is the way that lets you press one button and have everything else happen automatically.

    Mostly it's to make life easier, particularly when 2 months down the line you need to make a subtle code change and reprocess huge volumes of data. Being able to start a script and go to bed, rather than continually change the inputs, is a godsend.

    I think this is likely a side effect of the "smart but lazy" geek trope, except actually taking advantage of it rather than procrastinating.

  3558. Goodbye, Ivory Tower. Hello, Candy Store 2016-09-05 02:15:40 jackfrodo
    >One study focuses on procrastination — a subject of great interest to behavioral economists — by looking at bookings. Are they last-minute? Made weeks or months in advance? Do booking habits change by age, gender or country of origin?

    Airbnb is already making tangible changes based on this kind of data. One example is using it to make predictions of demand, and then tell Airbnb hosts the optimal price that they should charge to maximize revenue and chances of being booked.

  3559. Hit Reply – Episode 1: Launch [audio] 2016-09-06 20:02:08 cambridge
    launching sounds like the most obvious thing to do but it is so underrated - I literally never launch, I always procrastinate and I always leave a project to die a slow death 3/4 of the way getting it done.

    I'm working so hard to not do that again, this has giving me a much needed kick up the arse.

  3560. Ask HN: What are your favorite articles/blog posts of all time? 2016-09-07 12:53:23 e19293001
    When I'm feeling down or burned out I used to read "Good and Bad Procrastination"[0].

    When I need inspiration I go read "How to Make Wealth"[1].

    During my day job where I'm required to study specifications, I found "The Feynman Technique"[2] to be useful in understanding the subject quickly.

    From time to time I also read "The Best of edw519: A Hacker News Top Contributor"[3].

    I just repeatedly read articles and posts that I like:

    [0] - http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

    [1] - http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

    [2] - http://calnewport.com/blog/2012/10/26/mastering-linear-algeb...

    [3] - https://web.archive.org/web/20160304034949/http://v25media.s...

  3561. How Writing To-Do Lists Helps Your Brain 2016-09-07 14:45:07 tdkl
    Until making To-Do lists (not to mention evaluating different software, mobile apps, techniques) is just another way to procrastinate.

    The best To-Do list is the one that gets you do the thing, even if this means not ever writing/using one.

  3562. You Suck at Excel with Joel Spolsky (2015) [video] 2016-09-08 07:38:51 taneq
    Procrastination.

  3563. To finish projects on time, start every single step as late as possible 2016-09-09 22:51:36 SZJX
    Well yeah of course this is one way of thinking, in that if you could use the early times to do something else meaningful then why not, instead of wasting all of the time on that one single thing which might not be improved that much by all the additional time. That's true to an extent. A good example I can think of is the exam preparation for university entrance exams in China. It's a common practice by high schools to dedicate all three years to it at the expense of other useful developmental activities for students, which is an absolute waste. Just at most one year is totally enough, as proven by some alternative high schools.

    However, I'd still argue that the problem of most people/individuals (especially as contrasted to huge organizations with loads of formal methodologies) is still delaying/procrastinating too much instead of too little. Too much pressure sucks, so is a rushed product/result compared with a carefully prepared one. So no, unless you really know very clearly what you're doing and how your plan will work out, which 99% of people have no clue about, start as early as possible, much earlier than your estimate, otherwise you'll definitely regret it. Though I acknowledge that this guy mostly talks about management methods, not productivity for individual endeavors.

  3564. Rkt reaches 1.14.0 2016-09-10 08:47:22 kozikow
    > (Kubernetes is not a suitable alternative to Docker Compose, before someone suggests it.)

    Why not? I have been contemplating this exact thing right before I came to procrastinate on HN.

    A few of my local development workflows are using minikube[1]. Kubernetes within minikube is a lot like docker-compose. The only use case I have for docker-compose is pycharm integraion[2], but someone will probably make it work with minikube one day. There is a tool to convert from docker-compose to kubernetes[3].

      1. https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube
  2. https://www.jetbrains.com/help/pycharm/2016.1/docker-compose.html 
  3. https://github.com/kelseyhightower/compose2kube

  3565. Be Productive Anywhere: Strategies for Better Remote Work 2016-09-11 05:41:43 wallflower
    As someone who is not a morning person and who is experimenting with daily habits like the above, I'd like to give you my thoughts on this.

    One of the things that Charles Duhigg writes about in the "Power of Habit" is reducing the barriers to action. One of the examples he gives is starting a running program. The best thing that you can do is to reduce the barriers to action for yourself by putting your running shoes and socks by the door. By preparing yourself for action, all you have to do is act (e.g. lace up and go out the door). If you have to find your socks or shoes in the fog of your morning waking up, that is a barrier to action that might even be enough to make you stay in bed.

    Making the bed in the morning is a symbolic action. I believe it mentally separates you from the 'sleep' part of your day to the 'wake' part of your day. By choosing to make the bed, you are choosing to take action on something that, honestly, isn't that important.

    Once you start your morning, you can add other habits (reading a good book, meditating, drinking coffee, playing with your kids, walking your dog). Note that I didn't say these or good or bad habits - but something that you would like to do.

    In fact, some life coaches argue that perhaps the goal is to extend your morning routine such that it takes up most of your morning and extends into the afternoon.

    There is a famous demonstration that involves a glass jar, sand, large rocks (not so large that they wouldn't fit into the jar), smaller rocks, and gravel.

    When you pour the sand in first, it is near impossible to smash in the rocks and even some of the gravel.

    The counter demonstration is that when you put the rocks in, then the smaller rocks, and then the gravel, you can pour the sand in and it fits between the voids.

    This is an analogy for making time for the important actions in your day. The ones that you want to do. The practical theory is that by doing what is good for you right away, you won't procrastinate all day (e.g. reading Hacker News) and do something relatively more useful like physical exercise or meditation or coffee with a good friend.

  3566. Medical guidelines don’t include a diet low in carbohydrates 2016-09-12 09:35:54 apathy
    I wouldn't say that HN is flawed the way elections are, because non readers aren't affected by what goes on here (I hope).

    You logic strikes me as specious -- the proximity of an idea to the mushy middle is orthogonal to whether it is correct. Great ideas are often met with violent opposition -- but shitty ideas are, too. If I thought most people on HN were in fact dumbasses, as most of the electorate often seems to be, I would go somewhere else. It's the least worst forum (save perhaps Metafilter) I've found so it's a place where I go to procrastinate.

    My job is to write, so my natural impulse when I see something that seems easily dismantled is to get in a bit of practice.

  3567. Logo Pizza: Hot and ready logos for sale 2016-09-13 23:57:30 kriro
    The pricing model could be the logical conclusion to some basic behavioural economics insights. Feeling of a loss >> feeling of a win. Thus you create an ever present feeling of that potential loss (missing out on the lower price) which forces potential buyers to act to lessen that feeling of possible pain as opposed to the standard approach of selling based on the feeling of a win (my nice and shiny logo). This idea could probably also be leveraged to combat procrastination somehow. It also has that novelty factor of the pay per pixel advertising from back in the day. Neat :)

    I guess the only problem is that the last logo shouldn't sell easily (without adding more).

  3568. Logo Pizza: Hot and ready logos for sale 2016-09-14 00:23:08 davemel37
    Two points. 1. Peoples tastes are subjective, so while Mr. Grin is likely not going to sell IMO, who knows who else might like it.

    The pricing accomplishes two great things that are quite brilliant.

    When someone is ready to buy, there are two excuses they turn to to not take action. The first is trust and the second is procrastination. Within the context of trust, is value (is it a good deal).

    By having the price go up, and inventory disappearing, you conquer both excuses.

    1. Social proof of a) others like these logos and b) others are willing to pay this price for that value.

    2. As the price goes up, you get worried about paying too much for something you want and wondering if you will lose out on a logo you like.

    Both of these compel you to take action. As you wait, your risk of missing out or getting ripped off go up in a very visual and real way.

    This also does a great job of framing the logo value when you order custom from the designer.

    All in all, it is pretty brilliant IMO.

  3569. A TensorFlow Implementation of DeepMind's WaveNet Paper 2016-09-15 14:47:43 vintermann
    In this case, it's DeepMind's idea anyway :)

    I get more disappointed when the opposite happens. I think something like, "Yeah, I'm totally going to add support in torch for noisy activation functions like in this paper!" (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.00391.pdf). Then I procrastinate and put it off. Then I think, "No matter, someone else has surely done it by now". Then they haven't.

  3570. Varnish Cache 5.0 2016-09-15 22:01:47 Arnt
    I've used both in production. They both fast enough that their performance won't be your bottleneck. One's probably faster than the other by some percentage, but whatever you do, you're going to have some other problem that's bigger than that percentage.

    At that point, talking about metrics is likely procrastination.

  3571. Ask HN: What's the most frustrating part about saving money? 2016-09-15 23:28:36 Jaruzel
    The most frustrating part about saving money, is that you need spare money before you can save it. It's a catch-22 situation. People who struggle to have to spare cash tend to spend it immediately, thus preventing them from saving it.

    There have been many studies on this, but basically humans are addicted to their instant gratification monkey. It's FAR more satisfying to spend that bill in your pocket on something nice and shiny, than it is to store it out of sight for a rainy day.

    Ok here we go, the URL to which I refer:

    http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastin...

    It's not about 'money' per se, but does explain the gratification issue which is why we're all mostly useless at doing things that don't instantly pay off.

  3572. Varnish Cache 5.0 2016-09-16 00:16:02 nolok
    I'm sorry but I strongly disagree with the line of thought there.

    Parent above was saying "both are at the same speed / none offer any speed advantage".

    He is then asked for any metrics to support that statement, which is not an extravagant request and should be encouraged more.

    Your answer that "At that point, talking about metrics is likely procrastination" and "one will be faster than the other in any given scenario" serves nothing other that further his statement while deriding the need for said metrics to prove that this is not turning anecdotal evidence into facts, and frankly serves nothing to the discussion short of saying the point should be accepted without verification and that asking for verification is useless.

    A point of view I really cannot agree with. I do not know which is faster, nor if any of them is faster than the other or not, but if somebody claims one way or the other in a factual manner, he should not find it a waste of time to find an actual metric that shows it.

  3573. Twitter: It is too late for it to become the giant people expected 2016-09-17 01:37:33 unfunco
    I do (I won't post a link because this isn't self advertising, but my username is the same as it is here) – I work for a software company, I have my own company too (but I'm a procrastinator) – Twitter for me is to opine on political news or news I'm otherwise interested in (chemistry, psychedelics, etc) – none of which have anything to do with my job (and my employer would likely frown upon it too.)

  3574. Startup School Livestream 2016-09-18 02:32:49 BinaryIdiot
    I had a ticket and was going to join (I flew out for one in 2015) as I really enjoyed the last time. But then I remembered unless you're looking for a founder you only get to mingle with other, hopeful entrepreneurs and you don't really get good feedback from anyone. And the entire set of presentations end up online.

    So if you want to attend for the social experience (which don't get me wrong that's certainly fun) go for it but I'm not convinced it helps anymore beyond watching the videos online. In fact last time it ended up just helping me procrastinate.

  3575. The Most Popular Online Course Teaches You to Learn (2015) 2016-09-19 00:54:19 segmondy
    I took it after the class has ended, still remember the content. It seems obvious, but it pays to hear and see it reiterated by other sources.

    Get enough sleep.

    Learn to chunk large bits of information.

    Get a high level overview before diving into the small details.

    Learn to use things you already know to make connections to new topics.

    Don't over learn, cramming in one go rarely works, it's best to study, forget about it, come back at it, it will stick with more exposure. meaning, get the knowledge into your long term memory.

    Use pomodoro technique, to beat procrastination.

  3576. Why do Anything? 2016-09-19 02:43:14 skybrian
    The things that are truly optional are not the things a procrastinator worries about.

  3577. Why do Anything? 2016-09-19 03:41:00 Apocryphon
    If procrastination is anxiety towards the imperfection of creation, maybe the best way around it is to adopt the idea that all creation are iterative steps towards perfection- even failed steps.

  3578. Why do Anything? 2016-09-19 04:11:10 platz
    I think procrastination is simply a meachanism to avoid dealing with stressors, and sometimes too goes to far and becomes habitual.

  3579. Why do Anything? 2016-09-19 04:12:44 visakanv
    There are several different parts to procrastination, and both of these are valid interpretations. See: https://alexvermeer.com/how-we-use-the-procrastination-equat...

  3580. Why do Anything? 2016-09-19 04:16:26 anotheryou
    Thanks. I was disappointed the article ended with so much about procrastination though. I hoped for something like conceptual art that does not even have to be executed.

  3581. Why do Anything? 2016-09-19 04:42:52 TheSpiceIsLife
    I think procrastination is something we've be taught to believe is bad, where as I'm with Naht Hanh on this one: we don't need any reason to sit, we can just sit because we enjoy sitting. We don't need to be avoiding anything, or trying to achieve anything.

    We don't need to always be achieving something or working toward something, or putting something off. That thing we think we should be doing? Well, if you leave it till the last minute it will only take a minute to do.

    Yeah sure, hand in the assignment on time, fix the leaking roof, but it doesn't all have to be done right now.

  3582. Why do Anything? 2016-09-19 04:46:28 Apocryphon
    There are many different types of procrastination, but they were focused on the perfectionist variety.

  3583. Why do Anything? 2016-09-19 04:54:16 platz
    this sounds like you've not suffered from acute procrastination if it has not negatively affected your life.

  3584. Why do Anything? 2016-09-19 04:59:36 platz
    you're saying the procrastinator makes an analytical choice to lose their drivers liscence because they didn't choose to pay their accumulated parking tickets?

    This line of thinking presumes far too much rationality in this process.

  3585. Why do Anything? 2016-09-19 06:02:23 TheSpiceIsLife
    Auto-resolving low grade acute procrastination, for sure. Chronic low grade procrastination, for sure.

    Severe acute? Probably.

    It's the severe chronic you need to look out for.

  3586. Why do Anything? 2016-09-19 08:03:10 matwood
    > If procrastination is anxiety towards the imperfection of creation

    I'm sure there are many underlying causes of procrastination, but this is mine. I have worked around it by simply doing something to get from A->B knowing it is okay to go back and clean up the path. Abstract work is really the perfect job for me because it is so easy to go back and change things.

    I still struggle with some procrastination on physical things like fixing my deck or remodeling the bathroom (I say some because both of those did get done this summer), but I just remind myself that even then I can always rip it up and do it again.

  3587. The Insomnia Machine 2016-09-19 13:10:05 fern12
    Many years ago when I was a pre-teen, I was up late reading when I heard someone walking on the roof of our house. I will never forget that moment, because I was just sitting at my desk, when suddenly I heard heavy footsteps across our roof. I quickly woke up my dad, who called the police. To make a long story short, the intruder was not found - but I buried deep into my subconscious that it was due to my actions (namely, being awake) that saved us all. Thus began my never-ending trial with insomnia. I started staying up late, because I feared another intruder. Watching movies like “When A Stranger Calls” (the original version with Carol Kane) did not help.

    Later, when I entered college I discovered that I was a serial procrastinator. Nothing really seemed that urgent unless it was the night before the due date. Combined with the advent of the web, my circadian rhythm was forever altered. If I was not burning through the midnight oil for a deadline, I was browsing around in some forum or downloading songs through Napster.

    Next came the long-awaited moment of getting my first apartment. This was pure heaven. I could stay up as late as I wanted, without disturbing anyone.

    Now, I am in my mid-thirties, and I am unable to go to sleep without 10mg of Ambien. If I could tolerate the taste of alcohol, I would probably be an alcoholic. I truly envy those who can fall asleep within 10 minutes.

  3588. Why do Anything? 2016-09-19 22:58:26 dgreensp
    No one needs this advice. We already worship ideas. Especially on HN, which is full of perfectionistic, idealistic founders or one-day founders who will probably spend the first year or years of their start-up lovingly gazing at their technical vision, while their "perfect" idea and "perfect" product mysteriously don't resonate with any customers.

    I get it, though. In my teens and 20s, procrastination was the closest thing I had to meditation or serenity. This is the case when you are very, very anxious all the time, and your head is full of "I should do this," "I should do that" -- tyrannical dictates that won't go away, but at least you can ignore them for periods of time and try to nurture your authentic self a bit. However, I would not praise this situation for being more dramatic (more glorious!) than true calm.

  3589. Why do Anything? 2016-09-20 04:17:13 Anthony-G
    As a procrastinator – and a perfectionist – I enjoyed reading that article. However, I lack the imagination to properly contemplate things in their idealised pre-actualised state – so I can’t justify my procrastination on philosophical grounds.

    As is the custom on Hacker News, I thought I’d comment on the design of the page. This is the first article I’ve read from the mobile version of the New York Times website – and I love it. Firstly, it works really well with my 9 year old laptop (running Lubuntu with Firefox and NoScript). It’s so elegant in its simplicity and lack of clutter. The typography is beautiful and refined (with proper em-dashes and typographic quotes). The width of the column of text is ideal for reading. The links are underlined blue. Jakob Nielsen would approve.

  3590. Why Should I Care What Color the Bikeshed Is? (1999) 2016-09-20 05:53:33 yesbabyyes
    A counterpoint: We have this in my family -- stronger in some family members, ranging from OK to extreme. My family shares a farm. It has to go.

    Today I think it's a form of procrastination. In this family it's often about efficiency and use of resources, but it always comes down to having a "valid reason behind it", as you put it. It can also be a form of trolling, especially when you don't actually want something to be done, if you succeed in getting one or two hangers on.

    I still believe that doing things collectively is a good thing, but this particular behavior pushes me on, ever so slightly, into the modern, individualistic way where everyone has their own of every thing.

    You know what? You can always re-paint it. It's not a big deal. I know this might be rich from just one short comment from you, but if I were you, I would be wary and consider this deeply. Your examples remind me of a family member in particular, and it's debilitating.

  3591. Getting things done 2016-09-20 16:51:26 juiced
    What does help me too is to just start on something and not procrastinate. If you survived the first 2 seconds of starting, you can go on for hours.

  3592. Getting things done 2016-09-20 17:44:35 JohnStrange
    There is way more advice in David Allen's well-known book Getting Things Done, and there are many things to help with this like the Action Day Planner notebook.

    Allen's method is better than many others. Still I have to admit that personally this self-motivation stuff has never appealed much to me. I'm using the just do it - or procrastinate method.

  3593. Getting things done 2016-09-20 19:03:54 juiced
    Yeah, and I think that a cause of procrastinating is the idea that as soon as you start on something your time will be occupied for the next few hours/days/whatever by it and therefore you will not start, because you have other things to do too and you feel you need to first plan out the expected time you need for the thing you want to start, and then procrastination starts. It doesn't have to be, if you start on something you can stop anytime you want and start later again by only surviving the first 2 seconds. You can do this as many times as you want. This way you don't feel something will take over your life and needs planning and you are able to do other things too, etc.

  3594. Getting things done 2016-09-21 00:25:30 hbt
    One thing the post doesn't cover is a defeatist attitude or a poor outlook on life. Basically, depression (regardless of the reason).

    Depression doesn't need to paralyze you. You can be productive when depressed but it is often followed by a pattern of self destructive behavior.

    I used to never understand why addicts would self destroy. They would get a job, finally get their lives together and then fuck it up.

    Long term goals can feel pointless when you believe that you are insignificant and your life is meaningless. What's the point of improving my life by X factor if I'm gonna be dead anyway? What's the point of building this if it will be replaced by technology Y in Z years? What's the point of discovering this if eventually someone else will? What's the point if the Universe....

    That type of thinking about the far future often results in defeatism.

    In reality, you wake up the next day, having made no progress, your life is the same as yesterday, it may have gotten worse if you overindulged in your addiction and now you feel like utter shit.

    A positive outlook on life and a focus on improving now, on evaluating each activity as a return on investment and building a better version of yourself feels more serene than admitting defeat.

    I think comfort leads to stagnation. The best work I've done is when I was in survival mode and completely dissatisfied with my life. Once I reach "normalcy", procrastination and self indulgence kick in unless I see a point behind a long term goal.

  3595. Would I do this for 10 years? 2016-09-21 01:20:57 satysin
    I have managed to procrastinate for 10+ years without much trouble :P

  3596. Getting things done 2016-09-21 02:22:41 boodm
    I think it says something about the Hacker News community that these posts always float to the top. Hardly a day passes where I don't see a "no more procrastination" post.

    What does this mean? Is it that we're all procrastinators? I don't think so, many here are highly accomplished. Is it our fear or procrastination? Is it perfectionism?

    Strange.

  3597. Would I do this for 10 years? 2016-09-21 02:25:06 toss1
    Ha!

    ... but, just curious, is your procrastination the same in year 10 as in year 1?

  3598. Getting things done 2016-09-21 02:35:26 boodm
    >Once I reach "normalcy", procrastination and self indulgence kick in unless I see a point behind a long term goal.

    Greeeeat point. Productivity is incredible while you're in survival mode. However, is there a time when stagnation is the goal? I often thought, "If I got rich, I'd do nothing. Sit, enjoy life, travel." But would that lead to the depression you speak of?

  3599. Nootropics 2016-09-21 12:01:14 cavisne
    Its concerning to see Modafinil on the same list of "defaults" as caffeine and vitamin D. They are on a different scale when it comes to the effect on your brain.

    That aside, my anecdotal experience of mod is its basically a waste of time. Sure you stay awake longer but we can all easily procrastinate a day away regardless, it wont make you any more focused or any smarter. If you for some reason need to improve your focus for a period then dexamphetamines are the way to go, of course you should not pop them every day.

  3600. Nootropics 2016-09-21 12:21:40 jgalvez
    No mention of methylene blue? :O It's the best one!

    Below is a post I wrote on a Ray Peat Facebook group that I think fellow coders and behind-a-desk workers might fight interesting. I've been a serious procrastinator and slacker, and it was a long journey of trial and error in getting diet and lifestyle right. I'm thankful to the amazing work of Dr. Ray Peat, which isn't mentioned enough around Hacker News.

    ⁂

    Some comments on maintaining high energy, productivity, creativity and noticeably faster rational thinking (System 2 in the dual process theory) in my day job as a programmer.

    ◈ Basics first. That is, salt, sugar, calcium, magnesium, A, D, C. If you're lacking any of these you'll have energy problems very quickly. Buy magnesium chloride, add eggshell powder to your mashed potatoes. Get 1g vitamin C pills. Take 5 times as much vitamin A as you take D.

    ◈ Meditation daily. The main goal of daily meditation for me is to reinforce a stoic mentality, mainly the principle of being indifferent to the external. This is paramount in learning to deal with all kinds of stress. A simple line of thinking that will slowly help you deal with psychological stress better.

    ◈ Coconut oil-fried eggs. The generally accepted notion around here is that an extremely low fat diet is best for metabolism, i.e., oxidative metabolism is about 15x times more efficient (paraphrasing RP). But saturated fats are extremely good for our brains, because they are used together with cholesterol to generate several hormones (including the wonderful progesterone and pregnenolone). So whatever your brain condition is, if you fry 5 eggs in about 3 tbsp coconut oil, you'll equip your body with the elements it needs to restore its full capacity.

    http://www.functionalps.com/blog/2010/12/28/high-cholesterol... http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/cholesterol-longevity.s...

    ◈ Aspirin and K2. I was for sometime doing 4g aspirin a day, but I noticed that much isn't necessary. Just 1-2g a day along with 1mg K2 is enough.

    http://raypeat.com/articles/aging/aspirin-brain-cancer.shtml http://www.functionalps.com/blog/2012/04/22/ray-peat-phd-on-...

    ◈ Fruits, Lysine, Juices, Niacinamide, Methylene Blue, Coffee. I mention all of these in a single sentence because I use them in sequence, hourly, to keep a long streak of productive hours. I drink some fruit juice (orange, grape, even serotonin-ladden pineapple) with 10gtt 2.3% methylene blue, then eat some fruits (I keep sliced guavas and papayas in the frigde) with 100mg niacinamide and 500mg lysine (serotonin antagonist), followed by 100ml sugared coffee. Rinse. Repeat. I think in total I have been consuming nearly 60gtt 2.3% methylene blue and 1.5L coffee in a stretch of programming work, all with maximum focus, energy, no tiredness (taking very short breaks).

    https://raypeatforum.com/community/threads/methylene-blue-mb... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgeZJoir70w https://selfhacked.com/2013/08/25/methylene-blue-the-cheapes...

    Main benefit of MB is its effect as a NO and estrogen antagonist, which improves thyroid function and overall energy levels. Stay away from fish oil, polyunsaturated fats are extremely toxic yet you don't see it in the news -- that's because they're everywhere, it's a huge industry and it's not going to go away easily. But PUFAs (polyunsaturated fatty acids) are the #1 source of all kinds of metabolic disorders, including brain fog. Also avoid things that raise serotonin -- serotonin, contrary to decades of misinformation, does not make us happy -- its role in happines is only peripheral. High serotonin in reality is associated with aging, depression and anger. You should aim for high dopamine and low serotonin, in general -- that's why I take a lysine supplement, it competes with serotonin for entry in the brain.

    https://pranarupa.wordpress.com/2012/12/25/pufa-because-this... https://pranarupa.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/serotonin-inflamm...

    Happy reading.

  3601. Nootropics 2016-09-21 13:39:28 cariaso
    You suggest that it does work, but that procrastination is still possible. fair enough. But if it doesn't keep you awake, it's possible that you're one of the ~15% of the population who is a non responder due to:

    rs4680(A;A)

    aka Met/Met at COMT Val158Met

    via http://snpedia.com/index.php/Rs4680(A;A)

    rs4680(G;G) carriers deprived of sleep respond quite well to 2x 100mg modafinil in terms of improved vigor and well-being, and maintained baseline performance with respect to executive functioning, whereas rs4680(A;A) individuals barely responded to the drug at all.

    via https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19037200 Two-time 100 mg modafinil potently improved vigor and well-being, and maintained baseline performance with respect to executive functioning and vigilant attention throughout sleep deprivation in Val/Val genotype subjects but was hardly effective in subjects with the Met/Met genotype.

  3602. Say hello to Google Allo: a smarter messaging app 2016-09-21 15:45:56 andmarios
    > Google Allo makes it easier for you to respond quickly and keep the conversation going, even when you’re on the go. With Smart Reply, you can respond to messages with just a tap, so you can send a quick “yup” in response to a friend asking “Are you on your way?” Smart Reply will also suggest responses for photos. If your friend sends you a photo of their pet, you might see Smart Reply suggestions like “aww cute!” And whether you’re a “haha” or “” kind of person, Smart Reply will improve over time and adjust to your style.

    So for Google instead of snowflakes we are glorified chat bots? I like it. I hope one day it can imitate me so well I can delegate all my chats to it. It will be like a mini-me!

    > Have some fun. Ask your Assistant to share that funny YouTube video or play games with friends right in your group chat — for instance you can compete to guess a movie title based on a series of emojis.

    Oh great, now I have a tireless assistant to help me spam my friends and make them procrastinate!

  3603. Nootropics 2016-09-22 02:57:34 PeterisP
    I want to blacklist only the main site - Stayfocusd was a particular example, I got some google results on subreddits that I never knew existed and couldn't have been in a whitelist.

    I'm rather going for the reading vs scanning distinction - even there I would want the particular subreddit main page to remain blocked to prevent the procrastinating pattern of checking an interesting place to see if there's something new interesting. Similarly, the main news.ycombinator.com should be blocked but visiting particular pages from e.g. a weekly digest email would be useful.

  3604. Why Do Anything? A Meditation on Procrastination 2016-09-22 04:26:38 HenryTheHorse
    The author conflates procrastination, idleness and perfectionism, as if they were interchangeable. I would argue that they are not, even if they appear to be similar, at the surface.

    While perfectionism CAN sometimes lead to procrastination and procrastination occasionally manifests itself as idleness, they are distinctly different phenomena arising from different mental states.

    But that's not all. Read the column a little bit further and you find the author introduces yet another romantic notion to support his argument: nothingness.

    > Idleness, then, reveals an experience of nothingness. While nothingness tends to occupy a central position in Eastern traditions like Buddhism and Taoism...

    Nothingness ("Shunyata", in Sanskrit) is not about idleness or vacuum but means something very specific. It refers to the absence of a solid, tangible self (or an ego, if you must use a Western term). Buddhism's core practice is often mis-interpreted as "don't do something, sit there!" but it couldn't be farther from the truth.

    Zen Buddhism and Taoism's idea of "nothingness" is not about inactivity but about keeping the "self" out of activity.

  3605. Why Do Anything? A Meditation on Procrastination 2016-09-22 04:29:25 rafinha
    Because what's better than procrastinate reading an article about procrastination?

  3606. Why Do Anything? A Meditation on Procrastination 2016-09-22 04:39:04 qntty
    >First, the author conflates procrastination, idleness and perfectionism, as if they were interchangeable

    But he distinguishes them later:

    The drama of procrastination comes from its split nature. Just like the architect from Shiraz, the procrastinator is smitten by the perfect picture of that which is yet to be born; he falls under the spell of all that purity and splendor. What he is beholding is something whole, uncorrupted by time, untainted by the workings of a messed-up world. At the same time, though, the procrastinator is fully aware that all that has to go. No sooner does he get a glimpse of the perfection that precedes actualization than he is doomed to become part of the actualization process himself, to be the one who defaces the ideal and brings into the world a precarious copy, unlike the architect who saves it by burning the plans.

    So in this view procrastination is not his idealized perfectionism ("burning the plans") or his idealized idleness ("intuiting a cosmic meaninglessness, which comes along with the realization that, with every action, we get only more entangled in the universal farce"). It has a split nature that's the worst of both.

    Also it's possible that his reference to nothingness doesn't mean sunyata, but "making no karma" by not participating in samsara.

  3607. Why Do Anything? A Meditation on Procrastination 2016-09-22 05:52:49 qntty
    Yes, in the Buddhist view, you accumulate karma no matter what you're doing (even if you're procrastinating something), so long as you have an idea of self. So the only way to "really do nothing" is to free yourself from samsara (not a physical place, but the continuity of craving).

  3608. Analysis of chronic fatigue syndrome study casts doubt on published results 2016-09-22 21:16:39 ivanhoe
    Yup, that's a problem with procrastination, too. Many people will dismiss it as just "laziness", heard it many times.

  3609. Why You Need More Than Passion to be Successful 2016-09-23 06:42:57 TeMPOraL
    I wish I could summon this on demand. It is dangerous, but not as much as one may think. What I discovered thanks to random sparks of passion and frequent cases of procrastination is that a lot of the "rest of your life" is made of time-consuming bullshit and doesn't really need that much of an attention.

  3610. Ways to make working remote work for you 2016-09-24 02:02:03 colmvp
    I'll second the pomodoro technique, which is also talked about in Coursera's Learning How to Learn course as a means of battling procrastination and tough tasks. It's great for building momentum. I've been using it throughout 2016 and have found it SUPER effective at breaking out of funks.

    I don't 'dress for work' but I do have rituals, specifically always having a healthy breakfast, meditating with music/lit candle for 20 mins before starting the day, and heading to the gym for a refresher in the middle of the day. The benefit of working from home is that you can create your own workspace so I'd say cherish that privilege and make it a space and routine that you want. Customize it to what feels comfortable and desirable.

    Also I really can't emphasize getting outside and socializing. One of the negatives about working on your own is being inside your head too much whereby you unknowingly create blindspots and a distorted view. Try to find a meetup that meets regularly (once a week) because it'll help keep you social and may also instill a sense of urgency (i.e. "I have to finish this work now in order to make sure I can leave in the evening for that meetup."). My quality of life skyrocketed once I found two meetups that coalesced amazing individuals.

  3611. What I Learned from a Stroke at 26: Make Time to Untangle 2016-09-26 15:43:11 pipio21
    You do procrastinate. What is happening is that you basically forced yourself to work when you did not want to for so long, your emotional system learned that work is pain, basically.

    Think of this like a Paulov conditioning a dog to have an electric shock every time he lights a bulb. At the end the dog avoids the lightbulb at all cost, even when not lighted.

    Forcing yourself to do something painful trained your brain and created a trauma with work, as simple as that. Your body wants to help you not letting you work because: 1 work is associated as painful and 2 you can avoid it on the short term, so you avoid it.

    A good psychologist can help you easily solve the issue, but probably there are not good ones or are expensive for you on your current situation. A bad one could also damage you btw.

    So my advice is for you start learning about psychology yourself and learn how to recover from a traumatic experience using self help info. It is not difficult, basically is facing the traumatic experience but with a good outcome or getting rid of beliefs like "work is painful" that you learned over time. And of course, making work something pleasurable or at least neutral.

    Think of this as a curiosity or funny game you play, not like work to do. You could start with "Wake up productive" of Eben Pagan, "The now habit" audiobook and training to remove specific beliefs.

    If you are broke you can pirate it. Then pay for it when your life is better.

    Forget resolutions and to do list by now. It is making it worse as it is introducing guilt for what you should do, adding more emotional pain.

    Start making your life better, independently of your job. Eat well, exercise, enjoy beautiful and cheap places, the best things in life cost nothing...if you are jobless you are lucky and could go to amazing places when people are working, specially in overworked America! Go outside, no inside, and met people.

    Start being grateful and enjoying your current situation. It looks crazy but is exactly what you need. Look at it as the opportunity to learn and be a much better person in the future that what you were.

  3612. What I Learned from a Stroke at 26: Make Time to Untangle 2016-09-26 17:14:06 dspillett
    That sounds like a mix of two things:

    1. The working routine you build up in the elongated crunch period simply isn't compatible with not having a hard deadline or seven. I get this myself after years of burning the candle at both ends and it is taking quite some time to beat it out of myself. The problem is that my work ethic has for years been fuelled by deadline fear, and those short times when the pressure came off a little I enjoyed the opportunity to procrastinate. Somewhere along the line that became normal but flipped: I find it hard to not procrastinate until there is some deadline pressure. This makes starting new personal projects almost impossible (well, not quite, I have ideas and make notes, sometimes even get around to trying a PoC, but staring proper implementation is the difficult point).

    2. Common, garden variety, depression. This is seen a lot in circumstances you describe. It can be very difficult to sort due to how much the causes and effects can vary from person to person. Don't expect doctors to be able to help long term as the problem is often not really medical, apart from extreme cases where you might be given something truly mind altering most of what a doctor will prescribe is simply intended to prop you up a bit while you work on the problem. From personal experience of a very bad year or so in my life (over 15 years ago now, heck I'm getting old!): I found talking to a councillor and select friends/family were key.

  3613. What I Learned from a Stroke at 26: Make Time to Untangle 2016-09-27 05:00:12 throwaway28935
    I recognise the first very strongly. Somewhere I got to a similar flip and procrastinate everything no matter how simple until it is "house is on fire" urgent.

    You're probably right about depression, I was on Prozac a while but while I was still in the down spiral. It seemed to make me a happy flake, mask some symptoms but the downward direction and apathy remained. Now I feel a bit of motivation again I think they might help, or maybe CBT.

    I had one brush with depression some years ago, and it felt different, but that was a much cleaner cause and effect. A short spell of SSRIs and I was able to break out quite easily.

    Thanks!

  3614. Show HN: Tomato – Pomodoro Timer 2016-09-27 21:25:15 ohadron
    Very similar to the highly effective Structured Procrastination method - http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

  3615. China’s Plan to Make the Yuan the World’s Go-To Currency 2016-09-29 00:54:44 seanmcdirmid
    Truth, which is why holding the RMB to me was virtually pointless. I should have converted to USD and invested, but at the time investments were doing poorly while the RMB appreciated, so my procrastination saved me money. Can't count on that in the long term.

  3616. A Developer’s Guide for Hacking Procrastination 2016-09-29 05:17:54 roflchoppa
    "A Developer's Guide to Moderate Procrastination"

  3617. Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent 2016-09-30 01:41:33 arbuge
    >> What's less obvious is how nerve-wracking it is to know that there are real consequences. Danger creates stress, and stress ruins results. Paradoxically, if you know you have more than one shot, you're more likely to succeed on your first try.

    I think this depends on the person. Some people work better under pressure, others not. There is a real danger of postponing, procrastination, and not taking things seriously if you have a comfortable life already.

    I meet many successful people from very poor backgrounds who complain to me about their children being lazy and much less motivated than they were.

  3618. Ask HN: Top rules as a good-developer to stay on top of your game 2016-10-03 06:02:29 hannele
    Find excuses to learn things outside your comfort zone, at your work or through pet projects.

    The pet project can be easy, as long as you have the time and motivation - pick a tech and make a small hacky thing. (I must admit to being an unrepentant procrastinator so this is advice I have rarely followed myself.)

    The work route can also be rewarding though, given the appropriate work culture. I haven't found it too hard to take the time to learn about a thing that is blocking my team, and in my case I've gradually built up my knowledge of infrastructure and deployment practices where previously I'd mainly only written code.

    When you run into a bug, make sure you dive down into _why_ it broke in the first place, as well as what. This will help you avoid [cargo-culting][1] and can also give you some [pretty fun stories][2].

      [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming
  [2]: https://medium.engineering/the-curious-case-of-disappearing-polish-s-fa398313d4df

  3619. Woke up this morning, and realized I just lost my future company to Facebook 2016-10-04 10:52:12 xtnzt19
    Here in Manila, this is a huge thing and not just a nothing.

    This is like a breakup. I need to move on and work on something else, moving fast and not procrastinating.

  3620. Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators 2016-10-06 21:57:44 projektir
    I'm getting a strong impression that the article wanted to talk about hard work, growth mindset, and participation trophies, and not actually analyze why writers put off writing.

    I believe things like this can only be properly understood through empathy, and all the talk about millennials and hard work and procrastination, being blame behavior, is already putting one in the wrong mindset.

    Perhaps the author should try writing some heavy books, herself.

  3621. Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators 2016-10-06 22:04:37 jkot
    In my experience most writers are paid by word, and write very fast. Most content writers at Upwork seems to have very little procrastination..

    In other terms, image as coder you are paid by number of lines you produce. And there is no compiler, no unit tests...

  3622. Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators 2016-10-06 22:24:30 leot
    One simple explanation is that procrastination starts as a symptom of breadth-first search behavior (which can look like slow progress, and is slow progress if you have a poor algorithm/memory), and then it gets significantly aggravated by a shame/guilt feedback loop.

  3623. Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators 2016-10-06 22:37:33 salemh
    I'm an amateur writer / hobbyist. Having had a decade+ practice of this back-and-forth procrastination with my writing, I'd add "blank page" to War of Art and your excellent comment.

    "Blank Page" refers to having a separate notebook, or open document page on your computer, that you write why you don't want to write, during your time period.

    If I don't want to write, I write that: "I don't feel like writing today. It's not going to mean anything, or I'm bored with the story. Today wasn't that good of a day.." etc. Eventually, it dumps the things distracting you, and after five minutes I'm typically back into writing my actual work.

    Creative endeavors/procrastination has always been interesting to me, as I haven't had an issue dumping 90-120 hours into different employers, but have the issue with my own writing.

    This is also a tool used in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in various forms of use, namely, sleep. If you can't sleep at night, sometimes you need to dump everything in your brain on paper (which many times turns into a huge to-do list).

  3624. Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators 2016-10-06 22:43:03 searine
    >Like most writers

    Projecting much?

    I am, and know tons of writers and few are procrastinators, so from the start I find this idea goofy at best.

  3625. Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators 2016-10-06 22:47:27 frandroid
    If the managers call it "content", it's yeoman's work, and you're not going to get a lot of good writing in; the writers will phone it in.

    Also, the longer the writing project, the more potential for procrastination. 1000 word articles are easier to wrap up than 10,000 features or books...

  3626. Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators 2016-10-06 23:23:25 DigitalJack
    This is very interesting. I'm going to give this a try for when I procrastinate at work.

  3627. Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators 2016-10-06 23:34:30 JohnStrange
    I have no troubles with writing. When I start a new novel, I start with the plot and quickly lay out each chapter by starting it with 1-2 summary paragraphs, which are later discarded. Then I simply write until the novel is finished.

    I write only in cafés, so watching other people is my main distraction, but surfing the net and checking emails is also nice from time to time. Procrastination is an important part of writing, I don't see what the problem is with it. Are there still writers who are paid by page/minute?

    Personally, I don't trust machine gun writers' writing very much. Whether it's creative or scientific writing, nobody can think that fast, and producing good texts takes a lot of time, corrections and rewriting anyway.

    Now if I only knew how to sell my German Sci-Fi novels and make at least a little bit of money from them. That's the real problem. :-/

  3628. Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators 2016-10-07 00:02:51 throwanem
    A break here and there isn't a problem; I wouldn't even call that procrastination. Never starting, or starting too late to do the job right - that is the problem.

  3629. Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators 2016-10-07 00:22:55 wjoe
    Hardly unique to writers, I've had much of the same issues with procrastination when working on personal programming projects. Much as they describe writer's fear of writing a bad novel, I give up when I think no one will want to use the app I'm working on, I think the project be too difficult to finish, or I'm worried about letting people see my badly written code.

    Obviously there are some differences - there's a more specific barrier to making software that is functional serves it's intended purpose, compared to a story that might be badly written. But I think "I'm working on an app" may be our generation's version of the "I'm writing a novel" cliche

  3630. Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators 2016-10-07 01:22:42 cJ0th
    My thesis is that procrastination comes from cognitive dissonances. And that's the reason, why I don't understand these articles. They make a "science" out of something rather simple. The reason I (as a hobbyist) "can't" write a book or finish a piece of music is that I have ridiculously high, idealistic standards when it comes to producing a work of art. I much rather produce nothing than something mediocre. I don't even feel bad about it. I embrace fatalism in this area. If I don't produce anything worthwhile, so be it. I can't help it but start one musical project after the other. On rare occasions I've got the feeling I am onto something. In that case finishing is no problem. It could turn out that nobody likes what I do but in that case it doesn't matter because I absolutely feel that I did the right thing.

    On the other hand, there are professionals: people who create for a living. (I am not talking about extraordinary people like J.K Rowling or J.R.R. Tolkien but people who have to work every day just to fulfill a need of the market) If you decide to go this route then idealistic thinking is (mostly) out of the question. If I had to write a pop song or light fiction I'd just do it. All that is required is knowing the basics of your craft and top down planning and then you just work through the list like a maniac. It may be hard work but it's easy to do because there are no contradictions. It's like knowing that you have to walk 10k to get back home. That may be inconvenient but you quickly realize that you have to do it and then you simply do it.

  3631. Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators 2016-10-07 01:40:13 rpazyaquian
    An important thing to note: I wouldn't call this a fool-proof way of getting creative, necessarily. I tried this just now, and writing down my concerns and "stoppages" actually brought up some pretty good points as to why not to bother.

    I tried this for gamedev, just for some background. I've been putting off starting some sort of one-off game in Unity even though people scream at me "just make something!!". I thought about why I was hesitating to do so, and wrote down a Blank Page. Here's a few notable things I came up with:

    ---

    > It's too hard on my own.

    Games are multimedia projects. They incorporate audio, video, input, networking, etc. Game development teams are composed of experts in each of the fields the game touches. It's like making a movie, and making an entire movie on your own is somewhere between extremely difficult and laughably impossible.

    > It involves a lot of planning.

    In order to make games the "right" way, you need to design the right way from the very beginning. There's a lot of prep work ("preproduction") that involve determining gameplay systems, art and sound direction, and a whole bunch of other things in advance.

    > It's not something I already know how to do.

    True, nobody is born knowing how to make a game. But that just means you need to gain the skills in order to do so, which involves learning said skills, which involves time and effort. Therefore...

    > It's a big time investment.

    Making a game is in fact a significant time investment. Even if you're offloading graphics and netcode work to someone or something else, you still have to write gameplay code, playtest, debug, redesign, and iterate. Games can and often do take on the order of years to develop. And even outside of developing the actual game itself, the skills needed to even start (e.g. programming, game design, art, etc.) are things that people spend their entire lives mastering.

    > I won't really be able to make something worthwhile.

    Even if you do spend your free time putting your game together to the point where you're happy with its polish and development, it can still ultimately be an uninteresting failure - in which case, all that time and effort is arguably time not well spent. That's a huge blow, especially in a day and age where free time is at a premium. This makes trying to make a game a much less appealing prospect. And even if someone can make something worthwhile, it'd be after a few games that aren't as great anyway, so that time and effort spent multiplies.

    ---

    Writing this down actually helped me put my concerns into words: games are not single-person endeavors, even for relatively simple ones. Books can be written by a single person since they only touch upon a very specific subject and field that's reasonable for a single person to handle, but games are a very different beast that tie together many different disciplines. To put it in software development terms, books are comparable to web apps and command-line utilities, while games are more comparable to operating systems and enterprise software.

    That's not to say the Blank Page exercise isn't worth it, not at all - it's very helpful for organizing your thoughts and for self-reflection, and you can see how it helped me. But sometimes, if you procrastinate so much over doing something, the reality is that you might just not want to do it in the first place.

  3632. Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators 2016-10-07 02:06:06 CM30
    The point about being too worried about writing something that isn't good is likely why I write about half of what I should be writing. Because every time I consider it done, I go back through the article, reword the intro, change a bunch of sentences that don't sound right this time around and still keep thinking "no, this is nowhere near as good as it could be".

    I don't believe talent is innate or anything like that (which seems to be the main assumption in the article, that people who procrastinate believed skill is fixed). I believe full well anyone can become a better writer.

    It's just my ambition is probably higher than my actual skill level, and I simply can't accept anything I don't see as 'perfect'. So I get stressed, take a break to do something else, get stressed even more and only get the determination to finish on some random day when I feel like finishing everything.

    On another note, I wonder how much worse this 'imposter syndrome' and 'perfectionism' has become with the move to CMS systems like WordPress?

    Because if you install certain plugins for those scripts (like Yoast), it grades everything you write according to a Flesch–Kincaid readability test. As a result, I find it's very easy to get distracted and worried by the giant warning saying 'improvement required' and end up focusing more on that than what you're actually supposed to be writing about.

    Makes me wonder how many writers have been left paralysed with the fear their work isn't 'good enough' simply because of the script they use to write their work in...

  3633. Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators 2016-10-07 04:05:10 emodendroket
    Well, I feel like I could write the same thing except swap "writers" for a different profession and then swap "English" for a different school subject. Engineers are inveterate procrastinators because they easily did well in math. Politicians, because they did great in social studies. And so on.

  3634. How to begin a text 2016-10-07 04:05:40 bahjoite
    I'm procrastinating instead of beginning the documentation for some code. I've decided to start (this minute) in medias res. Thanks for the tip.

  3635. Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators 2016-10-07 04:32:29 llamaz
    you can't trivialise procrastination. Multiple books have been written on the subject, many of which go into the details of biology and economic theory.

  3636. Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators 2016-10-07 06:30:26 JohaRiz
    One of my favorite recent fantasy series is Kingkiller Chronicle, but its author is notorious for procrastinating. It sucks because his books are so beloved by the community, but he spends a ton of his time committing to other projects like his podcast and video series, without ever providing any updates on the status of his writing. It's like having a loved one missing and never knowing their whereabouts.

  3637. One does not simply become motivated 2016-10-07 07:56:40 usmeteora
    Ya. As someone trying to make a multiplatform phone app because one the idea seems useful scaled to many people, and unique, on the side, it seemed easy enough but it takes alot of habit changes and habits form over the course of 21 days until they become second nature around 3months where you can integrate more and changes to optimize your everyday life around your project.

    Instant gratification is a subconscious mindset many people have and overcoming it day in and day out and forcibly changing your perspective when you get frutsrated with how little your accomplishing to "taking a break" or "going out for a drink with friends to blow off some steam" to what can I do starting today to fix this or avoid it next time or implement a solution or make this apart if my everyday life? And then following through instead of just giving into frustration with a self soothing action like procrastination in the form of going out, checking your phone etc. Is the hardest part.

    There will be many times youre not motivated but dedication and habits will help you overcome that. I go to work from 6am to 2pm. I'm home by 3pm coding and on the on the weekends. I was wasting time going to the gym and in crowded gyms so I invested in weights and yoga at home that I do around 4:30am before showering and going to work and "binge" on some more luxurious types of working out like a hike or a lung run outside on the weekends.

    When time is of the essence you'll find that 1. Not automating your bills 2. Not having lastpass or some other organized platform for passwords to logins 3. Driving to gym 4. Grocery shopping 5. Friends who do not contribute to your lifestyle 6. Dysfunctional romantic relationships 7. As a girl, spending money on random stuff like clothing and makeup and martinis with girls who only want to talk about their boyfriends

    Are time suckers.

    Get sleep.

    Get up early and have "you" time whether it's yoga, reading your favorite blog, taking the dog for a walk, cooking breakfast having you time before the day starts makes you happier and more focused

    Make a to-do list the night before with every little phonecall, extra stop you have to make on the way home and email you have to do. Have 15things on your list? Turns out it took an hour to compile all of it that night before but 25minutes to execute the day of. You can send that phone call while they are checking out your groceries, make that phone call during your lunch break etc so you can FOCUS and not feel like you're forgetting to call time Warner cable about that address change or call your mom back. Get it done and move on. Do it everyday for a couple of months until it wittles down into a routine.

    Get a minimalist high class wardrobe. DONT spend time especially as a girl trying to figure out what to wear. If you're getting sleep. Working out regularly and bribging home healthy groceries and not drinking all the time having a minimalist nice well tailored wardrobe with some signature you pieces to brand your personal spin to it is all you need to look great. Less is more and alot more money to spend on that new thing you needed for your project that you didn't know you needed.

    If you do these things above it will take up alot of your time for the first couple of months but your life will forever be in better order and it will be more habit and take up less time.

    Very few people show up to their goals tasks or job each day with a workout done, a healthy breakfast, having taken them time, dressed well without much thought, and have a detailed todolist so when they need to focus on a task they can do it without the subconscious burden of trying not to forget random things that can turn into big things later.

    Wow. Shower, clothing, breakfast. Workout, you time = productivity and focus

    Mabipulative people. Negative people, on and off gray area relationships, anything or anyone emotionally exhausting besides your work: ain't nobody got time for that.

    At the very least. Trying out a challenging but doable project is great for getting your life in order and seeing who and what serves you and lifts you up when it's crunch time and who wants the best for you and who can contribute to your life in a positive way. If you make a genuine effort at making room in your life for a project and even if the project is a failure or you decide to move onto another one, this few months of life cleansing and getting your s$&* togerher time will not be something you regret.

  3638. Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators 2016-10-07 08:21:41 waspleg
    This is a great article thanks for posting it. My SO, in her not-day-job is a writer and stand up comic.

    She has set a self imposed 100 word minimum per day and has been going over 3 months now in an attempt to combat this type of procrastination.

    It seems to not only be working for her but people who read about what she's doing have also been motivated (but not me, and it's past my bed time ;)) to work on their own projects whatever they may be.

  3639. Ask HN: Opposite of not invented here? 2016-10-08 03:32:31 jrs235
    I've recently come to realize I've been afflicted with analysis paralysis. It stems from perfectionism and leads to procrastination. I have found How to Be an Imperfectionist: The New Way to Self-Acceptance, Fearless Living, and Freed from Perfectionism ( http://amzn.to/2dyrWcM ) to be very eye opening and helpful in overcoming perfectionism.

  3640. The Important Habit of Just Starting 2016-10-08 15:41:48 easychris
    That's happening to me often, too. But as I understand it, the habit of just starting applies to continue working on the unfinished work-in-progress project as well: starting a new project is your way of procrastination.

  3641. The Important Habit of Just Starting 2016-10-08 19:49:16 praptak
    It might be procrastination masking as productivity. Starting greenfield is so much easier and more appealing than solving a real problem in the older project that has some cruft accumulated already...

  3642. Quora has blocked me because it doesn't think Theodore Ts'o is my real name 2016-10-08 21:03:00 michalu
    StackExchange? Btw. same here, I used it before it reached it's first million users, even went to few Quora meetups but I blocked the site on notebook two years ago. I feel it became a place for chronic procrastinators and self-promoters + there's very little unique knowledge... as a content researcher, 99 out of 100 I find better information elsewhere.

  3643. The Important Habit of Just Starting 2016-10-08 22:34:06 jrs235
    Personally, this stems from worrying too much about not just making a good choice, but the "perfect" choice. It stems from perfectionism. I truly see many "techie's" and HNers seem to relate to the issues I often feel afflicted with: Perfectionism and Procrastination. My gut says its because many of us grew up being high achievers and quick to pick things up but now we fear being "wrong" or not being perfect. Ugh.

    Anyways,, I recently came across How to Be an Imperfectionist: The New Way to Self-Acceptance, Fearless Living, and Freedom from Perfectionism by Steven Guise[1] It's been very helpful in making aware of the challenge I have and how to work on changing how I think about things so that I stop worrying about results and focus more on process (and progress, the results will eventually come).

    I've realized I was/am a perfectionist but I didn't really realize how destructive it is. It leads to paralysis analysis, extreme fear of failure and thus "freezing" and procrastination. I've been contemplating doing a write up on these issues and throwing another one in the mix [pornography] but I'm still letting my perfectionism hold me back (I want the write up to be "perfect").

    Anyone else relate?

    [1] http://amzn.to/2dZDaW4

  3644. The Important Habit of Just Starting 2016-10-09 00:38:49 pwinnski
    This article is focused on beating procrastination. For those who've struggled with procrastination, it's fantastic advice: just start, as the anxiety of something half-done beats the anxiety of something not done at all.

    Once you've kicked that, then you need advice on how to finish projects you've started. In that, the anxiety of something completed is near-zero, while the anxiety of something half-done is clearly higher. Additionally, the sense of satisfaction of something completed is amazing, to the point that it often inspires people to do even more.

    There seems to be many, many points along the way someone can get stuck, but by far the biggest one is the first one: so just start. Then deal with overcoming obstacles along the way. Then deal with finishing what you started. Then deal with accepting "good enough," rather than perfection, and put it out there. And then don't rest on your laurels, but start either something new, or the next iteration of what you just put out there. Repeat as needed.

  3645. Windows 93 (2014) 2016-10-12 20:28:06 delegate
    The trick in the "simulator" is to drink coffee, smoke cigarette, smoke weed then take lots of acid and procrastinate until the operating system is finished. Then launch it to finish game. I got 194 #Hero

    You can also go to Paris at some point.

  3646. Windows 93 (2014) 2016-10-12 20:39:05 mdrzn
    Same just because I'm at work, but I'll procrastinate on it at home later.

  3647. What are malicious USB keys and how to create a realistic one? 2016-10-13 06:33:15 stcredzero
    So then, one tactic would be to fill it with nested folder after folder of something that might be interesting. Like "Studio Rough.mp3" If you make it large enough, a lot of people will procrastinate going through it all.

  3648. When Librarians Are Silenced 2016-10-15 09:01:55 amluto
    > This is literally what she did though! Why else would you not just erase but rewrite with random data?

    I do essentially this on a regular basis. It's SOP when I'm done with a piece of electronics. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the FBI -- it's because I don't want anyone who finds (or buys post-consumer) the device to find my data on it.

    I'm currently procrastinating on recycling a couple of old busted Android devices specifically because it's a real PITA to scrub them with any degree of confidence when they're busted.

    So yeah, if you look up how to clean a disk, you'll probably find an answer like this. An analogue is even baked into the ATA spec: "security erase enhanced". But actually doing a "security erase enhanced" is bizarrely tedious, especially on Windows, so overwriting it is.

  3649. Ask HN: How do you concentrate when you have non-work things on your mind 2016-10-15 22:14:38 BuenosAir
    When I'm procrastinating (and i'm a pro) I listen to http://rainymood.com while working I also did some phenylpiracetam sometimes witch get you a extraordinary focus on your work. But you can get some headache and it's not really a long-term solution.

  3650. Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that helps battle impulsive procrastination 2016-10-17 08:40:45 40acres
    If you were truly a procrastinator you would've posted this tomorrow morning.

  3651. Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that helps battle impulsive procrastination 2016-10-17 09:24:07 acomar
    Maybe this is the wrong thread for this comment, but I'm wondering if I'm alone in this. Anyone else find they procrastinate for reasons another than a habitual need to check e.g. reddit/HN? I find for myself, it's very rarely that I'm procrastinating without any reason, but instead that I'm actively avoiding whatever it is I think I should be doing for any number of reasons.

    The list includes:

        * I don't have a clear handle on what I should be doing  
    * I don't understand how to do whatever it is I should be doing  
    * I'm tired/fried and not able to think clearly  
    * There are way too many different things vying for my attention (too many things I should be doing)
    And probably more that I'm not recalling at this moment. So this extension, at least for me, would be solving the wrong problem and sometimes even making it worse. Anyone have strategies for tackling/mitigating these problems?

  3652. Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that helps battle impulsive procrastination 2016-10-17 09:33:03 delecti
    > I noticed I can visit same websites (twitter, reddit, HN) few times in the span of 5 minutes

    And then there are those times when you load a website, see that there's nothing new/interesting on the front page, close that tab, open a new tab, and then reopen the same site. That always lets me know that I'm really far down the rabbit hole of procrastination.

  3653. Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that helps battle impulsive procrastination 2016-10-17 09:33:33 supersan
    My main reason for procrastination is that I'm mostly undecided on what to do next. This looks urgent but this is more important trap.

    So far I've solved it by planning things in an excel sheet with all the work I have to do as atomic tasks with the next column I can mark as (pending, done, defer, much later) using which the excel sheet automatically sorts my tasks.

  3654. Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that helps battle impulsive procrastination 2016-10-17 09:43:51 qwertyuiop924
    ...The problem is, this extension likely wouldn't help me: You'd have to lock me in a room with access to only my work to keep me from procrastinating, and even then there'd be a lot of staring into space.

  3655. Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that helps battle impulsive procrastination 2016-10-17 09:51:59 Exuma
    Very astute... I agree.

    I NEVER procrastinate if I am on a roll and have a strong grasp of things, say 80% of a project.

    Theres always that 20% though, maybe 10% that can be extremely challenging when you're right at that extremely complicated bit and you just spaz out and just open Facebook, reddit compulsively until you can get your footing.

    I've been doing this the last 3 days :(

  3656. Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that helps battle impulsive procrastination 2016-10-17 10:04:59 jlbribeiro
    I know your first 2 points too well.

    Most people would advise you to, calmly, break the task at hand into small tasks/steps. Personally, my problem is that the tasks are too high level (maybe an epic), which makes them overwhelming. By breaking them into easy-to-do-steps that forces you to plan your solution (1st point) and understand the problem (2nd point). You should break them into SMART goals (you've probably heart about this concept already). By having a list of really really small items you get a feeling of progress every time you tick an item off the list; that progress should keep you going! Starting is the hardest part, there's some inertia to it; so make the item so small you'll have no excuse not to do it. Remember: if you still feel confused about an item/urged to procrastinate you probably didn't break it down enough.

    The sensation of ticking off items is what should get you going; that's what gives you the sensation of progress and that enables the feedback loop. Physically ticking off the item (pen and paper) is even better. So actually write your list (on paper or digitally using Trello, Todoist, etc.), don't just "think it"; that's key.

    Meditation is also good to sharpen your focus.

    P.S.: I'm also a procrastinator; there are good days and there are bad days; there's no cure. This is the kind of thing that is managed.

  3657. Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that helps battle impulsive procrastination 2016-10-17 10:13:55 markbnj
    Absolutely true for me as well. Often what feels on the outside like procrastination is, I think, just providing idle time for my brain to work out a way forward.

  3658. Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that helps battle impulsive procrastination 2016-10-17 10:20:56 gtirloni
    I still couldn't find a method for the worst source of procrastination for me: not having a clear understanding of where a task fits in the global picture or end goal. That coupled with highly abstract tasks kills my productivity completely.

    In all my jobs, I've tried to ask more and more questions but I have come to the conclusion that few people have an answer for that. I suspect my experience hasn't been great on that front.

    On the other hand, when the why's are clear, I don't have any trouble working at full speed to accomplish that goal (and will often put way more hours than I should).

    Just writing this reply made me think I'm also often more productive when what I'm working on will be used by others or it solves a pressing issue. If it's just a "nice to have" I will have trouble focusing (after I realize nobody cares about the results, until then I might be working super motivated and unaware).

  3659. Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that helps battle impulsive procrastination 2016-10-17 10:31:33 snoonan
    Debilitating procrastination can actually be issues with conscious control of attention/executive functions (ADHD being one of the main presentations of this). The other side of this is strong tendency to hyperfocus, whether on the right things or wrong things. Both occur without choice and are just different sides of the attention/behavior control problem.

    Some developers don't notice this tendency because their default attention (not actual choice) just being drawn to productive activities like coding and liking it as well. But when that doesn't happen and you can't pull out of the procrastination loop, it can be very confusion and unpleasant experience.

  3660. Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that helps battle impulsive procrastination 2016-10-17 11:57:30 sattoshi
    He procrastinated for us

  3661. Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that helps battle impulsive procrastination 2016-10-17 13:22:57 tvural
    For coding specifically, I find that I procrastinate much less when I'm debugging. Having the compiler give me bite-sized, well-defined tasks to complete can be very good for morale. So I try to avoid writing code for more than an hour or so without testing some part of it.

  3662. Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that helps battle impulsive procrastination 2016-10-17 13:41:15 cel1ne
    > * I don't have a clear handle on what I should be doing

    Just start anywhere, maybe with routine/maintenance work. The idea and the clearer understanding will come a while after you started.

    I guarantee you'll feel a lot better, knowing that you started.

    > * I don't understand how to do whatever it is I should be doing

    Same as above, just start without thinking about it. Postpone every critique of your work ("Is this ok?" "Will this be refactored"? "Is this necessary?") for at least 15 minutes and just produce something. If it's spell-checking code-comments, then it's spell-checking code-comments.

    > * I'm tired/fried and not able to think clearly

    Truth is you don't have to be wide awake to be able to work. It's perfectly possible and ok to work when you are tired or otherwise not feeling on top. Tell that to your immortal soul.

    > * There are way too many different things vying for my attention (too many things I should be doing)

    I have Bruce Lee's quote on a little paper card on my desk for this: "It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential."

    And keep in mind: Hating yourself for procrastinating is really a hidden way of procrastinating.

  3663. Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that helps battle impulsive procrastination 2016-10-17 14:27:38 MaulingMonkey
    I try to burn the candle from all five ends.

    > * I'm tired/fried and not able to think clearly

    Keep up with your health - eating well, exercise, and sleep are all things I could do better at myself. Taking some breaks, too, can help - a walk to the coffee shop (I don't even drink coffee!) can clear the mind, or give you a chance to chat with coworkers (if you invite them along). Sometimes they'll bring a fresh perspective to your problem, and sometimes their problems give you a break from your own.

    While I hate exercising for the sake of it, I've gotten pretty good at walking to lunch - especially if it's with coworkers.

    > * ...

    A lot of these seem to fall under a general category of task management. Breaking things down into smaller steps, prioritizing - or just plain picking one specific thing to work on - getting external feedback or prototyping... lots of stuff out there, different things seem to work for different people.

    Most recently, I'm thinking of going back to TDD just for the sake of really helping push the "break things down into smaller steps" angle. Failing tests? Pick the one on the top of the list and fix it. No failing tests? Add a test that fails. Indecision paralysis for what test to add? Make even a poor choice if necessary, and refactor later. Perfection is the enemy of good enough.

    > Anyone else find they procrastinate for reasons another than a habitual need to check e.g. reddit/HN?

    It's usually not even that I want to check reddit/HN, it's that I'm unmotivated to work on whatever I'm procrastinating on. At work, this isn't a problem - I'm motivated to earn my pay, contribute to the team, generally get things done and kick ass. The problem for me is at home.

    I've read a ton about motivation for tips and tricks with limited success. Although I have had some luck with the concept of "precommitment" as a form of generating extrinsic motivation - in the form of weekly bets with coworkers, for things we'd plan to do over the weekend. Fail to meet your commitments? Owe your buddy a coffee ;). Bonus points: It really forces me to realize just how bad I am at task duration estimation. Fortunately (?) so are my coworkers.

    I've also noticed that, as a means of distraction, for me the internet seems to be particularly insidious. It's an infinite stream of content, where there's always something new. I've had some minor success with playing games instead. More enjoyable, and much more finite - both in the sense that games can be completed, and in the sense that I'll eventually get properly bored, at which point I'll be much more motivated to do something productive.

  3664. Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that helps battle impulsive procrastination 2016-10-17 15:12:25 0xmohit

      I made a Chrome extension that helps battle impulsive 
  procrastination
    I'll check it out soon.

  3665. Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that helps battle impulsive procrastination 2016-10-17 18:56:10 vanderreeah
    A couple of points that don't seem to have been mentioned (hopefully because you're all better-adjusted than I am):

    1) Fear: I am scared of mess, of failure, of feeling incompetent or overwhelmed. I will therefore avoid tackling a task because that way I avoid the feelings of inadequacy, disappointment, or failure in the face of an incomplete result. In other words, I want everything to be perfect right away, and since that can never be the case, things don't get done.

    2) I believe there is simply something (which I am in no position to specify) addictive in internet-based fora. Whether it's the bite-sized demands on our attention, a voyeuristic synapse being tickled by viewing the opinions, arguments, etc. of others, or the illusion of connectedness - both of things to each other and of us to the world - the internet in itself (for me at least) encourages procrastination.

  3666. Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that helps battle impulsive procrastination 2016-10-17 21:25:36 kj01a
    I've tried things like this before, and for me if there is an easy way for me to change the settings or turn off the application, I'm just going to do that and go back to procrastinating. So, I'd like to throw in and say some kind of function that locks settings for some set amount of time would be helpful.

  3667. Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that helps battle impulsive procrastination 2016-10-18 21:28:02 cutety
    I just want to say that, ADHD is misnamed disorder. I have it, and thought for most of my life I couldn't because although I do have trouble with focus when it comes to boring stuff, if I found something interesting it was all I could focus on.

    ADHD is just the misregulation of focus, people with ADHD get Hyperfocus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperfocus) and that sounds exactly like what you are describing.

    If you're remotely, or anyone else, about ADHD Dr. Russel A Barkley's Essential Ideas Everyone Needs to Know is a great watch: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzBixSjmbc8eFl6UX5_wW...

    And P.S. the guy was correct, what you described above is exactly how I feel when I procrastinate. ;)

  3668. Deep work in practice: reimagining my workflow for radically less distraction 2016-10-18 23:42:53 Swizec
    It's a form of procrastination, especially frequent when you are tired, unsure of how to tackle what you're doing, or just don't like what you're supposed to be doing. The worst is when you run a compiler or something and it takes 5 seconds. You obviously can't just stare at empty space for that long so you go spend 5 minutes on the internet.

    The slower your tools, the viciouser the cycle.

    Opening the internet on encountering any sort of difficulty or setback in your task is a particularly vicious reflex. Sometimes I'm on my phone or checkinn slack or whatever before I even consciously realize whay I'm doing.

    Pomodore helps bring a modicum of structure to that behavior by keeping me off the internet for 25min and then letting the flood gates loose for 5min. It fails in the face of slow tools of course.

  3669. Deep work in practice: reimagining my workflow for radically less distraction 2016-10-19 00:33:21 neovive
    I tend to fall into the distraction trap for days/weeks at a time. It's hard to notice until you take a step back and realize how little was accomplished over a given time period.

    "This is all a lot easier if you’re working on interesting and important things." Definitely one of the more important points made at the end of the article and, unfortunately, not always something within our control.

    I was recently reading about learning theories (during a period of distraction) and noticed a possible relationship between Vygotsky's Zones of Proximal Development [1] and distraction. There must be a point of inflection between "completely distracted" and "deep working focus" where we feel compelled to switch off a current task or procrastinate. Maybe a similar scaffolding approach can be used to ease you back on task.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_proximal_development

  3670. Deep work in practice: reimagining my workflow for radically less distraction 2016-10-19 02:32:03 ajnin
    I sometimes use the "pomodoro" technique as a trigger, a way to beat procrastination. Often I have trouble starting to work on a problem if I'm unsure about what to do, I think it's similar to writer's block. That technique forces me to start working and once I'm started I can usually continue normally without need to use the timer.

  3671. Deep work in practice: reimagining my workflow for radically less distraction 2016-10-19 07:40:27 laredo312
    Like what people are saying about mindfulness. Ideally, we can notice ourselves drift and self-correct at that moment.

    Also think fear plays a role. Hard work can be scary. This video on procrastination from School of Life comes to mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QetfnYgjRE

    Personal favorite tip: Breaking things into bite-sized tasks! I have a whiteboard for just this purpose.

    Timewarp is going to help me. Set some wormholes up with quotes like "Stop playing the slot machines"

  3672. Ask HN: Do you log your time at work? 2016-10-19 15:53:23 hifunda
    Yes I use RescueTime for work tracking as well and has been pretty useful so far. haven't dug in too much though for analysis - a quick look at the chart is enough to stop me from procrastinating too much :)

  3673. The Strange and Sudden Disappearance of a Coding Bootcamp Founder 2016-10-20 03:10:33 madenine
    I did a bootcamp program. In-person, 13 weeks, 9-5, 5 days a week, plus HW/Weekly projects/Capstone project.

    If I had locked myself in my apartment could I have learned the same things in the same amount of time? Maybe.

    Going through an organization took the legwork out and let me focus on the learning. I didn't have to seek out my own materials (I did anyways, but that was for added depth into things that interested me along the way), I didn't have to trust my ability to be self critical in order to evaluate my progress, I didn't have to prepare exercises and projects, etc.

    Plus, I was going through it with 20 other students who were learning the same things at the same time as me - people to learn with, bounce ideas off of, ask different questions in class, etc.

    Plus I got a ton of career support. They brought in panels of industry leaders to talk to us, took us to different types of companies to meet their teams and get a good sense of the different types of organizations we could work for. They helped us with our resumes, online presence, interview technique - and hosted 'career day' events where they brought in a staggering number of companies who were looking to hire someone just like us, and helped us with applications, networking etc.

    Again, could I have taught myself the same amount of material in 13 weeks solo? Maybe. Would I have walked away with a new job as quickly as I did (less than 10 days after finishing the course), and with a decently sized professional network? Probably not.

    On top of that, the physical learning environment was great (coffee, food, etc), plus going to school every day meant it was easy to stay in learning/work mode, instead of getting distracted or procrastinating at home.

  3674. Adding a phone number to your Google account can make it less secure 2016-10-21 05:29:51 ocdtrekkie
    Yeah, I procrastinated on this for years. What I did was:

    - Created an email address at my own domain and forwarded it to Gmail.

    - For the last year or so, started using it as my email address and changing accounts to use it as it came up.

    - Signed up with FastMail and set up my domain's MX records to point to it.

    - Still checking Gmail for stragglers to change over to my new address.

    - Eventually will set Gmail addresses to forward, but didn't want to rush that so I remember to just make stuff not go to Gmail.

    The hardest thing is getting used to folders again vs. labels. But FastMail has everything like filters and aliases and two-factor auth to an extent that... honestly makes Gmail look kinda basic.

    The advanced features of Gmail were the most compelling reason to switch to it, but FastMail takes them a lot further.

  3675. Where do all the old programmers go? 2016-10-23 20:33:45 aws_ls
    Not sure if I qualify as old. But have coded for 20+ years. And have always loved it. The other aspects of work (sending email, meetings, making presentations, documents, etc) may feel like work based on the situation, but coding rarely(if not never). TBH, one does procrastinate, even for coding. But once you start it, and soon you tend to enjoy it.

    Being selective helps, so if you can afford to say 'no' to projects you don't like, you should. Another more important thing about being selective is IMHO, what you choose to believe and what path you choose for yourself. We will find all kinds of examples in others(people we know or people we read about). But perhaps taking inspiration from the likes of say Nikola Tesla, who were working in their 80s until they died. A lot of other people also work in management roles late into their life. But I think, programming is more like being a Scientist, in the way that the kind of brain muscles which get exercised.

    Can't speak about perseverance, as its easier to keep doing something you like. But yes, it does help to keep abreast of latest technology. I started doing C++ coding, then did Java about a decade. Now mostly program in Go, but fairly competent in C++/Java as well. And I also try to be a full stack engineer - coded Android app, and also UI in JS/Dart(This aspect of being a full stack engineer, of course may not be necessary for every one).

    Taking breaks to learn some new tech, also helps, I am taking an 'Intro to AI' course on a MOOC. And also spent time learning about Bitcoin and how it works.

    Sometimes, if my work does not offer me strong enough programming challenge, I do programming challenges on sites like Hacker Rank (and earlier Topcoder) just for fun.

    On burnout: Yes, that can happen. I think, it happens when you are working in an unhappy position for too long. Sometimes, it may happen when you keep doing a project for too long, even though it was your own baby. No easy answers.

    So, I think, its mainly love of programming for me. I hope to keep doing it, till late in life.

    PS: I see the question was posed few days ago. But its still not answered. So answering, just in case you check for replies.

  3676. Bill Gates: He eats Big Macs for lunch and schedules every minute of his day 2016-10-24 08:32:56 developer2
    I think having a schedule is perfectly fine, so long as one reserves the right to throw out the schedule whenever something spontaneous comes up. It becomes a matter of discipline to allow for spontaneous events that are enjoyable or beneficial, rather than anything that is an excuse to procrastinate on real tasks.

  3677. Ask HN: Weekend wasted again 2016-10-24 09:40:31 maxlamb
    This may help: http://qz.com/770768/how-to-stop-procrastinating-with-tips-f...

  3678. Ask HN: Weekend wasted again 2016-10-24 10:58:19 464192002d7fe1c
    Not sure what HNs opinion of this will be....

    I used to have similar issues. It was mostly down to procrastination and overwork/stress.

    Weekends were really bad since I was so busy/stressed from the week that I would get into an attitude of "i'll start doing it in an hour" and eventually it was so late that it was too late to get any work done. I had a lot to do, just very little impetus to do it now.

    Fixed it by starting to smoke pot. Not even kidding. I set a timeline for my weekends for when I was working and when I was done. When I work, I work. When I'm done, I go smoke. Basically every weekend for a few months.

    I've probably tripled, if not more, my weekend productivity by giving myself a defined period of work and a defined period of relaxation and a reward for getting there.

  3679. Ask HN: Weekend wasted again 2016-10-24 14:35:53 l33tbro
    I become productive based on deciding I'm going to do something.

    Pause on that word: decision. We all have impulses, wishes, desires, etc. But you're only ever going to progress when you stop, think about what you want, be realistic with if you can actually achieve that with everything else going in your life - then DECIDE that you are going to do it.

    Once you've decided, that is when you follow through every time (if you've done the first steps correctly). Then it's basically autopilot and you don't ever feel like procrastinating. I dunno - works for me.

  3680. Ask HN: Weekend wasted again 2016-10-24 16:03:52 jillav
    What you need is basically to become more aware of the value of your time.

    Every day you get 86400 minutes offered to you. You can either not do anything with it or use it to accomplish your goals.

    Time is on of the only things you can't buy. Every one is equal on this level, this si the most precious and the most volatile ressource everyone has.

    But first you must define your goals precisely.

    So stop whatever you are doing, get a piece of paper and write what you want to accomplish within 1 week, 1 month, 1 year.

    That done, try planning your week ends so that you get shit done and eventually your accomplish your 1 week, 1 month, 1 year goal.

    Helpful to keep to you schedule : identify your "time stealer". All those things that wast your time like useless tv, uninterested facebook posts and so on. Realize that every minute you spend doing something you consider useless is wasted.

    Then, most important, try getting some rest BEFORE being tired : that way you won't procrastinate in the "I might rest just a little while before i get to it" spirit.

    I hope this can be helpful to you. I just spend the last year trying to get out of the loop you're talking about so I know exactly how you feel about it. I'm succeeding one little step after the other.

    It's a lot of discipline, but I can tell you the trip is worth the effort.

  3681. Ask HN: Weekend wasted again 2016-10-24 22:32:55 shubhamjain
    The benefit of any productivity hack / book / app is ephemeral before you are back to your "mindless" browsing (I wrote about it sometime back [1]). It's a great business isn't it? Write a book / app about procrastination — something that everyone is looking to "fix" and start raking money. You can write daily / weekly / monthly goals for all you want but a "guilt-creating" laundry list of tasks doesn't really help.

    Although, I do have my share of procrastination but I have gotten a lot better than I was an year back when I used to spend all the free-time on movies. This weekend, I read lots of New Yorker articles, a small book, and finished writing an article. To an extent, I think I can do better by working on a small side-project but then again, there is always room to feel guilty.

    You just have to hate wasting time and gradually, things will get better. There is no secret sauce towards working; if we had Facebook wouldn't be a multi-billion dollar company.

    [1]: https://shubhamjain.co/2015/06/28/why-productivity-tricks-do...

  3682. Ask HN: Weekend wasted again 2016-10-25 01:46:32 Regic
    Maybe the problem is not where we search for it. There is a theory that willpower is a limited resource [1]. If this theory is true, it means productivity hacks cannot work, because the problem is not in our weekends, it is in our weekdays: in our work that demands all of our willpower, in our relationships, social interactions, or in our inability to relax.

    I read an article some time ago that I cannot find. It stated that extreme procrastination is the result of a form of drug abuse: we need our daily dose of fb, youtube, etc to keep us functioning, but that takes all the time, and when we realize we wasted another day, it makes us sad, and the cycle begins anew. It is also no secret that these sites are designed to be addictive.

    This article might help you too (well, the original, but I couldn't link that because, most likely, the author of the original essay procrastinated the renewal of the web page for too long, and it cannot be reached): https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/sep/07/change-...

    [1] https://www.apa.org/helpcenter/willpower-limited-resource.pd...

  3683. Ask HN: Weekend wasted again 2016-10-25 04:17:01 reitanqild
    If this is not a problem for you then good for you : )

    For some of us it is a constant struggle.

    My biggest contributors for this specific thing (weekend procrastination) are probably:

    * fear of investing a lot of time without being able to finish (I get interrupted all the time outside of work). This might sound stupid, but it is really draining me to the point where when I was younger and not married I'd go to bed shortly after work, wake up and go to the office in the middle of the night just to get something I wanted to do done.

    * fear of failure, coupled with perfectionism, leading to hesitation while I wait or even more dangerous, search for the perfect solution. I worked my way towards "sloppiness", telling myself it is only a draft, I can always get back to it later etc. Helpful resources: "Cult of Done" http://www.manifestoproject.it/bre-pettis-and-kio-stark/ as well as "The Now habit" by Neil Fiore.

    Now for anyone who doesn't struggle: there is nothing here (unless you want to be a good boss that happens to magically make people like us output more good stuff in shorter time while enjoying work).

  3684. Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit 2016-10-25 21:06:42 staticelf
    I don't see how this differs from a normal calender in terms of killing procrastination? The problem I have is not that I haven't planned correctly, it's that I do not follow my plan.

  3685. Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit 2016-10-25 21:50:39 inputcoffee
    This is great idea, just because it lets your prioritize what you actually want to do with your time and manages conflicts explicitly.

    I think you may have picked the wrong title. I am sure people are going to be confused and wonder what this has to do with procrastination, and it it really is the best tool against that and how it compares with other tools etc.

    I think if you changed the title to "explicitly manage constraints", or "trade-off calendar for your time", you might get more takers.

  3686. Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit 2016-10-25 21:54:57 rgun
    Interesting way to manage time (irrespective of the fact that this will not solve procrastination)

    Would be better in the form of browser extension or desktop app for better tracking time.

  3687. Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit 2016-10-25 21:56:32 AlexCoventry

      > I used to delete completed items, but I found it robbed me
  > of a sense of accomplishment I kinda value.
    This contains the key to ending procrastination -- crafting one's psychological relationship to the intended task, and also to the pastimes one uses to procrastinate. You can't fit work that in an app, though. It's more like internal marketing, management, or propaganda than scheduling.

      > There are no perfect answers in the continuing battle with one's self.
    You can always strive to do better, though.

  3688. Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit 2016-10-25 22:04:46 bear330
    Procrastination is a psychological problem, not a planning problem. Seems like you solve a problem in a wrong way, or you promote your product in a wrong direction. You can say it is a combination of kanban, time tracker, project management or even habitica...blahblahblah, but it is just combination of functions not solving any procrastination problem at all.

  3689. Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit 2016-10-25 22:12:40 andulus
    I see a "put back" button. Isn't it a synonym for procrastination? :)

    I suggest following for at least taking one step away from procrastination.

    https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_mas...

  3690. Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit 2016-10-25 22:13:30 jbmorgado
    My issue with this method and most other methods, is that I have no good idea on how much time I need to actually allocate to each project/goal.

    I work in research, when I start a project I have no really good idea on how many hours I'll have to put into it in order to complete it.

    Same goes for some of my personal projects. Let's say, I want to learn Data Analysis in Python... I can't really come up with a good idea about how much time that will take me.

    What I actually feel the need (as a procrastinator, which is the target of this product) is to keep tabs that I'm working on something (productively) every day.

    Pomodoro method helps me a bit with this, although just as a metric, not really as a day scheduling tool as it was intended.

    I would actually like to hear some thoughts about people that also struggle with this and how do they manage to stay productive (productive on their personal point of view).

  3691. Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit 2016-10-25 22:20:57 mataug
    I've come to realize that no tool is going to help me solve my procrastination problem.

    It has to come from within and if I bring myself to stop procrastinating then the tool doesn't matter.

  3692. Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit 2016-10-25 22:34:55 dogma1138
    >Procrastination is a psychological problem

    Yes it is, but some planning tools can help you to break out of it as long as you don't end up using your planning as procrastination.

    I've known a few people that were chronic procrastinators I even had some issues with that myself, I eventually outgrew it by using a bit of additional organization but without "religious" adherence to any method.

    For some a more strict method which they follow daily works, for others I've seen it can make things worse they use 2-3 planners/organizers and just spend the time they would normally be wasting on procrastination by procrastinating via planning.

  3693. Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit 2016-10-25 22:51:46 enraged_camel
    >> if you don't follow the plan, you haven't planned correctly.

    Nope. Procrastination is a psychological problem, not a planning problem. You can create the most perfect plan, but if you don't have the mental discipline to ignore distractions, combined with mechanisms to manage those you can't ignore, your plan will be worthless.

  3694. Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit 2016-10-25 23:04:11 dageshi
    Personally the only method I've ever found that reliably works for me is to have a rough idea of what I want to tackle the next day, then first thing in the morning after a good cup of coffee I open up notepad and attempt to plan out the things I need to do for the rest of the day. I try as hard as I can to break them up into as many individual tasks as possible. Then through the rest of the day I implement them.

    Those first few hours in the morning are typically when I'm at my most mentally able to come up with good solutions for whatever I'm doing and the rest of the day I find it relatively easy to follow the plan.

    In terms of pomodoro I use the opposite method, I don't time myself when I'm working on individual tasks from the list, instead as soon as I finish one I give myself 10 mins before starting the next.

    My mind absolutely refuses to change context too quickly, it's almost as if I have to go defocus my mind on reddit or HN/youtube for 10 mins before it'll suddenly snap back to the next task.

    But I'm a lifelong chronic procrastinator, I sometimes think I'm the equivalent of a runner who's trying to run a marathon in 100 meter sprints...

    I'm productive enough in my own terms :) I get things done and mostly meet deadlines.

  3695. Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit 2016-10-25 23:27:15 hal9000xp
    I already wrote how I manage my time in this post:

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12736194

    I'm training hard for algorithm contests (mostly on CodeForces.com and acm.timus.ru). It requires very intense focus without any distractions. Also, it's very energy consuming (at least for me) and can be frustrating if you get stuck.

    But I have a problem with procrastination. To solve that, I agreed with myself that I will work on my algorithm stuff only when I turn on timer for 15, 30, 60 or 120 minutes. But if timer is turned on, I must work without any distractions at all (in complete silence, non-stop).

    The key idea is that it's much easier to convince myself not to be distracted for specific time frame.

    If it's hard for me to start working non-stop for 120 minutes, I start with 15 minute timer, after that I usually warm up and can setup timer for 30, 60 or 120 minutes with less psychological resistance.

    Another key idea is that in order to start working hard, it's easier to convince myself to work hard only for 15 minutes. Then after that, you become warmed up for longer work.

    I also record all my time to a journal. So I know exactly how much time I spent on algorithms last day, week or month.

    I like simplicity and keep my journal in plain text.

    I also wrote very simple program (C + X11 Xlib) to display histogram.

    Here is how it looks like:

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/qmd198jr17dlt1t/hours_resized.png?...

    Displayed data collected since February 2016.

    Vertical black/grey (color alternating to differentiate between days) segments is how much time I spend each day.

    Vertical blue lines mark 7 days frame.

    Horizontal red lines mark 1 hour time.

  3696. Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit 2016-10-25 23:38:41 SadWebDeveloper
    Ok m saving this link so i can plan later my schedule to tackle my procrastination just going to keep watching netflix for just a couple of more minutes...

  3697. Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit 2016-10-25 23:41:45 akoumjian
    I've found that methods like this don't actually help me avoid procrastinating. The key for me is to remove the psychological barriers to starting a particular task.

    I think Getting Things Done has a good approach by dedicating time to figuring out what the Next Actions are for any given task / project. The idea is that it is way easier to start on a task if what's listed is a concrete action. For example, you might add an item to your Inbox like:

    "Add better search for project X".

    You might avoid a task like this indefinitely. With GTD, you take regular time out of your day (it's how I start every morning), and you take your Inbox items like above and figure out what the literal next step should be to achieve the goal. So the above item might become:

    "Search google for adding search to a django project"

    There is something about taking the mental task of figuring out what the Next Actions are, and putting it into its own process that removes a lot of the hurdles for me.

  3698. Ask HN: What are some productivity hacks for remote employees? 2016-10-26 00:14:18 endswapper
    First, discipline is critical to what you mentioned. Figuring out how to develop habits that avoid procrastination or other problems with your productivity are wildly different for each individual. Some people work well with a TV on, while others are completely distracted by it, and up paying attention to the TV instead of being productive. Some people take 15-20 minute naps and wake up ready to rock. Others, fall asleep for long periods of time, don't reboot and waste a day. You have to know which one you are and tailor your routine around you.

    Having a routine is important.

    Additionally, here are a couple of things that you might consider hacks that have worked for me:

    1) Front-load your day - I start my day at 4am and I start work immediately. This has a couple of benefits. For me I know I am most productive the first half of my day. Starting early eliminates a long list of distractions and interruptions simply because no one else is up to bother me. Plus, if I find myself dragging between 4pm and 6pm I don't feel guilty about cutting out because I have already put in a pretty solid day overall. This is something I read not to long ago that validated what I was already doing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12346307

    2) Walk - Any time I am feeling distracted or stressed I take a walk outside. It reboots my mind and I come back refreshed. If something was eluding me before the walk it typically reveals itself quickly after returning from the walk.

    3) Diet - This is from my response to this post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12684180): "In order of volume and priority...Coffee, leafy greens(in all forms, especially cabbage - all types, kale, napa, green, etc.) and protein in all forms, diversity is important, animal and vegetable sources. I mix in other fruits and vegetables for flavoring and variety. Also, I eliminated salt and that relieved my stress in a significant, noticeable way. I start my day at 4am, if I eat heavier, carb-based items, I notice a crash somewhere around 3 or 4 pm and the last few hours of my day are a struggle. If I stick to what I listed above, I power through the afternoon and feel more balanced when I end my day."

  3699. Ask HN: How to make remote work a success? 2016-10-26 00:22:28 endswapper
    In addition to what's below there's no reason you can't pop-in on the team with bagels, or attend a group lunch. If that's generally not geographically feasible then make an extra effort to do it when you are able. I have been in sales a long time, as long as you are not intruding or interrupting, people will appreciate that fact you were thinking of them and you made the effort. This is important in maintaining any relationship and important for the morale of a team.

    There is a similar thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12788080

    For convenience, here is my post to that thread:

    First, discipline is critical to what you mentioned. Figuring out how to develop habits that avoid procrastination or other problems with your productivity are wildly different for each individual. Some people work well with a TV on, while others are completely distracted by it, and up paying attention to the TV instead of being productive. Some people take 15-20 minute naps and wake up ready to rock. Others, fall asleep for long periods of time, don't reboot and waste a day. You have to know which one you are and tailor your routine around you. Having a routine is important.

    Additionally, here are a couple of things that you might consider hacks that have worked for me:

    1) Front-load your day - I start my day at 4am and I start work immediately. This has a couple of benefits. For me I know I am most productive the first half of my day. Starting early eliminates a long list of distractions and interruptions simply because no one else is up to bother me. Plus, if I find myself dragging between 4pm and 6pm I don't feel guilty about cutting out because I have already put in a pretty solid day overall. This is something I read not to long ago that validated what I was already doing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12346307

    2) Walk - Any time I am feeling distracted or stressed I take a walk outside. It reboots my mind and I come back refreshed. If something was eluding me before the walk it typically reveals itself quickly after returning from the walk.

    3) Diet - This is from my response to this post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12684180): "In order of volume and priority...Coffee, leafy greens(in all forms, especially cabbage - all types, kale, napa, green, etc.) and protein in all forms, diversity is important, animal and vegetable sources. I mix in other fruits and vegetables for flavoring and variety. Also, I eliminated salt and that relieved my stress in a significant, noticeable way. I start my day at 4am, if I eat heavier, carb-based items, I notice a crash somewhere around 3 or 4 pm and the last few hours of my day are a struggle. If I stick to what I listed above, I power through the afternoon and feel more balanced when I end my day."

  3700. Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit 2016-10-26 00:53:01 hosh
    Great idea. Was thinking less about procrastinating and more about how it keeps ongoing projects steady. It's really buggy though.

    Is there an opt-in mailing list I can sign into to get updates on it? This isn't usable for me right now but I can see it being sufficiently useable in the future.

  3701. Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit 2016-10-26 00:54:27 neap24
    I generally prefer simpler, bullet point, plain text lists. The more complex my to-do list system is, the more I actually end up procrastinating (by spending so much time focused on the list itself). I remember a story from the Frog and Toad children's book about Toad losing his list and being unable to get anything done the rest of the day because he couldn't remember if it was on the list or not.

  3702. Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit 2016-10-26 00:54:37 ranprieur
    You kill procrastination by making everything fit in a meaningful larger context. This is much harder than making it fit on a calendar.

  3703. Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit 2016-10-26 01:08:18 rmhsilva
    > The key for me is to remove the psychological barriers to starting a particular task.

    Agreed. And one solution is, as you say, writing down a concrete action. The task is suddenly something you can hold in your head, and easily completely mentally.

    Procrastination, at least for me, happens whenever I can't see an end to the task, usually because I haven't properly defined the task. As soon as there is a well defined set of steps to take, it suddenly becomes much easier to not procrastinate.

    Procrastination is my brain's way of telling me it's not happy with the plan I've made, and that the goals I've set need to be re-written to be more achievable (in particular, more SMART [1]).

    That said, projects like this are great, and definitely help with enumerating and planning!

    [1] https://www.projectsmart.co.uk/smart-goals.php

  3704. Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit 2016-10-26 03:41:44 Gruselbauer
    I really want to stop procrastinating and use a tool like a this, but in the end I just can't be arsed.

  3705. Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit 2016-10-26 13:36:12 Jugurtha
    >Procrastination is a psychological problem, not a planning problem.

    This is one of those "circular cause and consequence" things.. our psychological state is a function with side effects changing the events in our lives, which are themselves functions with side effects changing our psychological state.

    In other words, psychological problems can also be viewed as symptoms or consequences of something happening in the lives we live in the physical world which are shaped by the way we plan them.

    If it is indeed circular, the question becomes not which one came first but which one is easiest to change and what you can make of both. This is akin to postponing the chicken/egg question, making poached eggs and chicken thighs for lunch, and thinking about the question while you eat.

  3706. Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit 2016-10-26 18:06:28 dizrupt
    Killing Procrastination in one step: Start with the smallest part or thing.

  3707. Why does software development take so long? 2016-10-26 20:00:36 koolba
    Software development is 5% inspiration, 20% perspiration, and 75% procrastination.

  3708. Why does software development take so long? 2016-10-26 20:16:25 eludwig
    >> and 75% procrastination.

    I laughed at this and it's true. But I would like to champion a bit of procrastination in creative pursuits. I know the way my mind works and the simple truth is that sometimes it pays to wait until my head has worked through what feels like an incessant cycle of building up possible approaches and relentlessly tearing them down.

    So lets say I'm given an assignment (or a stand-along idea occurs to me). I immediately start to visualize possible outcomes and the approaches that I would need to take to get there. I throw out 99% of these subconsciously. Some of these ideas don't even make it into a full-blown thought, but they are there lurking below the surface. All of this takes some time. Subjectively, it just doesn't feel like the right time to start yet.

    This may look like procrastination, but it isn't. I'm not arguing for always waiting until every detail is mapped out in my mind to begin an effort, but sometimes it pays to let your head work through stuff for a bit.

    Of course, moderation in everything (including moderation).

  3709. Isaac Asimov on How to Be Prolific 2016-10-27 19:12:27 biofox
    With regards to mortality as a motivator, I often find the opposite to be true. When I am reminded of death or illness, I usually end up falling into a spiral of procrastination -- anything to avoid the thought of oblivion. I find it to be quite a major source of time wastage and I suspect I'm not alone in this.

    When Asimov was unwell following bypass surgery, James Randi wrote that Asimov fell into a depression and gave up writing altogether [1], presumably for the same reason.

    [1] http://www.skepticfiles.org/atheist/asimovob.htm

  3710. Isaac Asimov on How to Be Prolific 2016-10-27 20:40:41 faitswulff
    In my younger and more foolish days, and inspired by Steve Jobs, I tried to literally live life as if every day were my last in an effort to be productive. I discovered that if it were my last day on earth, I would much rather spend the time joking around with friends or family rather than working, and I fell into the same funk you describe.

    If anything, I discovered what my priorities in life were. But I could have done without the moodiness, procrastination, and cognitive dissonance.

  3711. Don’t go to art school (2013) 2016-10-30 09:03:18 mysterypie
    > Knowledge (from best universities as well) is free nowadays. I'm sure for 4y in solitude of your own house and internet knowledge you can advance your skills a lot.

    That's true, but one thing missing is personal discipline; that is, staying on track, avoiding procrastination, and actually doing the work instead of playing video games or watching TV.

    Most people need the discipline of having to show up in a physical classroom, having deadlines for assignments, having an obligation to do work. Not everyone, but most people need this.

    This brings up an idea of a meetup-style classroom: Suppose we had a physical weekly meeting of everyone in a city who's interested in learning genetics, or Java, or French, or oil painting.

    At the first meeting, we'd agree on what online books, videos, or courses we'd study, and each week we'd meet to discuss what we'd learned so far, tutor each other, maybe even make tests for each other. It would serve as that little push that most people need.

  3712. Ask HN: What do you regret in life? 2016-10-31 22:34:35 Starwatcher2001
    Not coming out as transgender through fear about what other people might think.

    Getting involved with religion.

    Sticking with comfortable old technologies for too long (VB6) before moving on.

    Not cracking procrastination.

  3713. Ask HN: What do you regret in life? 2016-10-31 22:40:47 michalstanko
    I regret my constant procrastination.

    I regret not getting the best domain names in my country while they were still available back in 1998, which would now provide for a comfortable life.

    I regret not being able to persuade my wife to move somewhere to Spanish coast - like Valencia or Alicante. I hate winters so much.

    I regret having so many regrets and insecurities and unanswered what-ifs in my head, not being just happy and awesome at all times instead.

  3714. How ReadMe Went from SaaS to On-Premises in Less Than One Week 2016-11-01 09:07:39 sumo
    Thanks for writing about your experiences. Its a weak spot for most of us, and it was a refreshing kick in the butt, to get ourselves in gear about this topic which has been on our mind for a long time.

    Its great to see more startup support in this weak area. I really hope replicated/gravitational succeed, and perhaps more articles can be written to help the rest of us reduce the procrastination or fear of taking the steps toward supporting enterprise.

  3715. Instapaper Premium is now free for everyone 2016-11-02 03:46:27 neves
    Wow! I'm a premium subscriber and really love the send to kindle feature. I always read articles on my bed with good lightening.

    BTW, it is the greatest procrastination killer. Instead of reading HN articles during my work hours, I send them to my kindle and -- usually :-) -- never finish to read them. A great time saver!

  3716. Show HN: Killing Procrastination by Making Everything Fit 2016-11-02 21:06:09 SZJX
    I've always been using Google Calendar for planning. Guess this could be an improved version of Google Calendar if everything goes well, and I'll definitely give it a try. Don't think this necessarily have much to do with procrastination, but rather general planning which still is absolutely essential to getting things done.

  3717. Ask HN: Does music increase productivity at work? 2016-11-03 03:26:47 koolba
    Not good enough for the distraction levels of which I'm capable. I'd still hop through the playlist.

    The best solution I've found is a trusted third party (read: co-worker) who's anal about picking their own music. I'm essentially delegating my procrastination to them!

  3718. Does your mind jump around, stay on task or get stuck? 2016-11-04 04:27:58 internaut
    I was once watching Elon Musk talk about this, he said something kind of curious, which I'll paraphrase here because I forget his exact words. He said he does not feel motivated every hour of the day, occasionally running into snags, ick factor, brain fog but he also doesn't not view handling those as options. He just literally does not think of 'dealing with it', which sounds like the opposite of most self help book advice It is not so much thinking, as the lack of it that gives him an exceptional personal executive command to coordinate.

    Either that or he's got a secret supply of NZT.

    It does speak to several things I've read about the brain though. The higher brain functions are 'new' and rudimentary. It fits in with Moravec's Thesis about AI. I don't see many animals procrastinating or stressing out unless there is an obvious physical stimulus that explains why they're behaving like that. Many of the psychological phenomena humans experience must be related to higher brain function and it being evolutionarily unrefined. In the human species itself there is a wide spread of behavior, where a lot of intellectual people are neurotic as hell (kvetching being quite noticeable) but the obviously less intellectual apparently don't suffer quite as much. It cannot be a coincidence that meditation has the goal for absence of thoughts and so many geeks practice it.

  3719. Show HN: Quick JavaScript Tetris – Based on Yesterday's Show HN 2016-11-04 07:33:19 lanius
    >I set my deadline as the time before I had to start studying for my midterm

    Ah, procrastination ;)

  3720. Ask HN: Lessons you wish you knew when you were Junior developer? 2016-11-04 20:21:07 lojack
    In regard to various software engineering literature and quotes (hofstadter's law, mythical man month, etc) while there's some truth in what they say, what you'll take away is absolute lies.

    - Just because you can't reliably estimate a project doesn't give you an excuse to refuse to give an estimate. We get it, your estimate will be off. Whats important is that you communicate deadline changes early and often.

    - Contrary to everything you hear, software projects can be finished on time. Most of the time we procrastinate at the start of a project and crunch at the end. Stop procrastinating at the start and more projects will be completed on time. Which brings me to...

    - If you fail to complete a project on time and failed to communicate this impending delay early, this is 100% your fault. This isn't the fault of some stupid law, or book you read. You slacked off and as a result couldn't reliably see how much work was involved in the project and by the time you realized it was probably too late. This is on you.

  3721. Ask HN: Lessons you wish you knew when you were Junior developer? 2016-11-04 23:03:32 afarrell
    > We get it, your estimate will be off.

    Many people don't get it. And if you genuinely don't know, then how is claiming you do anything other than writing a cheque against an account of unknown balance? If you feel like you don't have a good handle on how to estimate the project, that is an important sign that:

    - The scope of the project is actually not well defined.

    - The tools you are going to be using are ones you don't have a lot of experience with and you have a high probability of running into an odd bug that takes a long time to track down

    - You haven't broken down the task enough.

    - The task is large enough that you should actually be biting off a smaller piece of it and estimating that.

    If you think that there is a significant chance of missing a deadline, you should indeed communicate that as soon as possible. That includes during the meeting where you give your estimate.

    > Stop procrastinating at the start

    If you find that you do actually have a bunch of time that you're losing at the start, ask yourself what the causes of that are and seek solutions to those causes.

    - Consistently get good food every day and good sleep every night

    - Use https://freedom.to/freedom to block HN and reddit.

    - Make sure that you are clear on the projects' goals and the tools you are going to use.

    - Make sure you know whom you can go to when you need to get clarification on things.

    But be aware that there are other causes for deadline slip.

    > this is 100% your fault

    If you find yourself in on a software team or a state of mind where your top-of-mind question is "who's fault is this?" get out of there. Pointing fingers prevents organisations from making systems-level changes to avoid them.

    Furthermore, if you get yourself into the mindset of "I failed and am behind on this project and it is my fault and I need to just buckle down, catch up, and fix it." then you will not do yourself or the project any favors. Take a deep breath (or even a brief walk), find a senior engineer that you trust, and ask for their help in thinking about how the project is structured and how it might be estimated.

  3722. Ask HN: Lessons you wish you knew when you were Junior developer? 2016-11-05 01:09:43 lojack
    Keep in mind, these are all things I'd tell myself, not things I'd tell other junior developers. Saying something is my own fault is taking responsibility for things, not pointing fingers. I would never go around blaming junior developers for a project being late and not being told it'd be late.

    But, when I was a junior developer, I had a tendency to procrastinate at the start of a project and cover up my procrastination by keeping everyone else in the dark. I learned, through time, that over communicating from the outset would help those that relied on my work plan ahead, and it'd also have the effect of helping keep myself on track. A form of personal accountability.

  3723. Variational Inference for Machine Learning [pdf] 2016-11-05 07:29:02 murbard2
    That's hard to answer because there wasn't a precise point where I started and that's not the only thing I've been studying in my life, and I've studied a lot of this while working full time jobs which didn't really require this knowledge (constructive procrastination ftw). I started getting interested in sequential Monte-Carlo methods around 2008 while working at a hedge-fund and I think I had a pretty solid grasp by 2011. But I started with solid math fundamentals, so picking it up wasn't too troublesome.

    I think a talented high-schooler could learn this topic in three to four years by studying it (and nothing else) intensively. I think it tends to happen more organically in general. You become proficient along the way, it's more of a lifelong thing. I think every piece you'll learn will be valuable and useful on its own.

  3724. Employees are faster and more creative when solving other people's problems 2016-11-07 01:25:17 agumonkey
    It's a source my procrastination, I'm much more motivated to reflect on other's issue rather than my own. I even consider this a psychological issue.

  3725. Shyness: small acts of heroism 2016-11-07 22:50:05 josephwegner
    I've been procrastinating (for obvious reasons) sharing this for quite some time... but this seems like as good of a kick in the pants as any.

    I wrote a bit of a short story about my shyness/social anxiety. Hope helps people understand what goes on in the brain when anxiety strikes: https://stories.wegnerdesign.com/how-i-party

  3726. Show HN: A chat+cards platform for teams that syncs with PouchDB over WebRTC 2016-11-08 00:41:38 fiatjaf
    I was going to, but the anti-procrastination filter stopped me.

  3727. A Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires 2016-11-11 00:30:48 ellisv
    > If you are coding 'in front of customers on the spot' - you at the wrong company :)

    Or a procrastinator ;)

    "Hi, one coffee please."

    "Sure, just one minute. Ok, first I'll pip install stripe…"

  3728. The Happiest People Don't Let Their Minds Wander, According to a Harvard Study 2016-11-14 01:22:58 sdfin
    Maybe your worries are about important matters, and focusing in finding solutions to them has been useful for you. If doing that was useful then it's difficult to let go of that because nobody likes to cease doing what's useful.

    If you want to worry less I think about two things that may help:

    A - Set a time of the day for worries, and procrastinate worrying until that time. For example, set the worrying time from 18:45 to 19hs. This may sound strange, but it's recommended by some CBT therapists. http://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/docs/Info-Postpone%20your%20... http://www.getselfhelp.co.uk/worryzones.htm

    B - Train! Not following worry thoughts is a skill that requires practice, like building muscle. If you train you become better at it. You may train your attention by noticing your breath and when your attention gets caught by worry thougts, you notice that and go back to your breath. When it happens again, you notice it and go back to your breath. With practice, letting go of worry becomes much easier. You may practice that 15 minutes a day.

  3729. Why Don't They Just Do It? Lecture on Procrastination by Expert Dr. Pychyl 2016-11-14 22:29:36 dpflan
    Here is information about the research group at Carleton University and a short article:

    1. http://www.procrastination.ca/

    2. http://newsroom.carleton.ca/2012/09/20/what-are-you-waiting-...

    Also, Dr. Pychyl's book on procrastination: Solving the Procrastination Puzzle: A Concise Guide to Strategies for Change if you're interested in a read:

    https://www.amazon.com/Solving-Procrastination-Puzzle-Concis...

    (Just throwing up links for more info.)

  3730. One year later 2016-11-14 22:37:47 biofox
    This is what happens for me even with shorter lists.

    Or, I try to ease myself into working by starting with a list, but start feeling overwhelmed as the list grows longer.

    When this happens, I more often than not end up procrastinating. It usually takes a critical deadline and an unhealthy amount of panic to break the deadlock.

  3731. Making Time for Side Projects 2016-11-14 23:11:42 tertius
    If you don't act on what you learn you're just escaping.

    I think many many are in a similar boat. I try to tell myself the above and realize that I should spend my "reading" time on things other than "productivity." I.e. planned procrastination isn't a bad thing. Just don't fool yourself that you're being productive.

  3732. One year later 2016-11-15 19:48:05 hnnsj
    I don't want to sound like a douchebag, but isn't the post basically saying that short-term gratification and procrastination feels nicer, so that's what he focused on? Not that I am any better, but that's not something I'm proud of.

  3733. Todoist uses machine learning to predict your task due dates 2016-11-17 11:31:33 troopkevin
    The no brainer for those who procrastinate a lot on a daily basis.

  3734. Todoist uses machine learning to predict your task due dates 2016-11-17 12:28:20 chang2301
    I am a paid Todoist user and I find this feature useful and interesting since I sometimes procrastinate tasks without notice. I will still need to test the accuracy and whether the auto allocation is reasonable. Overall, it's a right direction for Todoist.

  3735. You Are Not Paid to Write Code 2016-11-17 17:02:56 z3t4
    The other day I had problems with grep, so I rewrote it in JavaScript ... I could have used awk, but at least my script is more then double as fast as awk. I think it's some sort of procrastination and being self managed. Reminds me that I should get off HN and start working.

  3736. The Joy of Linux Desktop Environments 2016-11-18 02:15:00 stinkytaco
    While I agree with you personally, I also get why people do it. For some the tinkering with the DE is working, or at least having fun. It might be a form of procrastination or a genuine interest. It's not terribly different than reading productivity blogs or looking at other people's vacation photos.

  3737. SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed 2016-11-18 17:38:06 tdkl
    More effort needed is less free time for nonsense and procrastination.

  3738. How to start a company with no free time 2016-11-19 07:41:49 jimbokun
    Right!

    Yes, there is a cost to writing code instead of using a pre-existing solution. But there is also a non-zero costs to using pre-existing code!

    In the end, using the pre-existing code will be a win in most cases. But reading docs is not nearly as much fun as reading code, so the emotional and procrastination barriers can be higher.

  3739. Google reverses its ‘digital death sentence’ for Pixel phone resellers 2016-11-19 08:56:33 ocdtrekkie
    Yeah, I know. But my concern is if it's 'too easy' to just handle my Gmail messages in Fastmail that I'll procrastinate changing over the accounts properly.

    Once I get down to a minimal amount I'll forward and tag.

  3740. How to start a company with no free time 2016-11-19 20:06:12 erikb
    Learning is also one of my main procrastinations, since it feels so useful when you do it.

  3741. Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It 2016-11-20 22:55:36 II2II
    It may also be a question of how you use sites like HN. I've found that this site is useful for learning when I simply click on the headlines and ignore the comments. Yes, the comments are informative. On the other hand, I have found that reading comments is a behaviour that I have adopted to procratinate (rather than to gain deeper insight).

  3742. Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It 2016-11-20 23:49:43 Reedx
    Same here. Although I never got pulled in by Facebook and only a little with Twitter, I did with Reddit and especially Hacker News.

    HN is the one where I find myself checking several times/day and I constantly have 20+ HN tabs. The pattern is something like this:

    1) "Oh, interesting topic!"

    2) Open in a tab

    3) Read existing comments & the link (I don't always do the latter, admittedly)

    4) Come back N hours later, read new comments

    5) Repeat #4 over a day or two

    6) Close tab unless I haven't read the link yet. If I haven't, then they tend to stick around until I do or send it off into OneTab for ultimate procrastination.

  3743. Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It 2016-11-21 00:50:36 tehabe
    I understand the procrastination argument but if it is not some (social) website it is something else. People who tend to procrastinate will do it anyway.

    At least this is my personal experience.

  3744. Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It 2016-11-21 01:00:58 kowdermeister
    I've read the whole article, but this is where I should have stopped.

    > I’ve never had a social media account.

    He basically summarized that procrastination is harmful and social media is to blame. He doesn't really share anything I haven't known as a social media addict. Kinda like saying to a smoker that smoking tobacco causes cancer. I know that, what now? I tried shutting down social media sites with plugins, blocking sites in the hostfile and other slow to circumvent things. They kinda worked, sometimes never. I also noticed that if a site gets shut down, something new emerges that replace it.

    This is something you have to deal with, regulate it. If you find yourself constantly opening FB, Twitter or whatever your addiction is, then it signals that something you are having problems with something you should be really doing.

  3745. Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It 2016-11-21 01:09:10 jccalhoun
    The general message is good: stop procrastinating and actually work (which is what I should be doing instead of mulling over the wording of this comment). The way it is written, however, is less than ideal because it has entirely too many unsupported claims. Without evidence it isn't a solid argument.

    For example: "My second objection concerns the idea that social media is harmless. Consider that the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks is becoming increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated economy. Social media weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be addictive. The more you use social media in the way it’s designed to be used — persistently throughout your waking hours — the more your brain learns to crave a quick hit of stimulus at the slightest hint of boredom."

    I know it is a newspaper article and not an academic paper but I still need evidence to make me believe these claims are true. I've read people claiming that we are becoming more distracted but I haven't read that the ability to not be distracted is becoming more valuable. Similarly, while I've read claims that social media is addictive but not that it is engineered to be so.

  3746. Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It 2016-11-21 01:49:02 vic-traill
    In 1992, a fellow student called Usenet the 'ultimate procrastination device'. The Internet provides access to an inexhaustible supply of people, topics and thoughts (some interesting, others less so).

    This is still the case, except that the number of access methods and filters have increased, and many of them are with us everywhere, all the time.

    Our own time is indeed finite, and my experience has been that the digital world will consume as much of that limited time as you let it.

    Awareness is a first step, and a purposeful approach to consuming content helps keep your content consuming time balanced with, well, all the other stuff you can do in this world.

  3747. Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It 2016-11-21 10:05:03 bbcbasic
    Probably a dump followed by bowels being open for too long. This is bad for you I've heard. Best to dump n go... and then procrastinate elsewhere.

  3748. Kafka: An End or a Beginning? 2016-11-21 12:53:11 icanhackit
    A bit of both. Count me as an employed procrastinating philosopher.

  3749. Ask HN: As a developer, how can I take advantage of time spent driving to work? 2016-11-21 13:28:03 Schwolop
    I second this, but would also add that I've started motorcycling instead of driving. Even a commute on a motorbike is a thing of wonder, using parts of my brain and fight-or-flight responses I've left dormant for years.

    But to the primary point, I also thoroughly agree that downtime is important, and there's a danger of trying to optimise every waking hour too much. Learning the art of structured procrastination (neither too much nor too little) should be part of every pragmatic programmer's toolkit.

  3750. To-Do Lists Are Not the Answer to Getting Things Done 2016-11-21 15:45:06 kriro
    The greatest insight I had when it comes to time management came from a surprising source. I had played around a bit with Pomodoro for my typical intellectual tasks (research, programming etc.) with no real success.

    Then on a summer weekend my sister asked me to help her renovate her apartment, specifically I was tasked with the removal of all the wallpapers. I said sure, give me the key and I'll get going over the weekend and actually dropped by Friday after work...by chance I had my Pomodoro timer in my work backpack. I looked around and came to the conclusion that I had absolutely no idea how long it would take me to tear everything down. So I guessed how much I could do in 25 minutes, set the timer (25 minutes) and went to work. I got less done than expected and I suppose you could say I started a Bayesian process of sorts updating my priors but most importantly I realized that knowing how much time something roughly takes is extremely valuable in scheduling work.

    I went on to calculate roughly how many tomatoes it would take to get each room done and since there wasn't much time left on the Friday figured I could get one of the tiny ones done. It worked, the estimation was fairly accurate and I actually caught myself trying to beat my estimates. On Saturday I had a great plan and a firm goal (get the living room and one extra room done). I eventually settled in on 2 tomatoes followed by a 15 minute break. Worked great.

    tl;dr: Ever since that I get more done whenever I know how long it'll roughly take. That means exploring is very valuable. For new tasks I estimate in tomatoes, draw a circle for each and get going. When it takes longer I add squares and once the task is done I update my mental image of how long it'll take in the future.

    Whenever I don't know how long something might take I tend to procrastinate a lot until I force myself to timebox it. I think most interesting tasks tend to fall in this category.

  3751. To-Do Lists Are Not the Answer to Getting Things Done 2016-11-21 21:25:54 dosethree
    The problem with using calendars is actually you're pretty flexible about when you want to get most stuff done, you just have a deadline. But you don't want to do it at the last minute, so for a weekend task you want to check in a few times to see if you are not too busy to do it.

    http://www.dueapp lets you put a time to be reminded and that has really clear snooze functionality. So I procrastinate a lot (snooze) but I'm always aware of it in case I have a deadline, and I don't have to worry about remember it.

    (I'm unaffiliated with Due I just love the product)

  3752. Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It 2016-11-22 05:33:35 m_fayer
    That's exactly the problem. If I'm in "work mode" I'm after the thrill of tackling a meaty challenge. Then I don't procrastinate. But when I'm dealing with some tedious dependency hell/build glitches/other slow boring BS, I go looking for my intellectual thrill and before I know it, hello HN.

  3753. The Case Against Python 3 2016-11-23 13:13:48 esaym
    I was procrastinating this evening on some python 3 coding. This article is just what I needed to get motivated.

  3754. Ask HN: Any student bug bounty hunters? 2016-11-30 12:48:02 teapot01
    I made 7.5k for a Facebook Vulnerability that i found while procrastinating instead of studying for exams.

    Haven't done much since though.

  3755. Universal Basic Income Will Accelerate Innovation by Reducing Fears of Failure 2016-12-02 08:36:16 WheelsAtLarge
    No, no, no.... Universal Basic Income will only make it easier for people to do nothing.

    If money is such a saver why doesn't 100% or for that matter 50% of those considered rich have a business or at least try for one? Why doesn't every venture capital fund throw money out like it's candy? The answers is that it's both money and motivation that makes successful people and businesses. Money no matter the amount will demotivate people. If one knows that just by waking up one is guaranteed a way to stay alive then it's much easier to not do anything. It's easier to wait until the perfect idea comes to mind. We (procrastinators) all know that tomorrow is better than today. Whether we like it or not failure is not just about money. It's also about how we are view by others in society and money will not make public perception any easier.

    Yes, there's a place for financial aid and such but it needs to be carefully parsed. No, not everybody needs a basic income. Basic income for all is a bad idea.

  3756. The Busy Person’s Lies 2016-12-02 19:18:01 somestag
    Maybe we can generalize this a bit, since you can definitely be stressed/anxious but not feel busy (e.g. when you have a big presentation coming up, and you're more worried about your performance than your preparation).

    I would guess that knowing you have work to do, rather than actually doing the work, is what makes us feel busy. If I have 30 things to do today, I feel busy the moment I wake up, even if my morning routine is no different than usual. If I procrastinate for 2 hours and then spend 6 hours doing 20 of those things--pushing the last 10 to tomorrow--I still feel like I've had a crazy day even though I've done less than the amount of work in a typical work day. Then I spend all evening feel restless because I really should have finished up those last 10 things, so then my whole evening feels like work.

    I don't think this is entirely an illusion. Thinking about work takes mental energy; often, it takes more energy than actually doing the work. This isn't just because of stress; it's because planning (even if that planning is ultimately pointless) is an active mode of thinking.

    Perhaps the solution to feeling busy all the time is to refuse to think about work you haven't started yet (unless that work is specifically a thinking task, e.g. most coding). Easier said than done, of course. Personally, I know that constantly thinking about work to be done is what keeps me from forgetting about important things I need to do. My solution to the issue was to refuse to think about doing the work, instead only reminding myself that I had to do it. This "solution" actually caused me anxiety, because thinking through work made me feel like I had it under control. Not thinking through it made me feel like I was letting it slip away, which was actually a good thing, because entirely by accident it solved my procrastination problems. It turns out that "thinking through work" was enabling my procrastination by making me feel like I was being responsible when I was making no tangible progress. The anxiety of not thinking forced me to actually do the work, and for two weeks I was basically a workaholic while I caught up on all of the things I'd been procrastinating on. But, after those two weeks were over, something magical happened: I felt less anxiety than ever before, I felt like I had tons of free time, and I had far fewer things to keep track of. I didn't feel busy, but I also had no desire to become busy, because I knew I was still doing as much work as ever, if not more. The difference was entirely based on my thoughts outside of the time spent working.

  3757. Ask HN: Are there any systematic and scientific ways to develop a habit? 2016-12-03 23:28:13 auganov
    I'm very sorry that I don't have citations handy [0]. But there are studies that explored affecting one's propensity to do what they rationally believe to be right. The common theme of these studies has been that feeling observed by others greatly improved it. The most memorable result has show that merely placing someone in front of a mirror improved it too (a testament to how salient the effect is)! My point being that if all else fails, it's worth trying to structure your social environment in a way that motivates you. It's easy to slack off when nobody's watching. It's easy to not deliver your side project on Friday if nobody's gonna care anyways!

    [0] that's the playlist where I heard about it, I'm not sure if it's the right video, though. Sorry just don't have the time to dig through it. I greatly suggest everyone watching the whole playlist. The subject matter explores a lot of concepts tangential to procrastination from a philosophical angle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reZA81S0zfI&list=PL3F6BC200B...

  3758. Ask HN: Are there any systematic and scientific ways to develop a habit? 2016-12-04 00:27:00 d23
    As someone who got into a regular exercise habit a year ago that has progressively gotten more intense, I disagree with a few of your points.

    Actually, I guess it's mostly the first 3:

    > 1. Build a routine. Set a specific, repeating time when you will do the thing in your calendar. Keep that slot clear, ALWAYS. Never let something interrupt this task.

    > 2. Learn to say no. If someone wants you to do something else during this time slot, say no, and tell them why.

    > 3. Never break the routine. Breaking it once makes it MUCH easier to break the next scheduled time. If you do break it, feel bad about it and get back on the horse IMMEDIATELY.

    It's this "do it now or feel guilty" stuff that keeps most people procrastinating or avoiding doing the task. I remember initially I would have it set in my mind that I needed to go to the gym at 10 a.m. the next day. If I woke up a bit late or was wasting time on reddit and 10 a.m. looked unrealistic, I started feeling really guilty. "Oh no, if I don't go now, I'll never go!" It put a lot of stupid, unnecessary pressure on the situation. And it didn't really have the desired effect -- I'd usually not go, since I had already blown it by missing my 10 a.m. deadline, after all!

    Now, I might wake up and plan on going at 10, but I know that I 1) absolutely do plan on going and 2) can go at 11, or 12, or 1, or 2, etc. There's no need to make the task worse by associating a lot of negative pressure and guilt with it.

    > One thing at a time. [...] Leave time in your schedule for play.

    Totally. Especially if it's an area where the amount of information out there can be overwhelming (a la fitness / weightlifting). I started out going with a few exercises I enjoyed in mind and simply did them until I felt tired. I didn't worry about making a program, writing down my workouts, obsessing about nutrition, or obsessing about how many days or which days I did what.

    Over time, things started getting easier and I began incorporating more of this stuff as I started feeling comfortable. But the initial phase where I made the habit something I actually enjoyed was crucial. Even now, when I occasionally find myself feeling like I've slipped too much back into treating it like a job, I take a day to not keep track of anything and try some new exercises that I think might feel good.

    Edit: Also super useful:

    > If you can find someone who will hold you accountable, do it. Someone who does the routine with you, or a coach who will call you out if you make excuses.

    For me it was my roommate. I'd go with him the first couple of months. After a while I felt comfortable enough to go by myself and do my own thing, but that initial time where I would use the slight social pressure of him going and asking me if I wanted to go to keep myself in check.

  3759. Ask HN: Are there any systematic and scientific ways to develop a habit? 2016-12-04 01:05:43 mrleinad
    > It's this "do it now or feel guilty" stuff that keeps most people procrastinating or avoiding doing the task

    Couldn't agree more with this.

    I've tried many times to build habits into my routine, only to abandon them and feel bad about it because I couldn't maintain them for a few days.

    No more. Now I have them in my list, I keep them consciously present, but I won't punish myself if I don't get them done one day. Allow some leeway. If you really want it, build it paciently into your routine and if it doesn't feel right, try another way.

    One example: I've been trying to stick to a healthy diet to lose some weight. I don't enjoy cooking, and much less enjoy preparing or eating salads. Tried lots of apps, lots of ways of grocery shopping, and hated it all the way. Now I switched to calorie counting and drinking lots of water. Walking away from the desk to fill a bottle 3 or 4 times a day feels like I'm moving forward without any hassle, and I just try to eat slowly when I sit down for lunch or dinner. Water diminishes my appetite and cravings for eating out of just feeling anxiety. And if I feel like chomping down on a pizza with beer, it's ok, no big deal.

    Just take it easy. Hakuna matata.

  3760. How I Wrote the Screenplay for “Arrival” and What I Learned Doing It 2016-12-05 11:47:26 skepticaldrunk
    That's very kind of you to say, and after this project is finished, I might even get around to it. Procrastination willing, maybe even sooner.

    The takeaway at the end of the day for me is that my idea of efficiency is built around conditional repeatability. However, the fundamental drive of art is to create a unique experience. For obvious reasons, these two goals run a bit counter to each other. There are absolutely repeatable elements, otherwise we wouldn't be able to relate to media (or each other, for that matter). But by the very nature of the requirement of uniqueness, there is no one size fits all. When the syntax is the program, it tends to exclude all but the most basic and robust standardization.

    At least that's my drunk peanut gallery theory.

  3761. Amazon Go 2016-12-06 03:22:32 homakov
    Good point of view, and indeed procrastination is the opposite of evolving.

    However "I am unsure we are evolving" sounds like paradox. Isn't a version 2 of anything always "evolving" by definition? Otherwise, what's "better"?

  3762. Andrew Wiles: what does it feel like to do maths? 2016-12-07 02:50:11 digler999
    What I'd like to know is what his routine is like. I think I recall watching the FLT documentary and he talks about retreating to his home office for hours at a time where he was not to be interrupted. I wonder how he or other mathematicians organize their time and track their progress.

    For most of my life I've struggled with procrastination, time management issues, and concentration problems. I feel like the only time I can concentrate is after 10pm, for a narrow window of an hour or 2 before I go to sleep. I'd guess mathematicians must not suffer from that problem or have learned to overcome it to be able to wrangle their minds around abstract mathematical constructs.

  3763. Andrew Wiles: what does it feel like to do maths? 2016-12-07 02:59:36 treehau5
    If you are like me -- It's something you have to chip away at slowly, because your brain is probably so used to having sudden, increased rushes of pleasurable activities -- whether that's habitually checking HN, facebook, reddit or whatever quickly, or reading an interesting topic or checking out an interesting book -- yes all these things are great, but if they aren't directly, tangibly helping you towards achieving your goals, however insightful or educational they might be, you have to be able to restrain. You can actually learn to concentrate again. It will take time and work, just like anything else in life. If you want to get in shape and start running, you don't start running 3 miles right out of the gate, no you start with maybe one mile, where you split between jogging and walking. Then you jog a full mile, then run a mile, then 1.5, etc. Same with being able to intently concentrate for long periods of time -- you have to learn how to do it. How? By trying to concentrate intently on smaller, tangible things. The better you get at it, the more you will be able to do it. That's why I like things like the pomodoro timers. On my good days, I am able to just sit down and blaze through a couple of pomodoros and not even notice the timer went off long ago. Most important thing I have found is setting tangible, short, achievable goals that all point to a larger goal, and then setting aside a reward. We are so used to having our reward now, now, now, but we need to retrain our minds that the reward comes after. There are more aspects to procrastination I have found -- fear of failure, fear of success, fixed mindset, all these concepts are great, but at the end of the day, in my opinion, I treat my brain like it is a muscle, and you can train it to do things just like anything else in life.

  3764. Andrew Wiles: what does it feel like to do maths? 2016-12-07 05:51:11 digler999
    Thank you for the tip. I will give it a try. I see procrastination/concentration impairment coming from so many directions: caffeine, information bombardment, interruptions from coworkers, noise, stress, meal-planning, simply being human and needing to rest, staying at home too much. It's overwhelming to manage.

    I will try pomodoro and just setting a small concentration goal and building on it.

  3765. How to Ship Side Projects 2016-12-07 11:33:11 epynonymous
    i think reid hoffman's quote (linkedin founder) sums it up best, "if you're not embarrassed with the first version of your product then you've launched too late."

    i have seen many posts about mvp and narrowing scope here--all right on the money.

    some other things that have worked for me, i'm the world's biggest procrastinator and i have literally 20-30 side projects that i've started for some time, was extremely passionate about, and then moved onto the next big thing, but i've recently had a few projects that i went deep on and actually got out, even hoping to build a business out of.

    i've also found that the technology stack is not that critical, as a perfectionist i want to create a kickass platform that's easily maintainable, beautifully coded, using all the right tools that can meet billions of requests per day from the start, easy to deploy, automated, etc, but that typically just leads me down a huge rat hole. if your energy is finite (for me it is), you should focus all of it on getting your stuff out the door as quickly as possible, getting it in front of potential users because often times what you think is a great idea is raw and will need tuning. make things functional, able to showcase your main idea (or a particular use case), don't have to have all use cases fully done. get it out there and iterate. i'm certain that there are people that can make all the right technology decisions from the get go to support billions of requests per day, fully automated (if you are one of these, please email me right away!) but you're solving the wrong problems, if you want to get a side project or business out there, go build it, get it out there and then iterate, and iterate fast.

    for the sake of argument, probably side projects like tools or libraries, these are a bit different in nature, you probably want to choose the right technology stack, etc. but if you want to build a business out of your side project, then don't dwell on this too much, use what you're familiar with that can give you the quickest turnaround, there will be pains with whichever tech stack you choose, some more than others, but it will pale in comparison to the roadblocks in front of you to build something into a business.

    for one of my recent projects, i use sqlite3 for my relational database, i don't even want to spend all the 30 minutes or whatever to set up postgresql, it's to that level of scope reduction. when users grow, then i'll spend the time to upgrade and add backups, etc.

  3766. Ask HN: Would you read Q&A with senior developers about their career path? 2016-12-10 01:41:36 TechHawk
    I think this is a great idea! You could even go a step further and also discuss challenges like perfectionism and procrastination. I believe that a lot of developers are struggling with this and would appreciate guidance in areas which are also about the internal challenges and not just about the functional career challenges. I know I could have used a website like this.

  3767. Developers’ side projects 2016-12-10 16:35:54 alfonsodev
    Great, more reasons to procrastinate on our side projects :(

  3768. Ask HN: Why Study _____? 2016-12-10 23:50:54 repple
    I know! Ironically, I can see myself procrastinating, getting lost in the site just exploring different topics and answers. A site which was supposed to motivate me to study in the first place!

  3769. Ask HN: What problem in your industry is a potential startup? 2016-12-11 04:45:39 stult
    >Doesn't this take money away from your firm?

    No, because we are in fact competing on cost and client-recognized quality, and to a lesser extent time. Plus our fees are driven more by the market than by our actual costs, so if we billed fewer hours, we would simply bill at a higher rate to reach the same expected fee while still maintaining our position in the marketplace. Or if we could reduce our fee, we might be able to win more market share.

    The pejorative term in the industry for padding billing with useless busy work is "fee justification," which really shouldn't ever be necessary. Especially in my practice area, because there's always more work that can be done to flesh out our deliverables, which in turn makes them more effective for convincing the IRS (or state equivalent) or an appeals judge. When I say I've cut thousands of dollars of charge hours, we didn't simply stop charging those hours, we allocated them to more useful, value added activities.

    Right now, staff spend far too much time inefficiently manipulating data in Excel, manually organizing exhibits, and a variety of other mundane, low cognitive effort tasks (I can't really specify what kinds because that would essentially doxx me). They feel productive, they look productive, and they meet their charge hour goals. And it allows them to procrastinate on the more mentally taxing work, like evaluating the relevant legal and technical tax issues, which in turn detracts from the quality of our service. Our clients aren't paying us to be extra-expensive outsourced spreadsheet monkeys. They're paying us to eliminate uncertainty about complicated legal and tax issues. So freeing up engagement budget and the staff's mental bandwidth to focus on the high value added cognitive services is tremendously useful in improving quality.

    And in terms of time, we compete on that in some cases where there's an audit, exam, or appeal deadline and the client came to us late in the game. But that's an edge case and relatively rare. Certainly having a reputation for being quick, efficient, and timely wouldn't hurt our market position, though.

  3770. The short, tormented life of computer genius Phil Katz (2000) 2016-12-11 19:54:39 SiVal
    I have no idea whether this will help at all, but after staring at it for a while, I decided I had to try. I think it's VERY likely that a craving for a chemical such as alcohol or various drugs is learned by the brain and shares a property with such things as language learning, which is that early learning plants it deeply and indelibly in a rapidly developing brain--making it essentially native to the brain's structure--while late learning is relatively superficial.

    Based on what I've seen, those who wait to start drinking until well into adulthood have brains that are MUCH more resistant to alcoholism.

    The implication for you, then, is that if you can't get your sister to just join you in being a non-drinker, then at least persuade her to procrastinate her drinking as many years as possible and use the language-learning analogy if it helps: the LAST thing you want to do is become a "native drinker". You want it to be something always a little foreign and unnatural to your brain so you can push it away entirely should you ever choose to do so.

    Again, this might be of no use to you in your personal situation (and sorry I can't be more useful), but if there's any way you can get her to wait until after college/university age, she won't be completely safe (no drinker is), but she will have MUCH more power than she has now.

  3771. Spaced repetition 2016-12-12 02:51:03 rspeer
    I remember earlier versions of Anki that implemented the algorithm so literally that it would tell you that you couldn't learn new cards until you had reviewed the 500 cards in your backlog, a seemingly insurmountable task that would just cause you to procrastinate and get a bigger backlog. They revised that to make it more motivating, fortunately, partially by capping the amount of backlog it would present to you on any given day.

    I'm using WaniKani for Japanese now -- it's not nearly as portable as Anki but it's the first integrated solution I've seen for Japanese, teaching kanji by a Heisig-like method alongside vocabulary that uses the kanji.

    I used to use an Anki deck for Heisig's Remember the Kanji, but I found it entirely unmotivating to spend time every day learning symbols out of context. Imagine an English class about learning the alphabet song, except the song just keeps going, and by the time you're learning the tenth verse of the alphabet you're still not spelling any words. That's Heisig. It's a clever system of mnemonics but it's not a complete solution.

    Now WaniKani has the opposite problem with motivation -- it ramps up far too slowly. It doesn't let you study ahead. On your first day using the system, you can only study something like 20 cards, and you only get more when you wait out the spaced repetition and prove you've mastered those, even though they are extremely simple radicals and numbers that you probably know already if you are interested enough in learning Japanese to seek out WaniKani. This must be terrible for on-boarding, but I'm putting up with it because it's still the most effective Japanese study method I've seen.

  3772. Spaced repetition 2016-12-12 04:28:23 pmoriarty
    My main problem with spaced repetition programs like Anki is getting the motivation to stick with them long-term. This also dovetails in with my problems with procrastination. I've never seen a good solution. Most of the proposed solutions boil down to "just do it". It doesn't work for me.

  3773. Spaced repetition 2016-12-12 05:26:39 summarite
    > My main problem with spaced repetition programs like Anki is getting the motivation to stick with them long-term. This also dovetails in with my problems with procrastination. I've never seen a good solution. Most of the proposed solutions boil down to "just do it". It doesn't work for me.

    If it's just one or at most three such'daily'things you want to do i had great success with simple "don't break the chain" kind of apps - every day you succeed in doing your task you check the box and it's marked on a calendar. There really is a drive not to ruin this beautiful chain, and I've found myself following through for months at a time - but then when you do fail once and the chain is broken the motivation really takes a slump as well.

    Checking in with a friend or your partner can also help. Get some mild social accountability going and you might find yourself quite driven to follow through.

  3774. Spaced repetition 2016-12-12 05:51:43 pmoriarty
    "If it's just one or at most three such'daily'things you want to do i had great success with simple "don't break the chain" kind of apps - every day you succeed in doing your task you check the box and it's marked on a calendar. There really is a drive not to ruin this beautiful chain, and I've found myself following through for months at a time - but then when you do fail once and the chain is broken the motivation really takes a slump as well."

    This reminds me of the big physical yearly calendar I put on my apartment's door. It's right there in front of my face every time I go out the door. When I first got it, I crossed out all of the days that had passed for the year, and wrote in what was to come on important days of the year. Each day I would look to see what was on the calendar, and cross out yesterday's day. I had this nice long chain of crossed out boxes and written in appointments.

    That worked for a while, but eventually, I stopped. Now it's been months and the calendar hangs there, and I don't touch it. I can't fail to see it all the time, every day I leave home, but I've just phased it out, I ignore it, and don't even notice it 99% of the time. Sometimes I do notice it or remember that it's there, and that I should really be crossing out those days, but I don't actually do anything.

    That's the thing about procrastination. It's one thing to know what you should be doing, and quite another thing to do it. Tricks like "don't break the chain" can only get you so far.

  3775. Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Jack Ma, and others launch fund to fight climate change 2016-12-12 13:40:58 kitsuac
    But it isn't the role of the representatives to come to terms with science, it's their role to come to terms with the will of "The People" (the tangled mess of what that means). I think it could be argued that the will of "The People" isn't to enact strong action to fight climate change. It's more to retain jobs in old energy industries and procrastinate until something absolutely dramatic and visceral impacts their day-to-day.

    I'd suppose the Achille's heel of "The People" is their short-sight. You need big minds with big wallets to see and act on the long game.

  3776. Ask HN: Best Monitor Around $300 for Dev Work? 2016-12-13 06:13:44 imafish
    Ironically, I went from a dual monitor setup (24" and 21" in 'portrait'), and I find that I'm more productive now.

    Probably just my lack of self-discipline but the dual monitor setup tended to encourage me to code on one monitor and procrastinate on the other.

  3777. Ask HN: Hiring managers what would it take for you to reply to every applicant? 2016-12-13 21:17:50 invaliduser
    This is probably bad practice, and I don't hire much anymore, but when I did, I could usually put the resumes in three slots: 1/ Good match, want to see 2/ Maybe 3/ No

    I generally give an immediate answer to 1 et 3. 2 are applicants that may do the job, but I am not really convinced, don't seem as great for the job as 1, and want to see them only if nobody in 1 gets the job. Also, 2 is definitely all the applicants that never received any answer from me, because I don't feel like telling them a straight no (in cas I'd need to interview them), and the job process usually takes a very long time. In the end, I either forget/procrastinate/feel like it's been to long to decently answer, so no answer.

    As I said, I'm not proud of that, I know this is bad and not respectful to applicants, just being honest at how bad I am at the recruitment job.

  3778. Ask HN: Are there any books that inspire or highly influence the way you work? 2016-12-15 06:12:16 rprameshwor
    Trying to recall my memory - While reading the book, i could many times relate it to the problems i have been facing in life and my day to day work. Reading the book helped me pictures those things as a 'RESISTANCE'. I used to procastinate things for next day, i was reluctant to speak up and reach out to other co-workers. After reading the book i was able to convince myself that this was just a resistance and if i wanted to be happy and successful, i would have to overcome this resistance. I'm not saying i'm a completely changed person after reading the book, but it definitely had positive impacts in my life.

  3779. Firefox Hardware Report for Web Developers 2016-12-16 01:54:46 T-hawk
    The logic was to impose a deadline on the free upgrade as an impetus for users to take it now rather than procrastinating on it forever.

  3780. Psychiatrists Must Face Possibility That Medications Hurt More Than They Help 2016-12-16 02:37:00 pmoriarty
    As I got older, I've had more and more trouble focusing. I also started to suffer from confusion. The scariest part was when I was talking to someone about a technical subject, and suddenly what they were saying literally stopped having any meaning. I just couldn't understand a single word they were saying. I saw and heard them speaking, but didn't understand any of it. This lasted only a short time, but it happened a couple of times.

    I then started taking DHA and CDP Choline, and all of the above symptoms went away. I was back to "normal". Through experimentation with stopping and restarting both DHA and CDP Choline, I figured out that it was the latter which was responsible for the change. There were days when I'd forget to take the CDP Choline and then later in the day notice that I felt I had trouble focusing and then realised, "oh yeah, I forgot to take the CDP". Starting to take it again would relieve the symptoms. This happened more than once. I also went for months without taking either supplement, where I'd run out and procrastinate on getting a refill, and sure enough, I'd go back to having trouble concentrating. Then I'd finally get a refill of CDP and I'd be able to focus well again. All of this has convinced me that CDP really is working for me.

    Later, due to some other health issues (not related to cognition) that I've had, I took a good hard look at my diet, and found out that many health issues that I have and have had in the past could very likely be due to various vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Though I've always known that my diet wasn't really healthy, I never realized how much of a profound effect the lack of proper vitamins and minerals could have on my mental and physical health.

    I started eating a lot more healthily (in particular, eating lots of fruits and vegetables, which were almost completely missing from my diet in the past), and taking supplements for some of the nutrients which I was still not getting adequate amounts of from my diet.

    As a result, I feel much better, have a ton more energy, feel in a better mood, and have no problems concentrating.

    I strongly encourage you to take a hard look at your diet to see if you're missing or low on any essential nutrients, and consider supplementing those (or, better yet, getting them through eating more nutritious food). It can really make a world of difference.

  3781. Ask HN: What are your greatest productivity hacks? 2016-12-16 17:19:32 nstart
    Not sure why the parent was down voted. Various things work for different people and I follow something similar. I keep a mantra of sorts going on in my head throughout the day where I tell myself to not be weak and give in to procrastination (I'm on a lunch break right now). This actually does push me harder during the hours which I've set aside for productive time. That way I feel zero guilt when indulging in HN and YouTube after my work hours.

  3782. Ask HN: What motivates you in life? 2016-12-17 23:27:36 Jugurtha
    >Abstract thoughts about death, while depressive, don't motivate me. What does end up "motivating" me are developing habits. In order to develop habits, I use pathetically achievable goals

    This. I was chatting with a friend and he asked me about how I get motivated. My answer is that I abstract away the motivation with a process.

    For instance, I used to work out a lot when I was younger and then stopped.. But when I wanted to work out recently, what I did to start the habit wasn't to go to the gym because that's a "new thing", an action and I'm a "procrastinator"..

    I incorporated working out with the act of taking a shower and they became one, so each time I was about to take a shower, I'd do a few hundred push ups, then get in the shower and do a 100 successive squats and that was it. It's not much but it beats nothing. If I imagined I had to wear clothes, go out somewhere, work out, then come back and take a shower, I wouldn't do it..

    As a side note, when I was in college, my commute was 6 hours and arriving late to class. Then they added a university bus. I had to take a bus to get to the Uni bus and I had to wake up early, so I said "why not work out while I'm at it". Woke up at 4h30 and a good work out, shower and food, and about 30 minutes of review study. The energy I had through the whole day was amazing.

  3783. No Proton Decay Means Grand Unification Must Wait 2016-12-18 05:45:39 HiroshiSan
    Aaah...procrastination. "I'll just wait t'ill I'm 150."

  3784. How basic income could fail in America 2016-12-19 08:16:47 generic_user
    People have problems doing those things for the same reason that people complain on Hacker News that they spend to much time procrastinating on the internet instead of working. And posting on HN when they should be studying etc.

    Willpower is a very hard thing to master. Procrastination is a part of everyones life. Distractions are everywhere. People get sucked into watching TV. Playing sports. Video games, gambling etc, etc.

    Also depression can be a big part of it. People get depressed and that can be very debilitating. Many people do not want to admit that they are depressed and would rather just shut themselves off from the world.

    Some very smart and wealthy people end up dropping out of university or loosing all of there money and sleeping in the streets.

    For some people that might end up in a work program simply having the responsibility of getting to work on time and having some obligations gives them a sense of order and purpose that can turn around there whole perspective and set them back onto a productive path.

  3785. 9M American men in prime working age can’t find jobs. I’m one of them 2016-12-20 00:08:06 yummyfajitas
    This guy seems to fall into that category:

    "There have been times where I’ve wondered if I should just get a temporary service or manual labor job...I would be too humiliated... It would be exceptionally difficult to work eight hours a day hoping with all my might that a neighbor or friend wouldn’t swing by to see me working the cash register or pumping gas."

    This is a definitive example of the prideful worker effect. It's kind of crazy how our modern culture substitutes "can't" for "won't".

    Meanwhile, this guy says he doesn't have skills with modern technologies and he spends 4 hours/day ("a quick glance at Twitter to see what’s going on in the world, and then I look up and it’s 1:15") procrastinating rather than learning those technologies. Hardly a surprise that no one wants to hire him, I certainly never would.

  3786. 9M American men in prime working age can’t find jobs. I’m one of them 2016-12-20 05:01:15 antisthenes
    Well, HN never fails to to disappoint with the libertarian "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and "just learn how to code" rhetoric.

    A slew of survivorship bias comments that seem to focus on the 1 sentence of the article, where the author is saying they do not consider a manual labor job to be practical, and neatly ignoring everything else.

    Here are some things most commenters have willingly ignored from the comfort of their privileged ignorance of economics:

    1. Depending on your health, working a manual labor job at 47 may be a net negative value. Your body does not heal or recover that well from prolonged repetitive tasks, so working long days for a $12/hr wage may actually be a worse deal from not working at all. If this country had federal health care, then it might have made sense, but since we have the for-profit approach, it doesn't.

    This can be true even if he's in perfect health right now.

    2. Ageism is more real than you think. Especially ageism when it comes to the resume and job history. Since he's not an engineer, the thought process of a potential employer goes like this: this guy is 47 and he hasn't held a management job once in his life, nor progressed beyond basic tech support and customer service. He also has a family, so he likely won't be willing to work extra hours for free and be as willing to be exploited as someone who is 23.

    3. Applying for shitty jobs is more costly than applying for higher paying jobs. The application process for a job is taking a certain amount of time regardless of the job itself, but the since the payoff for a better job is much higher, it makes sense to apply only for jobs that pay above a certain threshold. This is especially true when you consider he is providing some benefit at home as a stay at home dad (presumably). If he's providing $10,000 in value by staying at home, It will be 6x as costly to apply for a $15,000 job than for a $40,000 job.

    4. The social stigma and not being able to network: Networking works great when you're a professional that is able to get job offers without networking. It helps you get better jobs or more interesting jobs, but it doesn't suddenly elevate you from a non-professional status (tech support + customer service) to the status of a professional with the corresponding salary and benefits. The only case where this work is very entrenched nepotism, where someone unqualified could get a job for which they are not suited with compensation higher than their "real" market rate.

    Networking is mostly useless if you don't have the skills to back it up, like this guy.

    5. The twitter sentence. I'm honestly shocked at some of the vitriol from the HN community here. Do none of you ever procrastinate? If I'm not mistaken, it's working hours right now, but most of you are finding the time to comment here, on HN. If you had ever spent job hunting for a significant amount of time, you'd know it's at least as mentally draining as any job, so getting distracted or having some down time isn't unwarranted.

    I could go on and on, but the gist of it is: show some goddamn compassion and maybe step outside of your bubble for once.

    The fact that this person is one of 9 MILLION should maybe at least tell you that it's a systematic problem, and not just a problem of "not being willing to work any job for fear of embarrassment" For every one unwilling to do manual labor like this guy, there's another one who is (aka the other 4.5 million).

  3787. 9M American men in prime working age can’t find jobs. I’m one of them 2016-12-20 06:21:34 jimmywanger
    > Ageism is more real than you think.

    Citation needed. Most of my coworkers are easily over 40. The best programmers I've met at most of my jobs are late forties/fifties. What studies are you using, rather than your hypothetical "though process" of the hypothetical employer?

    > If he's providing $10,000 in value by staying at home, It will be 6x as costly to apply for a $15,000 job than for a $40,000 job.

    It will be 6x more costly to accept the 15k job than to accept the 40k job. The application costs are still the same. Also, by applying for the 15k job in your example, you are able to a) spend 10k to offset the value you bring at home or keep the 10k and let some chores remain undone and b) Keep 5k regardless.

    > but most of you are finding the time to comment here, on HN.

    We are not the ones who have to stretch 30 dollars a week to cover expenses for a family of four. If you have a steady job that doesn't frown too heavily on some procrastination, go ahead.

    > If you had ever spent job hunting for a significant amount of time, you'd know it's at least as mentally draining as any job, so getting distracted or having some down time isn't unwarranted.

    We're talking about degrees here. I'm procrastinating right now, but if I procrastinate too long I will end up unemployed, just like this guy. There's a difference between getting distracted and down time, and taking weeks off between interviews.

    > show some goddamn compassion and maybe step outside of your bubble for once

    From all accounts, this man who wrote the article is the one in the bubble. It's all about how he feels, how his friends will hurt his feelings if they figure out he's unemployed. He's the one that needs to step outside himself.

  3788. 9M American men in prime working age can’t find jobs. I’m one of them 2016-12-21 03:51:33 antisthenes
    Cherry picking phrases out of my comment just like you cherry picked the article.

    > Citation needed. Most of my coworkers are easily over 40. The best programmers I've met at most of my jobs are late forties/fifties

    Programmers. Programmers. Programmers.

    This guy is not a programmer. He's not in a senior or even a middle role. Did your coworkers all start coding bootcamps and get their junior positions at the age of 40 and over? If not, then your anecdata is equally as useless as the example you're trying to disprove.

    > It will be 6x more costly to accept the 15k job than to accept the 40k job. The application costs are still the same. Also, by applying for the 15k job in your example, you are able to a) spend 10k to offset the value you bring at home or keep the 10k and let some chores remain undone and b) Keep 5k regardless.

    Yes, and he'll have to work 40 hours. You have no idea what his utility preferences are, so suggesting to trade 40 hours/week of work for an additional 5k of compensation is laughable. Especially coming from someone in a position of privilege.

    > We are not the ones who have to stretch 30 dollars a week to cover expenses for a family of four. If you have a steady job that doesn't frown too heavily on some procrastination, go ahead.

    Irrelevant.

    > From all accounts, this man who wrote the article is the one in the bubble. It's all about how he feels, how his friends will hurt his feelings if they figure out he's unemployed. He's the one that needs to step outside himself.

    And by all accounts you mean your account. Like I already said, someone in your position lacks the perspective to understand what it is to be in that position, not to mention the possible economic trade-offs available. So the value of your account/opinion is null. And no, just because you worked a manual job at some point in your life doesn't qualify.

  3789. Social Security Garnished for Unpaid Student Debt 2016-12-21 05:51:15 generj
    I've been very lucky. I don't want to say everyone can get through college without debt, because that simply isn't true. I also was blessed with a good job and some good timing. Mostly it comes down to my university being so inexpensive.

    I went to community college first. In community college I found it was really common for people to be doing both full-time school and full-time work. My present university (BYU) also charges very low tuition - almost as cheap as my community college. I've also done some full-time work with part-time summer classes in order to keep my graduation on schedule.

    I work for a web analytics consultancy, which has allowed my hours to be somewhat flexible. I started at about $10/hour which was enough to meet my expenses at the time (because I was going to community college while living at my parents). Within a year I was making about double that, which was perfect as it coincided with graduating from community college and moving 2000 miles to university (meaning I had to cover my living expenses). This is because the particular type of consulting we do is quite specialized - if I only got two or three real hours of work done in a week out of 20 hours worked the company was still massively ahead at the hourly rates we charge. The work (mostly coding) is different enough from my major (Economics) that I maintain interest in both.

    My major is also taught by professors who apparently all prefer roughly the same schedule for classes. As a result, semester to semester time shifts in my work schedule are minor. I work in the morning and then do some work in the evening.

    I won't say everything has been perfect. I don't spend as much time on homework as I ought to. If I procrastinate, a client's work might pop up in the morning before an assignment is due. So I've had to be much more structured in my classwork and often try to get a good chunk of it done on Saturday afternoons.

  3790. 20 years ago, Apple bought NeXT 2016-12-21 10:20:16 m_mueller
    I copy from a comment of mine from last week. In case you wanna procrastinate on a fascinating story about how Apple transitioned to NextStep's stack without completely annihilating their already weak developer base, here's a few links:

    You get a corporate drama, a human drama and a tech drama all wrapped up in one series of presentations:

    Jobs' return (as a consultant) 1997, promoting technologies from NeXT. Watch basically everyone asleep at the wheel except Jobs, the man with a plan.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QrX047-v-s

    WWDC Q&A - 'the art of saying no'

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iACK-LNnzM

    Jobs' hostile takeover in July by doing a (probably illegal?) stock dump

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Amelio#Apple_Computer

    Announcing a Deal with Microsoft as de facto CEO in August, booed by the crowd

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOs6hnTI4lw

    Internal meeting in September 1997

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GMQhOm-Dqo

    iMac introduction 1998 - Apple is back

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxwmF0OJ0vg

    Macworld 1998 - Apple is essentially saved as a company

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdYiqVzPjAc

    OSX Strategy reveal

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5dWDg6f9eo

    1999 - OSX Server launch

    https://youtu.be/NuCYHrSig94?t=48m40s

    2000 - OSX launch

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko4V3G4NqII

  3791. Ask HN: Books you read in 2016? 2016-12-23 05:46:21 josht
    Managing Oneself - Peter Drucker (recommended--quick read)

    The Martian - Andy Weir (slightly more entertaining than the movie)

    The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results - Gary Keller (great for improving ones focus on the task at hand while having the big picture in mind)

    Not Fade Away - Laurence Shames (note to self: it's never too late to appreciate all we have and have had. recommended)

    Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration - Ed Catmull (excellent stories and a unique POV on Jobs)

    Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose - Tony Hsieh (a bit higher level than I had hoped for, but still worth a read)

    The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It - Michael Gerber (recommended)

    How To Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (meh, I could take it or leave it)

    Tribal Leadership - Dave Logan (applicable tactics and strategies to achieving happiness-- recommended by Tony Hsieh via 'Delivering Happiness'. Highly recommended)

    Crossing the Chasm - Geoffrey Moore (solid concept, however this was a dry read... for me)

    The Obstacle Is The Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumphs - Ryan Holiday (recommended)

    The War of Art - Steven Pressfield (a great way to cure procrastination)

    Peopleware - Tom DeMarco (not for me)

    So Good They Can't Ignore You - Cal Newport (IMHO this book would have been better as a blog post)

    The Lean Startup - Eric Ries (recommended)

    As a Man Thinketh - James Allen (quick read, highly recommended)

    The Effective Executive - Peter Drucker (terrific book chalked full of wisdom. recommended)

    The Magic of Thinking Big - David Schwartz (recommended)

    Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us - Seth Godin (recommended)

    Psycho-Cybernetics: A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life - Maxwell Maltz (first published in 1960, this incredible book has been, hands down, the most impactful book I read all year. This book helped me finally weed out pervasive negative though patterns and much, much more. Highly recommended if you're open to it)

  3792. Deep Learning Enables You to Hide Screen When Your Boss Is Approaching 2016-12-24 13:56:21 DodgyEggplant
    (1) This is a clever implementation. Maybe with a mobile camera it can be even more convenient to use? (2) True knowledge work requires breaks, and can not be measured with simple metrics like "boss watch what on screen" or "lines of code" (3) Even true knowledge workers can get into a non productive youtube loop, and sometimes external influence helps to prevent procrastination (4) If your relationship with the boss is based on these types of system, you better look for another place where you are respected 360 for your contribution (5) We should respect people that can not easily find interesting work or bosses that respect you (6) Communication, context and respect are always better than authority, hierarchy, and politics. Alas, humans can be very good at both

  3793. Ask HN: What are some great fiction reads for someone that reads non-fiction 2016-12-24 16:40:22 slilo
    Since the theme of procrastination and self-discipline is quite popular on HN, I would recommend OP and everyone here "Oblomov" and "Frigate Pallada" by I.A.Goncharov.

  3794. Why is my NTP server costing $500 per year? Part 1 (2014) 2016-12-24 21:25:51 libeclipse
    An interesting theory in one of the comments.

    > I wonder if Puerto Rico has run out of its pool of IPv4 addresses. After Europe and Asia, just this month Latin America as well, have exhausted their IPv4 pools, many local ISPs have resorted to using NAT to deal with the scarcity of addresses (of course, after years procrastinating IPv6 and pretending that this day wouldn't come about). Given that the source is a Puerto Rican ISP, and one of the offending addresses from a small /21 network, it's possible that NAT is to blame. As ISP NAT increasingly becomes more prevalent, this is going to be rather touchy to deal with abuses. For is it an abuser or just several innocent users behind a NAT?

  3795. The Memory App – Instant personalized memory recall 2016-12-24 21:32:58 Fnoord
    I can highly recommend this course, Learning How To Learn [1]. Among things it explains how memory works, how to avoid procrastination [2], and how to use several tools at your disposal in order to improve your memory. It is free, btw.

    [1] https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

    [2] https://alexvermeer.com/getmotivated/

  3796. Why time management is ruining our lives 2016-12-25 04:30:21 austinl
    > “This topic of productivity induces the worst kind of procrastination, because it feels like you’re doing work, but I was producing stuff that had the express purpose of saying to people, ‘Look, come and see how to do your work, rather than doing your work!’”

    Outside of email, I often get carried away with setting up a system for doing work instead of actually doing work. If I know I have a lot to do, I'll spend time thinking about how I might organize it in a list and track my progress. Sometimes I even open the App Store and look through more to-do apps!

    Something I've settled on now is making a list (usually in an app called Clear), then going through it once a day and putting it on my calendar.

    Putting things on my calendar has helped a lot. I think, "this is the time I've set aside to get this thing done. I'm not going to focus on anything else but this for the next 30min/1hr". It also makes me feel less guilty about relaxing when I've got nothing scheduled.

  3797. Why time management is ruining our lives 2016-12-25 06:05:42 JW_00000
    You've just added an item to your to-do list to organize your to-do list. Isn't this the exact thing the article was criticising?

    > "This topic of productivity induces the worst kind of procrastination, because it feels like you’re doing work, but I was producing stuff that had the express purpose of saying to people, ‘Look, come and see how to do your work, rather than doing your work!’"

  3798. Why time management is ruining our lives 2016-12-25 07:35:05 BN1978
    The article has a right to its opinion. I don't agree with all in the article. In the real life, most of the time, the truth isn't black or white. Is improving my organization/time-management system really kind of procrastination? Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Again, it depends.

  3799. Why time management is ruining our lives 2016-12-25 08:30:03 Symbiote
    I have a croon job, which adds "reorganise Trello to do list" to my Trello to do list.

    The point being, I'm only to do this once a month. I have a few other similar ones, where I was procrastinating with tasks, but now only do them once per period.

  3800. Why time management is ruining our lives 2016-12-26 05:36:13 rimantas
    Learning Hot to Learn course on Coursera (highly recommended) talks about procrastination a bit and they do recommend a Pomodoro technique to fight it.

  3801. Ask HN: What do you want to learn in 2017? 2016-12-26 07:30:28 gemalandaverde
    The struggle is real and I have been in the same position... Procrastinating and just being lazy or dropping online courses in the middle... I just found out about a site liveyourlegend.com and I will try to use the tools they provide to find out about my true passion... I knew that I wanted to be a computer engineer since I was 15... But now I feel very behind in matter of experience and knowledge... Maybe it has to do something with these feelings also it could be a good time to do some internal work and try to know ourselves more....

  3802. Ask HN: What are other minimal, all-content, no-frills discussion sites like HN? 2016-12-27 22:44:43 karimf
    Looking at the alternatives on this thread, I'm glad I've been procrastinating on the right website.

  3803. Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016? 2016-12-28 06:56:50 zeta_
    Not so great like the others, but I think I'm finally overcoming my procrastination problems.

    I've being constantly working on my personal projects and reading lots o technical books.

  3804. Ask HN: How do you find time for open source? 2016-12-29 23:58:13 lhorie
    The great thing about doing open source work is that you decide how much or how little time you want to put into it.

    I have a full time job and two small kids. I'm usually out of the house with the family on weekends, and after work, I sometimes play video games or read manga. I rarely ever attend meetups or hackatons because I live and work uptown and frankly don't have time to be driving downtown.

    Yet, I still find time to work on my project (usually after the kids have gone to bed). I used to also do it on the commute when I took transit to work.

    There's really no real secret to doing open source. Working on my project is something I truly enjoy doing, so I often "stew" on problems and next steps while driving or eating or before falling sleep, and on the nights I feel like working on the project, I just sit down and do. If sitting down to do open source feels like a chore, then it probably isn't for you (and there's nothing wrong with that!)

    Like anything else that might get stalled by procrastination, every time you sit down to work, you just have to pick some small thing to complete, so that you can get into a roll.

    Working on open source to scratch an itch is also a good way to incorporate open source into your day job.

  3805. Dentsu CEO resigns after overworked employee commits suicide 2016-12-31 04:18:54 Cyph0n
    Haha, yeah, I get you. It's probably because I don't like spending more time than necessary when it comes to studying. I'm a really heavy procrastinator otherwise.

  3806. Show HN: JournalJerk – In 2017, keep a journal—or else 2017-01-02 00:01:08 cdevs
    I love it. So far the negative feedback is privacy but for a project that isn't at a full serious company point yet why is everyone else taking it so serious? Write some funny stuff about the day it doesn't have to be a deep dark secret, if that's what you want do it on your own.

    Also I enjoy the idea of mean services for procrastinators like me, if only start farm would yell at me for being late to pay my insurance would stop getting cancelled since I can't pay ahead and their site sucks ass.

  3807. Ask HN: How to learn new things better? 2017-01-02 08:06:22 dyukqu
    I too was going to mention this course.

    It is absolutely fantastic, IMO. Going through every week/lecture of it, I keep saying myself it must be an obligatory course for every freshman. We are surrounded with so many distractions in our ordinary daily life and most of us are terrible at habit formation. Procrastination and irregular sleep pattern are our most-common "habit". Long story short, IMHO, this course is a must for whom wants to form a habit, learn how to avoid procrastination / about the importance of sleep / how to avoid distractions and other relevant things.

  3808. Ask HN: How to learn new things better? 2017-01-02 18:28:29 throwaway_proc
    I want to strongly recommend this book on procrastination: https://www.amazon.com/Procrastinators-Digest-Concise-Solvin...

    I started studying (math) at university this fall for the first time in my life. I'm 32 years old. I have extreme problems to adjust myself to the workload that is required. The other freshmen struggle as well, but I have clearly more problems.

    The problems arise most noticably when I'm not subverted to direct peer pressure, that is, when I'm not sitting in university to do homework with my group partners. As the workload is (or seems) so extreme, at least for us freshmen, I just didn't have time to do anything else than sit in uni to do homework, often until 8 or 10 pm or even into the night when there was a deadline the next morning.

    What I should have done differently so far is prioritizing the learning of material over just trying to get stuff done inefficiently. I realise that these inefficiencies and getting rid of them are a normal part of growing up academically.

    The procrastination problem starts to show up most visibly in my spare time, where I have the time but just cannot bring myself to learn the material. This is where the book really helps. I admit, I just finished it and it will take some time to show results. The thing is, I knew for years (which I have wasted partially) that gaming, reddit, HN, twitch.tv, etc. are a strong negative influence for me. The book helped me realise just how bad my procrastination problem really is and it already helped me be more productive in situations where otherwise I just couldn't bring myself to work on important stuff due to distractions.

  3809. None 2017-01-05 15:52:31 erklik
    The best tool to procrastinate even more. Its actually quite fun to see crazy insane searches.

  3810. The 10x software development gap 2017-01-06 00:20:45 cel1ne
    I don't find the distinction very useful either.

    But I think that a 10x developer is one who knows all the ins and outs of the tools in his or her belt.

    Who will prefer a 10-year-old framework that served him well over an opportunity to procrastinate by means of reinventing the wheel. (I'm looking at you, JavaScript-land)

    And who doesn't fall into the "tower of babel"-trap, which is the believe that there's a universal language and a perfect way of writing a program or structuring a system.

  3811. Ask HN: What manual processes would you automate in your company? 2017-01-07 00:56:52 cableshaft
    Hahahah! You just made me think of creating a chatbot to answer people's questions about me for phone screen interviews, since answering the same questions over and over and over again has gotten me to the point where I sometimes procrastinate getting back to recruiters because I don't want to go through the process for the fiftieth time.

    "How much experience do you have with Unity?" <chatbot-version-of-me>: "I worked with Unity on projects blah and blah and....". "Tell me more about your leadership in project blah?" <chatbot-version-of-me>: "With project blah, I was in charge of X number of people. The project was completed over a period of X months and ...etc."

    That's what you're suggesting, isn't it?

  3812. Ask HN: Are there better countries to start my SaaS company for tax reasons? 2017-01-09 03:13:06 ryanmaynard
    This needed to be said. I think a lot of the problems founders try to solve begin as responsible research, and slowly morph into a means of procrastination. I have certainly done it. Fear of shipping manifesting in 'productive' ways.

  3813. Micro-Dosing: The Drug Habit Your Boss Is Gonna Love 2017-01-09 07:38:33 mistermann
    I am recently having problems with procrastination, possibly depression (I imagine possibly in part due to lack of progress), etc - are these sorts of things symptoms of ADHD, or possibly something Adderall/Ritalin could help?

  3814. Deep Work: A welcome kick in the butt 2017-01-10 00:53:15 lunchladydoris
    For me the Pomodoro technique is about starting, not finishing. I normally devise ways to procrastinate but PT allows me to fool myself into starting by committing a small period of time.

  3815. Deep Work: A welcome kick in the butt 2017-01-10 00:58:05 thanatropism
    When I'm in a procrastinating streak -- that kind of low-grade depression that makes you dependent on having some measure of fun at all times -- I will set an e.ggtimer.com for, say, 20 minutes so I can get some work done in a day.

    I usually get carried away and ignore the timer's end.

  3816. Want to Build a Side Business? Just Buy Great Domain Name 2017-01-11 01:46:27 rcymerys
    Personally, I think of buying a domain as a form of procrastination rather than the first step of starting a business. It gives a feeling of achievement while staying in your comfort zone (seriously, it's just choosing a name and paying ten bucks, how difficult is that?).

    What I noticed to work is reaching out to people, telling them about your business or project and getting their interest. Getting the first clients puts more pressure on you, but also gives a huge motivation to continue working on it.

  3817. Why I switched from OS X to Linux 2017-01-12 22:11:32 jeromenerf
    Procrastination isn't it? mac, linux, bsd, windows, even android or ios seem to work for some people. I have this feeling that if the trackpad quality and other osx niceties are a must have for some, they should just stick to it and move on.

    - everything sucks at some point - it has never been easier to test before making a decision - it is possible not to switch but to adapt and use different devices and systems - "switching' is not an life commitment; if it sucks for you, switch back; it is not an insult to the system you chose - when encountering issues, spend some time contributing to reports or wiki. Not a user but archlinux wiki is great.

  3818. Rust severely disappoints me 2017-01-13 09:12:01 eridius
    That's understandable, as long as you don't procrastinate either ;)

  3819. Ask HN: What a 2nd tier college student must do to be at par with the best? 2017-01-13 22:06:39 ravirajx7
    You're doing great. Don't stop your learning curve fall down. I feel that there are really very very less people like us in our country who have similar likes and views though they share almost same story like ours.I can understand the situation of student like me. I too am sophomore student at an Institute ranking way below yours but i feel it doesn't matter a lot specially in our field. I read so many things over internet like how i can develop myself up and so and so though i start everything i don't do anything good which i can show or prove to the world Trust me bro you can't match my level of procrastination. I haven't done anything except reading things over internet and i don't know why the heck i came here to suggest or advice you. But one thing i would like to tell you: don't let yourself feel down and fuck the negativities around you instead try utilizing and learning as much as you can in forthcoming years. There are hell lot of people who are there to help us out and internet is our best friend. I'm studying really hard to learn things around me and i feel you should do the same and make each second count for your better future. Good luck.

  3820. Regaining control of your attention 2017-01-14 11:48:58 ivm
    There are natural "goldfish" states during the day plus procrastination peaks when the current task is very unpleasant. Because of them I keep my phone in 3 meters from my workplace and leisure sites like HN - on a laptop in another room.

  3821. Regaining control of your attention 2017-01-16 01:43:02 laredo312
    Probably read them on a blog and made the connection later when I was searching for reasons why I keep procrastinating. Putting a convincing name to the mental force that holds you back gives you something to fight/say no to. Or you can pretend it doesn't exist and hope it goes away (doesn't work for me).

  3822. If you don’t finish then you’re just busy, not productive 2017-01-16 02:03:09 andersonmvd
    "You call it procrastination, I call it thinking", that's a quote I heard in a TED talk :)

    Leonardo da Vinci seems to be one of those who procrastinated/thought a lot.

  3823. If you don’t finish then you’re just busy, not productive 2017-01-16 20:38:26 LifeQuestioner
    "Under that system, things like polishing and refactoring my code (which can be a valuable use of your time, but I would frequently use them to procrastinate), counted equally towards my goals for the day, even if I wasn’t actually making any real progress."

    ...so set the goal before you start your Pomodo task.

    That's what I do.

    I choose something I can get done in say and hour and start the task for an hour and try and get it done during this time. This also gamifies my time, and I have to keep redirecting my focus on the goal. I get shitloads done during this. During my 10 minute break in between, i'll reflect on the task, decide next goal, etc. And repeat.

  3824. 80,000 Hours career plan worksheet 2017-01-17 08:58:12 ethbro
    Related question, what's the opposite of sunk cost / escalation of commitment?

    In this context, your comment made me think about the counter point, i.e. "I'll be able to make that decision later". Is there a name for procrastination bias?

  3825. An Inferno on the Head of a Pin 2017-01-18 14:17:06 Theodores
    My hunch is that you opened up a Chromebook Pixel (2013). I thought about it but decided against 'mutilating' the design classic that is the original Pixel, stepped back from the edge and bought an Acer 14" full HD Chromebook with 4Gb RAM for £250.

    One thing though - sound. This only works on HDMI which again is a feature - I can't procrastinate with videos. Installing 'WinZip' on a PC back in the day when I used 'Windows' was harder and certainly more fraught with danger.

  3826. PSA: LastPass Does Not Encrypt Everything in Your Vault 2017-01-20 02:59:07 Flimm
    Here's the draft, which as you can see, isn't very polished (without the screenshots). I think you can see why I've procrastinated on it. Also, I have reported a couple of the issues to LastPass, and they've acknowledged one and fixed none.

    - Clicking "Export CSV" does absolutely nothing

    - If you have more than one two-factor device, it forces you to use the Yubikey, you can't log in with an alternative second factor

    - Asked me to log in, and then when I logged in, it complained that I was already logged in, and forced me to log in again

    - You can't have individually shared items within a shared folder

    - The UI for permissions is confusing, checkboxes should grant permissions, not take them away

    - Moving an item gives this error: "Sorry, this request is taking longer than normal", but the edit dialog stays as it is

    - Just because you've added someone to a shared folder doesn't mean they have access to all the items, they may only have access to a whitelist or a blacklist, it's not clear which until you click through

    - There's a "(none)" folder, which is confusing, as you can still select the parent folder.

    - The free trial of Teams expired, but no visible effect on anything

    - On Dec 21, 2016, I get this message: [screenshot]

    - When you convert a folder to a shared folder, you get this message, which is not true: [screenshot]

    - I get this error after sharing, even though "Shared-Email" does not exist, as I just deleted it! [screenshot]

    - LastPass Android doesn't let you edit stuff offline

    - LastPass browser extension prompts me for Yubikey more frequently then every 30 days, despite ticking "30 days"

    - Keyboard shortcuts just don't seem to work on Firefox on macOS. Also, the help documentation doesn't mention that the defaults seem to be different.

    - "Find duplicates" didn't find duplicates, one when one was in a shared folder and the other wasn't.

    - This error message when I try to share something: [screenshot]

    - When a user in the team forgets their password, they get removed from the team for some reason, without notifying admins.

    - When trying to use LastPass on Safari, I get this error: "Something blocked LastPass"

    - After creating a shared folder, I get this error. It's very unclear what cancel is meant to do. What is actually does is cause a spinner to appear for ages, then for an error message to appear saying the "request timed out", then a folder called "Shared-Email" to be created which is empty.

    - Searching for an email address simply doesn't work

    - This is so confusing. My trial has ended... [screenshot]

    - I changed a permission, and I got this email. What is "Super Admin Shared Folders"? [screenshot]

    - When I tried to add a user to LastPass Teams, I got this error message: "error: undefined" [screenshot]

    - The users have a circle next to them with a letter in the middle, representing the first letter of the email address (not the first letter of the first name!)

    - It added person X, but then forgot her after she attempted to add a personal account, and none of the passwords showed up

    - It forget X's full name

    - If you invite someone by accident to a LastPass team, there is no way to uninvite them, until they have accepted the invitation

    - If you invite someone to join LastPass Team and they already have an account, the only way to join is by clicking on the link in the email. If the email ends up in Spam (which it did for us), you are not notified in any other way (for instance, when logging in to lastpass.com)

    - If one of the admins make another user an admin, none of the existing admins are notified

  3827. Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky 2017-01-20 03:08:35 ergothus
    I see luck even within those fundamentals. I'm pretty successful, and I'm aware of how generally lazy and procrastinating I am. Perhaps it's Imposter Syndrome, but while I can point to some areas where my work ethic or effort is greater than some, I definitely don't think these are better than some other friends and peers that I'm clearly more successful than. I just got lucky, more than once.

  3828. Ask HN: Why productivity matters to you? 2017-01-20 07:41:14 mattbgates
    Without productivity, nothing would get done. In our society, where we have tons of distractions, as well as the innate ability for procrastination, it should be priority to set goals in order to accomplish things, even if it is just one or two things a day. If you want something in life, you have to go for it. Very few people get lucky and are given handouts.

  3829. Ask HN: What is your best method to learn new things? 2017-01-21 00:22:07 dontJudge
    Reading a book is a recipe for procrastination. I just don't have the willpower to read upfront.

    Build an easy 2 hour project in the technology. Like a basic bug tracker. Dive in knowing nothing, no learning first. Consult google as you go.

    I need to build something first, then read little bits here and there. Eventually sitting down to learn the "proper" way to use the technology.

  3830. Ask HN: What inspires you to persevere through adversity? 2017-01-23 06:04:05 arkades
    I keep a small list of Marcus Aurelius quotes pinned up by my monitor.

    A few that work for me:

    "Marcus Aurelius: Be a boxer, not a gladiator, in the way you act on your principles. The gladiator takes up his sword only to put it down again, but the boxer is never without his fist and has only to clench it."

    "Remember how long you have procrastinated, and how consistently you have failed to put to good use your suspended sentence from the gods. It is about time you realized the nature of the universe. Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it."

    "Every hour be firmly resolved, as becomes a Roman and a man, to accomplish the work at hand with fitting and unaffected dignity, goodwill, freedom, and justice. Banish from your thoughts all other considerations. This is possible if you perform each act as if it were your last, rejecting every frivolous distraction, every denial of the rule of reason, every pretentious gesture, vain show, and whining complaint against the decrees of fate."

    "Stop jumping off the track. You don’t have time to reread your diaries, or the lives of the ancient Greeks and Romans, or the passages from their writings that you’ve collected for your old age. Throw off vain hope and sprint to the finish. If you care about yourself at all, come to your own aid while there’s still time."

    "Be like a rocky promontory against which the restless surf continually pounds; it stands fast while the churning sea is lulled to sleep at its feet. I hear you say, ‘How unlucky that this should happen to me!’ Not at all! Say instead, “How lucky that I am not broken by what has happened and am not afraid of what is about to happen. The same blow might have struck anyone, but not many would have absorbed it without capitulation or complaint. "

    "How at this moment am I using my mind? This is a question worth asking all the time. So is this: ‘How do my words and deeds measure up to the ruling reason within me? And who owns this mind of mine anyway? An infant? A boy? A woman? A tyrant? A dumb animal? A wild beast?’"

    "How shameful and absurd it is for the spirit to surrender when the body is able to fight on!"

    "Everything – horse, vine, anything – exists for a purpose. Is it any wonder? Even Helios the sun-god will say, “I have a job to do,” and the rest of the gods will say the same. So what will you say? “I’m here to have a good time?” The very thought is beneath contempt."

    "Attend to the matter at hand, whether it be an object, an action, a moral principle, or the meaning of what is being said. You get what you deserve because you would rather become good tomorrow than do good today."

    "In the make-up of a rational being, I can see no virtue incompatible with justice, but I do find a virtue at odds with pleasure: self-control."

    And a bit of a longer one:

    “In the morning, when you can’t get out of bed, tell yourself: “I’m getting up to do the work only a man can do. How can I possibly hesitate or complain when I’m about to accomplish the task for which I was born? Was I made for lying warm in bed under a pile of blankets? ‘But I enjoy it here’. Was it for enjoyment you were born? Are you designed to act or to be acted upon? Look at the plants, sparrows, ants, spiders and bees, all busy at their work, the work of welding the world. Why should you hesitate to do your part, the part of a man, by obeying the law of your own nature? ‘Yes, but nature allows for rest, too.’ True, but rest – like eating and drinking – has natural limits. Do you disregard those limits as well? I suppose you do, although when it comes to working you are quick to look for limits and do as little as possible. You must dislike yourself. Otherwise, you’d like your nature and the limits it imposes. At the same time, you’d recognize that enjoyment is meant to be found in work too and that those who enjoy their work become totally absorbed in it, often forgetting to eat and drink and seek other forms of enjoyment. Do you think less of your life’s work than the sculptor does his sculpting, the dancer his dancing, the miser h is money, or the star his stardom? They gladly forgo food and sleep to pursue their ends. To you, does the work of building a better society seem less important, less deserving of your devotion?”

  3831. How I got my attention back 2017-01-23 14:17:08 maus42
    >[...] Five months into it and I was fully hooked. I had complete farmer empathy. I set a goal—some level, some league that seemed just on the edge of “enough.” Make it over that line and I’d pull the plug. What makes Clash of Clans so treacherous is that you are always building, sculpting. Five months of work is really five months of work. Each additional day of play makes it that much more difficult to abandon.

    >As I got closer to my goal — that mythical league on the horizon — I felt the algorithms turn on me. I sensed they knew I had a goal, and they turned that goal into an unobtainable carrot. Was I being paranoid? Maybe. The last day I played, I played for ten hours straight. Play the game slowly, a few minutes a day over months, and the algorithms are insidious. Play the game in a manic burst, and suddenly the algorithms feel laid bare. I spent only $40 over those five months, but those last ten hours were grueling. The closer I got to the goal, the more the algorithm would knock me down, set me up with what appeared to be easy wins only to have me lose. Disheartened, I’d try again, this time beating someone against whom I should have lost. Over and over this continued. It was so perfectly tuned to my most primitive set of chemical desires that it was actually beautiful — a thing of beauty. I could feel it moving beneath the screen. Its tendrils and my neurons moving with an eerie synchronicity. But of course, the lock-step relationship was weighted heavily towards the house; just as victory was once again in sight, I was back to my position ten moves and an hour prior. Where did it end?

    I believe these problems are a major problem for the society. There is far more and far easier opportunities to procrastinate than before, and the net result is that the quoted stuff above is what the people do instead of doing useful stuff. When before did you have a combined one-armed bandit and casino inside your pocket, and it was acceptable to regularly take break from your work -- heck, even middle of conversation with other people -- to visit one of those?

    And then people talk like developing even more insidious casinos is the future of software industry, the thing where the VCs invest.

    Economy should not grow for the sake of the ever larger GDP per capita number. I'm not advocating for planned economy, but it should matter what kind of things, including what kind of entertainment and other luxuries, are being produced.

  3832. Ask HN: What inspires you to persevere through adversity? 2017-01-24 03:33:40 delinhabit
    Reading through what you said, it reminded me about how the Learning how to Learn Course [1] tackles procrastination. Basically the way I understood it (hopefully I did it right), if you focus on the product (ie. the final goal), our brain activates the pain sensors which make us look for other activities that will be more fun to do. The suggestion is to focus on the process (or system) that will eventually get you to the goal, using small periods of focused attention that can be individually rewarded (like spending some time doing relaxing and/or fun activities after focusing on the task).

    [1] https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

  3833. Create systems that make it easy for you to succeed 2017-01-24 06:50:51 hammocks
    Add: Here is an example of values-first, since it's missing from this discussion of mostly systems vs. goals. It comes from Leo Babauta at zenhabits.net, and he refers to values as intentions:

    Focus on intentions rather than goals. As you might know, I experimented with giving up goals after being very focused on goals for years. It was liberating, and it turns out, you don’t just do nothing if you don’t have a goal. You get up and focus on what you care about. Read more here. Instead, I’ve found it useful to focus less on the destination (goal) and instead focus on what your intention for each activity is. If you’re going to write something … instead of worrying about what the book will be like when you’re done, focus on why you want to write in the first place. If you are doing something out of love or to help others , for example, then you are freed from it needing to turn out a certain way (a goal) and instead can let it turn out however it turns out. I’ve found this way of working and living to be freeing and less prone to anxiety or procrastination.

  3834. Ask HN: How to finish personal projects? 2017-01-26 12:59:22 GregBuchholz
    Do people find it worth the time to read books on productivity like Getting Things Done, Eat that Frog, etc.? And learning more about things like Org mode? Or are those essentially procrastination enablers? Is see that most people are working on software personal projects. Anyone have thoughts getting "hardware" projects done?

  3835. Ask HN: How to finish personal projects? 2017-01-26 15:49:34 rak00n
    If you're procrastinating your brain is telling you it's not important. You can push yourself with motivational tricks but you might won't get anywhere.

    It might be better to get some value out of it and/or convince your brain why it's worth doing.

  3836. Ask HN: Do you keep a personal journal? 2017-01-27 00:45:00 cel1ne
    I'll answer these questions one by one:

    > Do you keep a personal journal?

    For the last two years I've written a journal entry almost every day. Some days I didn't write, like during travels, but I added information about these days afterwards. Sometimes those entries were pages long and contained conversations or dreams, sometimes it was just: "1. Dezember - 3. Dezember: much work, travelled to Budapest"

    I stopped writing about three weeks ago.

    > If yes, do you find it useful? > When journaling, do you try to track any specific aspects of your life or just write about anything that is currently occupying your mind?

    My purpose of the journal was to keep track of my motivation and good mood, so I put mostly positively worded events in there, like "* Went to training, despite mismotivation of the last days". I also recorded things that I never / seldom do.

    It served that purpose well. I don't need it anymore, that's why I stopped, but I'll probably pick it up again someday.

    > What tools would you recommend?

    Plaintext Files. Or MacOS Notes. It doesn't matter really. Finding the perfect journal is procrastination to prevent having to write a journal.

    > Is there any specific methodology that you follow?

    Write an entry for every single day, no matter when, no matter how short it is (but make it at least one grammatically correct sentence). If you forget, just write the entry for yesterday. Mark the entry with date and time.

    > Any advice on how to get the most out of personal journaling?

    After doing it for a while, you will develop a feeling about whether and how it benefits you. Follow that feeling.

    Apart from that: Keeping a journal will always enable you to reconstruct and remember details of your life 10 years from now. One key sentence is often enough to help you remember the day.

    That is why I'm going to pick it up again.

  3837. Ask HN: Do you keep a personal journal? 2017-01-27 01:17:29 Starwatcher2001
    I've been keeping one since 4th Feb 2008. It's simply a Word document stored on an encrypted drive. Currently 153 pages, with my last entry 5 days ago.

    It's intended for my eyes only. I record my moods, personal battles, health and weight information, self-development. I record snippets from good books, attempts to implement changes in my life, what happened and why.

    It's a real eye-opener to look back over the years and see myself hitting the same problems over and over, such as overeating and procrastination.

    Occasionally I distill all the positive, uplifting and useful bits into a "Highlights" document, which is really good to dip into when I need self-motivation. Whilst reading books and articles by others can be useful, there's nothing like reading your own advice from years ago, and re-living your victories, to get yourself back on track.

    I recommend it, making it private, and being totally honest in what you write.

    Good luck.

  3838. Ask HN: Would you pay for a “boss as a service”? 2017-01-27 17:08:58 Micoloth
    Of course you have already thought about the part where for a person who tends to procrastination, the whole point of having a boss is authority. There is no authority if he is paying you, and if he can play that game in his mind, he can proably also do it on his own.

    But even assuming you have this sorted out, i wonder, how would you pull off the "asking non-obvious questions" thing? You have to be smart AND knowing the topic to make non-obvious questions. Do you plan to hire enough well-educated people to cover all your clients needs? Or do it all by yourself?

    In my opinion, there are enough problems out there that need to be solved. What is the point of people creating new ones instead of solving something?

  3839. Stop Checking Email So Often (2015) 2017-01-27 20:31:09 vbezhenar
    Pomodoro designed to solve procrastination issues, when you're spending time watching cats on youtube instead of starting to work. If you have no problems starting to work, you don't need pomodoro, just do your work.

  3840. Stop Checking Email So Often (2015) 2017-01-27 20:53:45 Veen
    There are trade offs to using pomodoro, but I find it's worth it. I get more work done with it than without it even taking into consideration distraction and switching costs.

    I might be annoyed to be interrupted when I'm in the zone, but I don't procrastinate or lose focus during work intervals — being interrupted every 25 minutes is better than spending those 25 minutes scrolling through Reddit or HN.

    Also, if a session ends and I'm really focused, I just ignore it and carry on working. Pomodoro is a framework, not a straitjacket.

  3841. Ask HN: I don't think I can finish college 2017-01-28 01:00:32 gcheong
    Unless you have some alternative better opportunity then finishing even at just a passing level will probably be worth it in the long run than dropping out completely. At least you will have finished! You know you can do well as you have done well before but everything boils down to whether or not you can perform despite your feelings of anxiety, depression, panic, boredom etc. There is a formal therapy that has been developed around this idea called ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy). The founder of it, Stephen Hayes, wrote a practical book on it titled "Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life" which is worth reading. Russ Harris is also a pretty active writer in this area and has several books on the subject. Procrastination-wise Timothy Pychyl's book "Solving the Procrastination Puzzle" is probably the best book on current methods of overcoming procrastination tendencies. Both of these people are professors and actively do research on their respective fields of study to scientifically validate their ideas. Coincidentally enough I just came across a podcast http://www.myownworstenemy.org that interviewed both of these people in the latest two episodes. Worth a listen. I wish I had these tools when I was struggling with these problems 20 years ago (and still do, I don't think the struggle will ever go away) but I managed to get through and do OK and I believe you can too.

  3842. I Only Work Remotely 2017-01-30 23:33:56 intoverflow2
    > Like the author of the article, I too am not a morning person - people may scoff at this, but it's a real thing. Before noon I am almost useless, the proverbial bear with a sore head.

    Barely done an ounce of work before 11:00 in my entire working life. At home at least I can ease into it and work later comfortably. While I'm working in an office there is always someone super focused on how many bums are on seats at 9:30 every morning (even in places with flexible hours this always seems to inevitably happen at some point). So I'm forced to under sleep and just procrastinate for the first few hours of the day to keep them happy.

    Not to mention get stressed while trying to fall asleep because I'm scared of oversleeping.

  3843. More than one million people will work from coworking spaces in 2017 2017-01-31 07:38:19 prawn
    Ours are proper walls with two sheets of gyprock (which I think you call drywall). People also take as many phone calls as possible away from their desks in the meeting room or kitchen. I find that it works well for me.

    For every minute I might lose being distracted by someone chatting, I gain back another time by feeling pushed to work. If I'm at home, it's too easy to get up looking for snacks to procrastinate.

  3844. Learning how to lose weight and avoid being judgemental 2017-02-02 18:36:50 eru
    Not sure whether it does, but the extra information probably doesn't hurt.

    Some people suggest taking a picture of everything you eat, too. Forces you to stop and take the picture _before_ --- one can procrastinate on recording calorie entries in a journal, but you can't procrastinate on the picture.

  3845. To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics 2017-02-03 16:11:40 sametmax
    It is part of the curriculum in France.

    The problem I got with philosophy is that it's supposed to be applied knowledge. But it's always consumed as an intellectual one.

    As a result, the smartest philosophy lovers that I know are incredibly unhappy. They know so many things. But knowing something doesn't mean you are able to do anything about it.

    Some becomes cynical. Other become depressed. Other procrastinate to hell.

    But only those who actually take the knowledge and try to act on it, improving themself in the process, ends up happy. And once they get there, they usually don't quote much philosophy anymore, except for humorous purpose or make someone feel better.

    Bottom line: it's interesting to look for the meaning of life. But it's necessary to actually stop and live your life unless you want to have the joy of Sartre, the energy of Rilke, the sense of purpose of Kant and drive of Schopenhauer. Hint: you really don't.

  3846. Ask HN: What is the biggest untapped opportunity for startups? 2017-02-06 18:12:41 cel1ne
    If your body had enough sleep that night (6 hours, uninterrupted) and you aren't sick or otherwise stressed, then yes, power through.

    Getting sleepy is your brain telling you to preserve energy. Only sometimes it does that because something about the work itself bores, infuriates, disgusts, or otherwise upsets you.

    That means getting "procrastination-sleepy" is your brain trying to prevent spending energy on the miniature emotional turmoil "breaking procrastination".

  3847. Ask HN: What is the best way to learn for the easily distracted? 2017-02-07 12:50:23 gukov
    There are no magic tricks. You're either getting something done or simply reading about getting something done, which is just another form of procrastination (http://jamesclear.com/taking-action).

    Oh, and humans can't multitask. It's also more "expensive" to having to restart a task.

  3848. Ask HN: What is the best way to learn for the easily distracted? 2017-02-07 13:03:14 tchaffee
    Coursera offers a course about "Learning How to Learn" which I found very helpful. Once you understand what's happening in the brain it can motivate you to do what works (e.g. spaced repetition). In that course, they talk about using the Pomodoro method for tacking procrastination and distraction. It works pretty well for me. Especially if you reward yourself at the end.

  3849. Ask HN: What is the best way to learn for the easily distracted? 2017-02-07 13:28:26 oldmancoyote
    I have ADHD and it has effected every day of my life since I flunked out of Stanford in 1968. I have a few coping skills that might help you. They focus more on things involved in getting an education rather than directly on learning itself, but are never-the-less powerful aids to learning.

    First: Some kinds of work are better suited to ADHD folks than others. Try to devise an academic career that focus on these activities. Writing on a word processor is an example. The non-linear aspects of re-writing to improve what you have written is a good fit to the non-linear thought processes ADHD folks live by. Begin with stream-of-thought writing, then re-write as inspiration dictates. Structured and Objective programming also is well suited because visual rigorous structure makes is easy to refresh focus with a glance following a distraction, and strict objective practice isolates a single function into a small package that is easy to complete before attention wanders. That programming takes place in a graphical/word processing environment is an additional advantage for ADHD folks. Graphical work like drawing or painting is easy to re-focus on for the same reasons. Any program that offers a dynamic editing environment that permits non-linear editing or permits ratcheting forward a task and easy review would have similar advantages. Planning any activity or writing and organizing notes using a outline processor works well. The point here is don't try to work like other folks. find ways to work like you think: non-linearly.

    Second: Dealing with procrastination. Getting started on a task is a massive problem for ADHD folks. Read "Getting Things Done" and implement it on a outline processor. You can't overcome procrastination if you don't know what needs to be done. Next here is a little procedure that works wonders: Sit down on the couch and work up a substantial feeling of guilt for not starting a project. Then make a deal with yourself. If you get up and just get the job started (e.g. scraping the dishes and putting them in the sink or launching an IDE and defining the variables) you will have pushed the task forward and will have earned the right to sit back down. Once you are started however, it is such a relief to have started that there is no way you will want to sit back down.

    I realize that these programs are not specifically target at learning for ADHD folk like you are looking for, but they do help quite a bit. For decades now I have pondered what sort of program might directly address this problem. I've been working on something along these lines for a few years now. It might help someday.

    Hang in there my friend.

  3850. Ask HN: What is the best way to learn for the easily distracted? 2017-02-07 18:18:09 tuna-piano
    Question (as someone who has been told by friends and family he has attention problems but has never been diagnosed with anything):

    What is the difference (or where is the line drawn) between laziness and attention issues? Do they have similiar affects (procrastination, etc)

  3851. Ask HN: What is the best way to learn for the easily distracted? 2017-02-08 00:19:54 Broken_Hippo
    I've not been diagnosed with ADD, though I show signs of it and mild dyslexia. Sitting in a quiet library with kids shuffling papers? That's a horrible environment.

    So the first things first: Figure out how to deal with the environment. I prefer either to be in a silent house, alone, but that isn't doable often, so I tend to like music or something like NPR, BBC News, and so on because that minimizes the effect. Sometimes headphones are a bonus.

    Classrooms are different altogether. Granted, I recently completed 2 years of language classes (Norwegian, because I moved here). The first year was difficult. Class moved slowly, and I'd get bored. I doodled in class to help me focus, and always took notes. Anything physical to keep me in-tune with the words. The second year was much better, as I was learning health-care stuff along with the language. I stopped doodling because the pace of class was on-target. In addition, we'd change activities often.

    Studying on my own has proven more difficult, as I procrastinate. I'm going to need to start being more interactive. My solution is more a work-around: I'm gonna volunteer, probably to talk to someone elderly that requested some company. I'm more motivated to broaden my language skills this way. And I try to do this sort of thing as much as possible.

    Frequent breaks are another solution, if you can. It isn't so bad to commit to 15-30 minutes to study something... Kinda like the advice they give to people starting to meditate.

    And that's all I have for now. Much luck to you, your struggle is real.

  3852. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 02:28:12 ccvannorman
    Except for the super annoying blue bar popping in and out of this horrible website I'll never visit again, great article!

    I have found myself inadvertently taking advantage of my procrastination in this way before, and it's useful to codify it in the language this article uses.

    EDIT: The horrible website is one I have respect for, archive.org, which didn't use to have this eye-gouging UX. I'll send them a friendly feedback email about it.

  3853. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 02:49:30 treehau5
    But if I put big seemingly important but not really important things at the top and then work on the bottom ones, I will know that I am doing this, and resent myself. That's the biggest issue with my procrastination: my self loathing.

    (Ironically, here I am, reading this article about how to do the things I am suppose to be doing with at least 5 things that need to be done before this week is over)

  3854. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 02:51:54 thomasahle
    > Procrastinators often follow exactly the wrong tack. They try to minimize their commitments, assuming that if they have only a few things to do, they will quit procrastinating and get them done. But this goes contrary to the basic nature of the procrastinator and destroys his most important source of motivation. The few tasks on his list will be by definition the most important, and the only way to avoid doing them will be to do nothing. This is a way to become a couch potato, not an effective human being.

  3855. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 03:21:03 jschwartzi
    I manage my procrastination by taking on more tasks than I can handle, and then letting the seemingly really important ones wait while I finish less important stuff. As an example, my apartment was never so clean as when I was working from home on a side job, because I would wake up in the morning and immediately clean it as a way of avoiding the side job.

  3856. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 03:42:32 jasperry
    I agree that the article's problem is that it depends on deceiving yourself, which, as you said, your ego always ends up paying the price for.

    For me, the most helpful thing has been to become more aware of the fluctuation of my own energy/motivation levels, and managing them instead of thinking I should be super-motivated all the time. My subconscious knows which tasks will be a pain to get through and I know I'll tend to procrastinate on those things. So I have to make sure I seize those hours when I have high energy and get the tougher things done. Then when I have less energy later I won't feel bad spending that time doing smaller things or even chilling. Hopefully this creates a virtuous cycle of confidence, which results in progressively more energy and motivation in the future.

  3857. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 03:48:18 notlikeme
    The only thing i feel about procrastination -- problem exist only when it receives your attention. Have no hunger? Keep it simple: don't eat.

  3858. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 03:50:49 schlowmo
    > "The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing."

    I felt that way since I know the word "procrastination". When I talk about "procrastiantion" with other people I propose exactly this definition: Procrastination is a way to get stuff done, only that it's not the stuff with the closest deadline.

    > Indeed, the procrastinator can even acquire, as I have, a reputation for getting a lot done.

    This is why I felt the idea of the "instant gratification monkey"[0] doesn't fit my definition of procrastination so well. It's not just a pet in my head, but also friends, flatmates and co-workers whom I doing favors while I'm procrastinating.

    Anecdotal example: When somethings broken in our flat, my flatmates asking me when I have much work to do, because then will be the time when I will fix the broken stuff instead of doing the actual (paid) work. There's also the joke about me that when I stop doing (paid) work the whole house will go down because I will have less motivations to fix things.

    But there's also a dark side of this kind of behaviour: When I call it a day and review the things I have achieved that day, all the things I got done can easily drown in the sea of things which I have not but were on the top of the ToDo list. Sometimes this is the moment where "panic monster"[0] is seeing its chance.

    And yes, even reading article about procrastination is still procrastination in the sense of my proposed definition.

    [0] http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastin...

  3859. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 03:57:13 felideon
    For me, the guilt comes from knowing I -could- do more, but never doing as much as I could theoretically do if I did not procrastinate, rather than the self-deception itself.

    And I don't think the self-deception for me is on purpose. It just happens to my natural, procrastinating self.

  3860. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 04:15:18 danm07
    I think this is kind of a thumbtack solution to a more systemic issue. Self-deception, in my opinion, never works: you have to force yourself to be slightly dumber than you are.

    The other reason why it doesn't work in the long-term is that you will always be working on things that are adjacent to what's truly important.

    Clairvoyance is a better solution. Ever get stuck in a circular argument? After a while, you realize its going nowhere and you walk away. Procrastination, at least in my mind, is almost the same thing. If I let myself observe the mundane things I do, I'll eventually get sick of myself and stop doing it.

    Success in dealing with procrastination really a question how viscerally you feel a dead-end coming, and also making the necessary adjustments to remove triggers if its difficult to stop yourself in the act.

  3861. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 04:27:55 xyzzy4
    Procrastination is often caused by wanting to do something but not knowing exactly what to do. The solution is to cut it up into bite-sized pieces and start doing them one at a time.

  3862. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 04:43:15 neckro23
    This is a longer and more lucid version of a quip I have about my procrastination:

    "I can do anything in the world... as long as there's something more important I'm supposed to be doing instead!"

  3863. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 04:46:42 afarrell
    > by taking on more tasks than I can handle

    In contrast to your experience, I've found this to be an exceptionally poor strategy during uni. It led me to stay up late and wake up early trying to get things done, then to fall asleep in lectures (I once had a professor throw chalk at me). It led me to ruin relationships as I imposed stress on others by failing to deliver on things. Doing this to people is a really shitty feeling.

    The combination of sleep-deprivation and self-loathing made it very easy to fall into the escapism and thus more procrastination.

  3864. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 04:54:09 tdkl
    >That's the biggest issue with my procrastination: my self loathing.

    And to self medicate, you'll do immediate gratification stuff - more procrastinating. It's a vicious loop and goes hand in hand with many negative habits.

  3865. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 05:01:36 urahara
    The only thing that helps me to be more productive is allowing myself to procrastinate as long as I want and do whatever I want. Because any other scenarios make me caught in an endless "try to force myself - get nervous and lose self respect because it didn't work - hate all work on earth forever" cycle. If I allow myself to do whatever I want and procrastinate as long as I want, I simply get bored soon and return to work. Or find better ideas what to do next.

  3866. Why do we procrastinate? 2017-02-11 05:06:52 tedyoung
    http://www.procrastination.ca ?

  3867. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 05:15:04 gukov
    The brain will eventually adapt and find a way to continue procrastinate. Self-deception might work for a while, just don't expect it to last forever.

  3868. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 05:28:17 buzzybee
    I use a to-do ordered by perceived energy and alternate between low and high energy tasks over the course of the day. On most days this means that I do a lot of low energy things and few or no high energy things, but as with the structured procrastination approach, I am getting a lot done, the only difference being that I'm not couching it in terms of ineptitude and avoidance.

    Edit: And I also had a huge issue before with concerning myself about the "right time" to do a thing. The right time is now when I have the energy and there are appropriate external conditions(time of day, weather).

  3869. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 05:40:21 youare123
    It seems the book the art of procrastination by Perry is about this kind of thing. Has someone read that book?

  3870. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 05:59:40 youare123
    The article is by John Perry author of the book: The art of procrastination, more meat.

  3871. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 06:06:13 youare123
    John Perry is an emeritus professor of philosophy at Stanford University and currently teaches at UC Riverside. He is the co-host of the nationally syndicated public radio program Philosophy Talk, and winner, in 2011, of an Ig Nobel Prize in Literature for the essay “Structured Procrastination.”

  3872. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 06:07:50 proee
    My most innovate times are during procrastination. My brain subconsciously looks for something else to do, and my very best ideas come at this time.

    When I'm razor focused on the task at hand (i.e. NOT procrastination), there's no "creative" freedom to capture a tiger by his tail and follow him wherever that may lead.

  3873. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 06:43:01 laughfactory
    I agree that we do need to give ourselves permission to turn off sometimes; and culturally we need to stop being so damn masochistic about work and such. It would be good if we all put more of a priority on LIVING. Work, no matter how inspiring, is still work.

    That said, I think a lot of procrastinators could use this intentional strategy to get more done when we are working. For instance, I can see how this might help me out. And hey, I'm a big believer in doing whatever works, even if it seems silly on the surface.

  3874. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 07:00:46 afarrell
    I recently watched the lectures from that class. I wish I'd taken it 8 years ago because it was a clear and concise summary of a bunch of lessons I'd learned through much harder ways.

    As far as thinking deeply about the problem, I've found that is helped by first getting your brain into the task by doing a pomodoro and, if you still feel the desire to procrastinate, either talking it through with someone else, going for a walk, or both.

  3875. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 10:10:56 spion
    Another alternative (still requires willpower, but significantly less) is to ask yourself "What is the smallest step I can take in the direction of finishing the task" repeatedly.

    It looks simple, but the answer to that question isn't always easy. Sometimes the "smallest step" really isn't; then you have to drill down to get to a smaller one. Sometimes its not clear which step should be first; a list of potential steps is beneficial in those cases.

    I think most procrastination stems from a combination of unclear goals and getting stuck; for me the above method gets rid of the second aspect and lets me move without having a clear idea which direction I'm going.

  3876. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 18:21:02 l1feh4ck
    Imagine you are doing procrastination in a structured way. Everything you do will go on to this algorithm before you even do it. So the combined effect of all these might take you to a new direction in life which you intent not to be in.

  3877. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 21:35:11 stenlee
    "Good and Bad Procrastination" (Dec 2005) http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

  3878. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-11 22:27:29 Michielvv
    Although I can see the reasoning, this absolutely does not work for me. The times procrastination bothers me is exactly in those cases: when there is something important but not exactly specified at the top of the list. I'll feel guilty about not working on it and then end up in a sort of limbo between the task I could be doing and the 'important' one.

    What helps for me is exactly the opposite: deciding this important task does not have a clear path forward and therefore go write down each and every question I have about it and need answered before moving forward or explicitly decide I don't have the proper energy/focus for it at that time and move on to something easier.

  3879. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-12 01:31:28 Scarblac
    Procrastination involves constantly telling yourself that you'll start the important thing, right after this one short little other thing.

    So the thing we're fighting is also self-deceivement, and that doesn't make it easy to beat.

  3880. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-12 03:17:00 traviscj
    Legitimately gone down this path and hack on it to procrastinate. It's now redis-backed, supports dependent todos, and has a decent command-line interface.

    No idea how I am still employed.

  3881. Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself 2017-02-13 01:42:13 spion
    The important part is that it lets you move, even if at much slower speeds. The small nature and unambiguity of the first step allows the possibility for it to beat procrastination impulses with lower willpower.

    Slow movement is better than no movement. Also it often makes it easier to pick up speed afterwards.

  3882. Ask HN: How do you overcome fear of failure? 2017-02-13 16:32:20 alpn
    I didn't mean to say you're lazy. I just think that the same advice holds for general procrastination, which is itself, often related to fear of failure, but could be mistakenly interpreted as laziness.

  3883. Medium plans to launch a consumer subscription product this quarter 2017-02-13 19:14:27 blobman
    I like Medium and I DO hope it goes ahead with the subscription model. It will make it easier for me to stop procrastinating and to read something more useful, like arxiv articles.

  3884. Amazon EBS Enables Live Volume Modifications with Elastic Volumes 2017-02-14 17:31:59 nidx
    I've been procrastinating on moving our app to aws because this was not supported, I was going to have to rewrite some horrible code to support using s3 for scaling (EFS is not in the new Canada region). This should save me a few hundred hours!

  3885. Python moved to GitHub 2017-02-15 04:20:47 Manishearth
    > Project documentation can suggest a workflow, but people who regularly contribute can optimize/change it for their convenience. What really matters is what works for the project maintainers and core contributors.

    Workflow for interacting with a project is different from workflow for interacting with email, a central tool to the rest of our lives. Git workflow is malleable. If I have to change my email workflow to contribute to your project, I probably just won't contribute, or contribute less. I'm a committer to gdb, but this is one of the reasons I dread putting up patches and often procrastinate. I have an unsynced MUA locally which I do use, but I still don't like it.

    Like I said, you can make it so that you only use the mail client for patch contributions, but that feels heavyweight. I've tried that (indeed, it's what I currently do), and it's really annoying.

    > I don't really see it as a problem. I have an email account that was provisioned roughly 8 years ago and the total folder size is around 1.2 GB

    That's just you, though. Mine is 7GB. On my current laptop that doesn't matter. I used to be on an older laptop that didn't have much space, was partitioned and dual booted, and regularly ran out of space. 7GB was a lot.

    > it's not something that I have to deal with more often than I end up setting up a new computer

    But we are talking about setup. We are talking about the setup time for contributing to a project for people who don't already use MUAs.

    > Perhaps having an email based process forces those who are willing to be more involved in the process, and discourages those who just want to drop code off and be done with it (without ever following up).

    I think this attitude does more harm than good. I've been involved with projects with more explicit mentoring, and this has always been a net positive -- for every contributor who drive-by drops a patch, we have many more new contributors who start off clueless but end up being valuable members of the community.

    > I wouldn't call it "blundering". It's a learning experience. If someone isn't willing to to put the time into independently learning (with assistance as needed) something

    Not everyone can afford to sink unlimited time into things. Making it easier to use things helps these people get involved.

    Besides, folks don't always approach open source project with the singular goal of contributing to that particular project. Sometimes they just want to do some open source stuff in the field of their choice to learn. If your project is annoying to get involved in, they will choose a different one -- they're still motivated, just not for your project in particular. Your project doesn't exist in a vacuum.

    This is a fundamental disagreement of opinion we seem to have here -- you don't particularly care about such contributors, I do, and I think that such projects (which try hard to keep it easy to contribute) I've been involved in have benefitted tremendously from this. To each to their own, I guess.

  3886. Go 1.8 Release Notes 2017-02-17 03:53:43 wyager
    > They are just types and they are here to help the developer write compile time type safe code.

    Type safety mostly appeals to developers with a low time preference. Getting a bunch of compiler errors is the opposite of immediate gratification. In a language like python, you can start running your program instantly and push dealing with bugs as far back as possible. You might spend more time, since debugging is harder and slower in the long run than making the compiler catch mistakes up front, but you get to procrastinate.

  3887. Ask HN: Non-technical readers of HN, why are you here? 2017-02-18 00:09:08 Dave_TRS
    While I am not a programmer, I gravitate to Hacker News the community seems to value smart, clear, concise, rational arguments, and sees through the BS. Because the community is intellectually curious, it is happy to discuss any interesting article that contains a smart new idea or perspective, which extends far beyond programming.

    Link Quality: Articles that are low quality and don't provide any new or noteworthy information are not upvoted by HN and as a result I don't need to take time and energy to sift through them. Almost every mainstream news site on the internet is half full of fluff, and the FB newsfeed is even worse. HN avoids this be having a community of smart people who care enough to vote, and also by not being captive to advertisers

    Comments Quality: Concise, rational, well backed up comments get upvoted. If I don't have a pre-formed opinion of a particular article I can turn to the comments to find the smart people who know what they're talking about, and then the best rebuttals right below. If I stay on WSJ I don't see that.

    Diversity: Not only does HN cover an incredibly diverse range of topics, but also a diversity of opinion in the comments. Most news sites are siloed by topic, and my FB feed is an echo chamber.

    Procrastination Value: Something about HN makes it the ultimate place to go when you don't want to do something else. Your brain gets a jolt from hunting through the list and finding something new and interesting to read. And it updates constantly at a similar pace to meet my procrastination needs. Plus the articles are good so I feel like I actually learned something compared with the Buzzfeed articles I might have clicked if I went to FB.

  3888. The idea maze of personal logging (2016) 2017-02-19 15:16:09 anticafiamma
    I've been using RescueTime (http://www.rescuetime.com) for around three years now, which pulls data from all of my workstations as well as my phone, but it lacks the ability to handle soft skill logging like social encounters and dietary habits with the finesse that pcmonk is working towards. Right now, I use it to track things like how much time I spend in IDEs, in StackOverflow, Hacker News, etc.

    For some previously unexamined reason, I am giddy about tools that enable me to surveil my own productivity and procrastination metrics, but feel slightly uneasy about trying to capture daily intangibles.

    I'm not sure if I would want to know how much time I've spent with each of my friends; the analytical side of me excises and optimizes, and I worry how that might manifest in negative ways if I start to quantify friendships and phone calls.

    Anyone identify unexpected truffles and/or landmines in the exploration of your personal logs?

  3889. Sleep Debt 2017-02-19 23:55:26 uhhyeahdude
    >Melatonin is also most effective at smaller doses, conterintuitively; try 300mcg instead of the more common 3-5mg doses. Sorry for no source on this, Googling around will help.

    This is not necessarily true. The effects of exogenous melatonin ingestion vary from individual to individual; quantity and quality of the supplement are but two variables, and they do not affect everyone the same way; in fact, they are unlikely to maintain a given measure of "effectiveness" in a single individual over time

    There are many factors to take into account when it comes to sleep quality and duration; melatonin, as an exceptionally powerful hormone and powerful antioxidant, is something endogeneous. Tinkering with endogeneous hormones while we stil make them is risky. Tinkering with those that are essential to daily life and well-being is not necessarily foolish, but it should be approached with caution and respect.

    Take a cycle of anabolic steroids for periods during which one is exhausted or overworked; it might work in the short term (if you are male, in good health, and exercise, it probably will), to better increase ability and recovery. However, there is always a risk of forever damaging one's ability to produce those compounds internally. This doesn't happen as often as one might think, because it is understood (both in the performance-enhancement world and the post-35 male world, that there might not be a return ticket - and there are now proven methods for preventing shutdown. Athletic medicine and its human test subjects in the highly networked world of steroid use have understood this for some time, and have made it much safer to take a cycle of testosterone and come back to baseline post-cycle; they understand the risks and are willing to take them. TRT patients are ok with the trade-off of meds-for-life in order to feel OK again.

    I think one would be wise to, at the very least, approach melatonin with caution and know how limited our understanding of hormonal feedback loops, up/down-regulation, cascades and downstream effects... SNP mutations... before taking melatonin. Better to take Zyrem. If you don't know what it is, google it for laughs. You'll never get a prescription; however it is one of the best, simplest sleep medications around. It has the advantage of being simple in a pharmacokinetic and MOA sense, along the lines of z-drugs or *azepams, without most of their most severe drawbacks. Excepting cost of buying it pharma-regulated, the unlikelihood of ever getting a prescription in the first place, and the fact that some people enjoy it to the point of habituation and dependence. The same cannot be said for melatonin, but why go for a master hormone?

    My sleep sucks, but I've improved it to the extent I care by incremental lifestyle changes. I'm back in school now, and I'm all over the place. Sleep when I can. Stay up until I know, absolutely know that I have done damage to my next-day performance. I don't know how else to get the work done, except cheat. Maybe that's the ticket? It seems like it is more or less accepted, if not spoken of.

    Oh, I take melatonin sometimes. I take it for it's antioxidant properties. Usually I take other things to clean up my oxidative damage, and have a lot of green tea, but a heavy dose (much more than recommended), every once in a while, seems to do me a world of good. I started taking melatonin off and on when I was sixteen, so I am fairly certain I've done whatever damage there is to do. I feel like crap when I take it regularly, however. Dark room, quiet, no screens, calm evenings, and if at all possible, waking up with the sun - for those in urban areas, this is not natural, or wasn't for me - but if you ge a week outside of civilization, without electronics - see what happens. I can't live like that all the time, but I sure want to.

    I'm procrastinating, and sleepy. Oh, parent was right about the prevailing wisdom, whatever that means, about melatonin dosage. Currently. And I'm not citing either, because I'm not a professional, just an experienced layperson.

  3890. Ask HN: What is a problem you face at work? 2017-02-20 01:06:07 wintryKat
    Count me among those unwilling to be featured in an email, but I made this discovery very recently:

    I have been dealing with a tremendous amount of anxiety for as long as I can clearly remember. After decades of a vicious cycle of procrastination and depression my ability to perform at an adequate level was entirely gone. I had this way about me that allowed me to appear very busy while accomplishing a criminally small number of tasks and never keeping any promises. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I lucked out by joining a team that was set up to enable this to continue.

    After almost 10 years on the team and some treatment for the anxiety I realized that I was performing at less than 10% of my comfortable capacity. With the anxiety lessened, I could go back and trace the path it carved through my life. Regardless of performing in a way that should have had me fired years ago I still managed to be, by far, the most productive, well-informed, and pragmatic member of the team. I spoke with my manager and confirmed that he believed all of this and that, amazingly, he was actively moderating the amount of work sent my way because he was convinced I was overworked.

    I had a sudden crisis because this meant that, as an entire team, we had trained ourselves to ignore how poor of a job we have been doing. If my 10% of capacity is that good then the entire team was underwater. Thankfully, my manager didn't try and deny it when I brought it to his attention. He also didn't notice it going on, but once I said the words it was like the clouds parted.

    I predict some staffing and management style changes coming pretty soon. I'll call that a happy ending or at least a hopeful future!

  3891. Scientists have detected a major change to the Earth’s oceans 2017-02-20 03:13:12 rdiddly
    People are so worried about "which bathroom" precisely BECAUSE there's climate change and resource depletion going on. It's a giant collective act of procrastination, orchestrated by an elite whose profits depend on keeping that procrastination going as long as possible. The worse it gets, expect all the more ferocious distraction attempts and non-issues presented as issues for you to deal with and get excited about. (See flag burning, gay marriage, gun control... Anything to prevent a realistic consensus.)

  3892. Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber 2017-02-20 10:10:07 z0r
    I used to do this sometimes in university. Haven't done it since entering the workforce, but they say sleep deprivation results in similar performance to being drunk. Not proud of it but I've found myself cornered into nightmare sleep deprived coding marathons by analysis paralysis / procrastination a number of times over the last few years. Alcohol might be preferable.

  3893. If Susan Can Learn Physics, So Can You (2013) 2017-02-20 16:48:50 botexpert
    ADHD is a real thing. Maybe not the same as procrastination and lack of self-managment.

    I've known ADHD people with extreme self-control (amazing time planning), persistence and will to learn but when they tried concentrating it wouldn't happen. Either something in their brain can't click to grok the subject or they get constantly distracted by their thoughts. The time they put into the subject is huge but they get so little from it.

    I've tutored several and am amazed at how well they try to avoid the problem by being better organized but their brain sometimes just can't focus on the important stuff which limits their ability to learn stuff that requires serious attention as quickly as others.

  3894. How terrible code gets written by sane people 2017-02-20 17:15:10 watwut
    Pretty much this. Sometimes pushing back is needed, but way more often "negotiation" is needed. It is unreasonable to expect managers to magically see into the development details, you have to explain, made plans transparent etc etc. When you do that you often (not always) find that requirements are negotiable and not equally important, e.g. it is possible to meet the deadline without sacrificing code quality. Oftentimes the compromise is possible - you wont get two week straight of refactoring, but they are ok with using 20% of development time for cleanups.

    I have seen developers "push back for the right thing" in a way that basically amounted to angry emotional outburst over things manager did not understood. The dude thought he is pushing for the right thing, but everyone else thought he does not listen to their needs, refuses to follow the company vision of the product replacing it by his own. (They wanted simplest possible functionality and fast, he was constantly adding own requirements to "make it better". When the same person pushes for yet another refactoring, management does not trust him.)

    The other thing to understand is that some experienced lead remembers teams that were given time, no deadlines and all the good stuff and then produced mess anyway, procrastinated and took long time to do it. I have seen that happen and I have also seen that ended in long wars over petty differences in style and opinions. Sometimes the mess is result of people doing something knew and thus bad decisions along the way. Code review alone wont solve that, because the reviewer may be the one forcing mistake on others.

    You need to communicate in the way that will ensure the manager that he or she is not in the above situation.

  3895. Lead Bullets (2011) 2017-02-22 03:32:03 gukov
    I thought the article applied to real life very well.

    You often procrastinate by overthinking and overplanning when the best approach to check off that item on the to-do list is to just do it.

    silver bullet == not acting in hopes to eventually come up with a magical solution

    lead bullet == the solution is dull but obvious, you just do it

  3896. White House Bars NYT, CNN, and Politico from Briefing 2017-02-25 04:27:58 anigbrowl
    It's good that you question yourself constantly - it's the only path to wisdom that I know of. But the downside of skepticism is procrastination and refusal to make unpleasant decisions.

    When you are faced with Hobson's choice (between unpleasant alternatives), a phenomenon economists call loss aversion inclines us to postpone decisions whose knowable outcomes are likely to be unpleasant. This actually makes things worse, but as the various alternatives remain relatively similar there's an excuse to keep dithering and hope things will somehow change by themselves.

    You're not alone in this. Note in weeks and months to come how trivial matters will become every more frequently blown up in the news as people grope for an extrinsic solution to the brewing political conflict.

  3897. “A state of flow can be achieved by deep work” 2017-02-25 05:01:26 splintercell
    I just wanna prefix this by saying that I am still trying to figure things out, all I am sure of is that I am onto something big.

    That being said, here are my observations:

    a) The days when I work from home, I focus better than the days when I work in the office. I believe the reason behind this is the fact that during WFH days I just make myself coffee and breakfast, and then start working. On WFO days, I have to go through a commute which increases my chances of getting distracted.

    b) During my commute, literally anything would trigger 'distractive thoughts' because my mind is so bored. Subway ads would do the same, seeing someone's book would do the same. The difference is, because now my mind is more focused, the distraction would simply be a long chain of thought rather than a pitstop in me hopping around from thought to thought.

    c) The fundamental idea why this process works is that you prevent your rain from 'getting excited'. Social Media makes your brain excited, a podcast, or an audiobook or a book is not as 'exciting' as 20 links on reddit /r/funny.

    So I believe that theoretically podcast, music, audiobooks should work (though nothing would work as well as doing nothing and getting bored, but as I mentioned, that might be hard), as long as it meets following two criteria: 1. The book, podcast, audiobook you're into is a relatively calm story, if the podcast is about last year's elections, or it's a real page turner novel or music is the latest album you just discovered by your favorite music artist then it might not be as effective. 2. The activity you're doing, should be long enough to last your commute. If you're reading newspaper, then you're reading 15 different stories, with their own dopamine spikes in your mind.

    d) Over long period I believe your brain will go through neuroplasticity and become calmer. I have already experienced that. There are some 'other' effects I observe because of this, but my productivity is so high. Not to mention I'm finally working on my dream side project and I stopped procrastinating regarding nearly everything.

    I hope this helps.

  3898. As a software engineer, what's the best skill to have for the next 5-10 years? 2017-02-26 02:02:53 analog31
    I'm married with two kids in high school.

    For me, it's not painting, but playing music every day. I don't always get to practice, but the days that I miss are more likely be due to me procrastinating than to actual lack of time.

    I also spend some time every day at work, doing some coding, even though I'm not employed as a programmer. Oddly enough, it makes me look quite busy, and nobody has ever questioned whether it's actually related to my job or not.

  3899. How to Be a Stoic 2017-02-26 09:40:35 cylinder
    What if I want to suffer more? I want to be less okay with all my procrastination, my job situation, my lack of willpower in the face of adversity, and more. I want to take my failures more personally - I want losing to be painful like it is for Michael Jordan, I'm presently too content with it.

  3900. Qualities that I believe make the most difference in programmers’ productivity 2017-02-28 21:54:24 thecourier
    "The number of hours spent writing code is irrelevant without looking at the quality of the time. Lack of focus can be generated by internal and external factors. Internal factors are procrastination, lack of interest in the project at hand (you can’t be good doing things you do not love), lack of exercise / well-being, poor or little sleeping."

    Get your ass up from the chair and go outside to exercise if you wanna reach Antirez levels of mastery

  3901. Ask HN: Is S3 down? 2017-03-01 02:36:28 mabramo
    Thanks for sharing. I overheard someone on my team say that a production user is having problems with our service. The team checked AWS status, but only took notice of the green checkmarks.

    Through some dumb luck (and desire to procrastinate a bit), I opened HN and, subsequently, the AWS status page and actually read the US-EAST-1 notification.

    HN saves the day.

  3902. Two-part Rubik's algorithms 2017-03-01 12:40:37 kranner
    Same here. I have one on my desk to solve whenever I find myself procrastinating out of anxiety. Not only does solving it quell the anxiety, it has helped me get better at detecting the anxious state before I get sucked into another, more distracting activity for relief.

  3903. Ask HN: What's the one thing that let you grow the most as a developer? 2017-03-03 23:20:59 jetti
    >Fear is a wonderful motivator.

    For me, deadlines are a motivator. I'm a horrible procrastinator but I do my best work right before a deadline

  3904. Ask HN: Does HN cause depression? 2017-03-05 22:30:50 manibatra
    The media or even social media always reports exceptional stories which can be both positive and negative. If you measure your life, which most of us subconsciously do against these stories ( positive or negative ) you won't ever feel great.

    I would suggest reading the book "The Subtle Art Of Not Giving a F*ck". A short easy read which gives actionable advice about dealing with negativity and procrastination which often are very correlated.

  3905. The Economics of Status (2006) 2017-03-06 10:48:56 paulsutter
    Ok then, I just deleted my bio, if that helps.

    As for HN points, that just indicates procrastination (spending too much time on HN).

  3906. How to Make Yourself Work When You Just Don’t Want to – HBR 2017-03-06 16:19:09 hmppark7
    I've always had a hard time motivating myself. I've tried Pomodoro, setting up schedules, and blocking all distractions. But none these methods seem to get Procrastinator-self to get moving. This article does provide some interesting tips. However, I've yet to actually get work done. As evident in me being here on Hacker News.

  3907. Any CEOs on HN? What do you look for on here? 2017-03-06 17:27:50 logronoide
    Hide procrastination with a false sense of keeping up to date on new stuff.

  3908. We Need More ‘Useless’ Knowledge 2017-03-07 02:00:24 js8
    I didn't read it completely yet but the opening sentence "At least I’m living; at least I’m doing something; I’m making some contribution" is resonating with me strongly.

    Coming from an academic family, I tried to do PhD but it was just 2 years of procrastination. So I decided, screw it, I'll find a job, and I am a programmer in a corporation since.

    It's pretty good, but somehow I wish I had more time to pursue things that go beyond one quarter. So I wish, like Feynman did, there was a place where I could do normal programming most of the time and yet when I have an idea, to pursue that idea. Google 20% time comes close (although it has really been dead for maybe 10 years), but it's still not quite that.

    And you could have that for any field, not just software. So perhaps we don't need ivory towers where people pursue basic research full-time, but something more balanced.

  3909. The 5-Second Rule: The Ultimate Procrastination Killer 2017-03-08 04:30:11 quizotic
    For those who aren't riveted by the gorgeous ... sweater ... the link to the relevant TED talk is

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp7E973zozc

    TL;DR: when tempted by procrastination count backward from 5

  3910. Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up? 2017-03-08 19:45:58 alkonaut
    I put my kids (4+6) to bed at 7. That gives me ample time every evening to procrastinate my hobbies while playing computer games.

  3911. Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up? 2017-03-08 20:05:12 moron4hire
    If, in having a kid, you don't suddenly come to a few realizations on what is truly important to you and in all the ways you've been wasting time, then either you're an ubermensch of productivity or you may have some unresolved emotional issues and I would highly encourage seeking counseling.

    I'm sorry, that's not meant as a dismissal. I mean it quite literally. There have been three things in my life that have improved it immensely: therapy, getting married, and having a kid. Everything else is window dressing.

    I needed therapy to learn how to evaluate myself. I needed to get married to start feeling comfortable with myself. And I needed to have a kid to realize my low six-figure web and database consulting business was never going to have a meaningful impact on the world and I needed to focus on my VR project.

    I've learned that commenting on Reddit does not make me happy. Playing video games does not make me happy. Watching TV and reading books doesn't make me happy. They are occasionally enjoyable, but to make these things a regular part of my life is just a holding pattern, a low-grade dopamine hit that just maintains the current state. What makes me actually, really happy, actually making progress towards not feeling depressed, not feeling anxious, is spending time with my wife and son and making progress on my passion project.

    And I say "making progress" specifically, rather than "working on". Going through therapy gave me a new set of skills on being more objective towards evaluating my own life, admitting to myself when things are sunk costs, not going anywhere, etc. I come from a long line of "creative procrastinators". We are the sort of people who put off filing taxes at the end of the year by cleaning the house. It stems out of fear of the unknown, but the point is that we are very good at slipping into the terrible habit of being active instead of productive. I've had many a project that I thought was "the one" that was going to be my startup, and I'd inevitably slip into micro focusing on technical details rather than keeping an eye on the goal and focusing on doing those things that make progress towards them.

    I got a little lucky in that I was able to find a great, small team of people to make that work my day job. It's "luck" in the sense that I had to be in the right places at the right time to draw their attention to eventually negotiate a partnership. But it wasn't "if you build it, they will come". That movie is about a literal miracle. I had to stop dicking around on code 100% of my time and start focusing more time on marketing myself.

    Quit hanging out in bars. Quit hanging out with the "friends" you only sort of like, but you secretly suspect are only in your life because they are in your extended circle. Quit spending all morning on HN, Twitter, Facebook. Be honest with yourself. You already know what is keeping you from progressing. You just have to stop relying on emotional crutches so you can discard them and focus on what is important.

  3912. Ask HN: Developers with kids, how do you skill up? 2017-03-08 22:29:24 mlave
    I was stuck in a seemingless treadmill where I was looking after my children, going to work, coming home and being utterly exhasted.

    I started going into autopilot at work and stopped inovating and spent more and more time organising things and less time coding.

    I realised that if I didn't change I would end up de-skilling myself and end up in Management or worse.

    Don't get me wrong about Management, I'm sure it's deeply rewarding if it's your calling but for me it felt a bit soleless so I had to do something.

    I now have a nice balance of family time as well as spend at least 5 hours a day coding professionally and around 5 hours a week hacking on personal or open source endeavours

    So what changed?

    I made things uncomfortable for myself.

    I started running a few times a week - suprisingly, this eats into more of my precious time but seems to make me less mentally tired, less grumpy with the kids and more able to concentrate when coding.

    I made sure I did at least 30 minutes of personal coding an evening to skill up - starting with katas then moving onto personaly projects, open source contributions or groking new tech. Once that is done I'm free to relax with my partner, eat, watch tv, drink wine, etc

    I quit my permanent Senior Development role and started contracting, this resulted in less meetings and more pure coding tasks.

    I always take the opportunities that allow me to learn new things.

    During the day I don't procrastinate (browsing the web, e.g. hacker news is limited for me) - I work hard on my programming tasks but not silly hard, e.g. I have regular breaks, lunch, etc.

  3913. Emacs org-mode examples and cookbook 2017-03-09 23:07:41 _jal
    Not sure if it is the same thing, but I find myself sometimes procrastinating by noodling with software features. It isn't the fault of org-mode (or any other software), it is mine, for not being disciplined enough.

    "Distraction free" apps don't work, because I frequently need to switch windows a lot and need some fancy features.

    Really, the answer for me is to work on staying focused. (Perhaps a lobotomy would help.) But it isn't a problem with my tools.

  3914. How to never complete anything 2017-03-10 23:44:30 J-dawg
    >I've met a 17 year old who built a wordpress website that generated $10K per month after just 6 months (though it already had tons of traffic in the first month) and couldn't write a single line of code. I've heard of hundreds of similar stories.

    As developers, we tend to think the technical stuff matters way more than it really does. I think non-technical people almost have an advantage here - they'll choose the minimum technology to get the job done.

    I've seen some really nice websites created by friends using nothing more than Squarespace or similar. I fear that if I'd been given the job I'd have procrastinated for ages over all the different options and ended up wasting a lot of time and ultimately creating something less impressive.

  3915. A response to “How to never complete anything” 2017-03-11 10:07:12 martincmartin
    The author of "How to never complete anything" seems like he was procrastinating. Procrastination is a kind of mental habit that can be hard to counter by just telling yourself to not get distracted. Yelling at yourself "JUST. GET. SHIT. DONE." is not making a dispassionate decision "you know, I'd be happier if I got to the end on my next project, I think next time I'll bang it out quickly then assess what I've got."

    There are a lot of good books on procrastination. Meditation / introspection can help too. There are much more effective methods than just trying to "force yourself" to not get distracted / procrastinate.

  3916. Show HN: Nomouse 2017-03-12 09:19:45 janekm
    The discipline of thinking before typing is one that requires experience. I suspect that many young developers are stuck with not knowing what to type, and try to find solutions to their apparent lack of productivity (a guilt-free way of procrastinating).

    I jest, mostly ;)

  3917. Ask HN: What are some good technology blogs to follow? 2017-03-12 21:21:04 eDameXxX
    The tittle should be:

    "How can I become a master procrastinator"

    OR

    "Websites that can steal all my free time"

  3918. Ask HN: What do you use to align your daily todos with your long term goals? 2017-03-13 22:27:45 PlaceFan
    I used to have a similar problem. One thing that helped me (which I won't take credit for): I categorize my todo list into four groups.

    * Urgent/Important (Fill out the kids' immunization forms for school)

    * Not Urgent/Important (Call old friend)

    * Urgent/Not Important (Pick up package from post office)

    * Not Urgent/Not Important (Wrap up loose coins for bank)

    It works surprisingly well, so long as you follow these rules:

    1) You have to constantly re-evaluate. Urgent and important are two adjectives that are extremely subjective and change over time.

    2) You absolutely must tackle tasks in the order above.

    3) Spend a lot of attention on group two (not urgent/important). You'll be tempted to put gigantic, overwhelming tasks on there ("Learn a new skill") as opposed to something actually accomplishable ("Go through React tutorial part 1").

    You really have to be honest about what "important" means to you. Especially group two (not urgent/important). Group one is usually pretty easy.

    I'll deal with the hassle of my package being returned by the post office if it means I can talk to an old friend instead. You may feel differently. Be honest about it. If you find you're not accomplishing group two tasks and procrastinating on them, maybe they're not that important to you. "Call an old friend" sounds like something important, but maybe you've both moved on and the friendship really isn't that important to you anymore.

  3919. WordStar: A Writer's Word Processor (1996) 2017-03-14 23:12:04 ycombinete
    Hey, Constructive Procrastination is a useful thing.

  3920. Vibrator Maker to Pay Millions Over Claims It Secretly Tracked Use 2017-03-15 03:57:59 brilliantcode
    The ironic and the most chilling thing is the people in the class action lawsuit aren't remotely aware their sex acts are already all recorded not by dildos but everyday appliances in the bedroom-microphones, cameras, now available to every hacker and selected government employees/contractors.

    Forfeiture of privacy as a free citizen to higher powers is absolutely okay but if my dildo starts recording how many times I've been penetrated with it and uploads it to the internet-pitchforks for all.

    Such is the mechanism of the common man/woman/ze. Incapable and unwilling to spend the extra brain power associated with understanding the underlying system but quick to get angry and play the victim when that oversight finally burns him.

    "A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance." - Some old white guy.

    In this case those who procrastinated in their acquisition of understanding and knowledge of systems and signed their privacy away, were unable to reverse their outcome when it turned out to be not in their best interests.

  3921. Chekhov: “Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions” 2017-03-15 06:08:02 thegeomaster
    >I would think that physical (i.e., chemical) addictions are different; your body requires that chemical. Alcoholism is a disease, AFAIK.

    I'd argue that this is not completely true, as in, there's a significant psychological component as well. I can give a personal example. I'm trying to quit smoking by gradually lowering my nicotine intake, or "cut down to quit". Currently, I've reduced the amount I smoke by several orders of magnitude, and I no longer feel any kind of physical need. Still, I procrastinate with actually making the leap to non-smoker, and I find that my desire to smoke is now driven by purely psychological impulses that I have a lot more trouble controlling than merely ignoring physical withdrawal symptoms.

    I'm trying to come up with a good explanation of all that, and you offered a compelling view on the subject―that's the only reason I'm so curious in debating this topic.

  3922. Why I’m throwing out React and going back to Angular 1.x 2017-03-15 06:16:34 oheard
    Sigh. You have limited time so get on with building your product... You're procrastinating by writing an article about your insecurities with regards to using old tech in search for validation. Just do it, who gives a fuck?

    Good luck.

  3923. Ask HN: Were you a procrastinator and could overcome it? How did you do? 2017-03-17 07:19:07 FLGMwt
    I was a terrible student in K-12 and then I college before I dropped out. Starting probably in middle school, I didn't do homework at home. I would do it in a panic the class before. Then in high school, I'd barely do it at all. I did well on tests so I suppose that's how I got by at all.

    In college, I got a part time job which I started taking more shifts at and stopped going to classes altogether because I was anxious about doing classwork.

    After dropping out, I went full time self studying 3D art and animation through DigitalTutors (now Pluralsight). I found myself more interested in programming so traded that for Pluralsight and Safari Books Online.

    Both 3D art and programming were immensely more interesting to me than Physics (which I was studying before) which I think influenced my work ethic.

    I got a programming job which forced me to learn as an additional full time job.

    I'm a relatively successful professional now, but I still suffer from devastating procrastination​. I put off launching an engineering blog for my company for almost a year because there was a step I avoided which eventually I did and it took 15 mins.

    The things which have been effective for me are the pomodoro technique. I use kanbanflow for this which also has a kanban board. I don't use this for everything, but I rely on it when I'm unmotivated or the task is really important.

    I also became more effective when I switched managers and made it a point to ask them to bug me about things. I tend to take on a lot of side projects and get them 80% done. Having a accountability (peer and/or manager) whom you actually care about impressing (or disappointing) is important, even if they're not in tech or at your company.

  3924. Ask HN: Were you a procrastinator and could overcome it? How did you do? 2017-03-17 08:21:43 dyukqu
    I was a (I'd call it hard-core) procrastinator. I still am a procrastinator, but I've come (relatively) quite a long way.

    I have never been a lazy person in terms of physical activity. I like all kinds of sportive activities - hiking, biking, football (soccer), swimming, working out, etc. But over years I had become very lazy for mental gym, a master of procrastination, developing a massive fear of intellectual activity. A few years passed, and I became so tired of myself not doing a useful cognitive work. I hated it - if you ever been a mentally-active person even in a childhood and in later years you realize you've become slacker, then you will hate yourself for not doing useful things. It's a good thing if it bothers you - it should bother you.

    What started my recovery from procrastination was reading. It was like going back to roots - I was an avid reader as a child, so, it really helped me to kick-start. At this point, I guess everyone has some kind of useful hobby, or habit, as a mental activity and if it has gone rusty, they should clean that up and start rotating the gears. BTW, I should also mention the "Learning How To Learn" course (MOOC on Coursera by Barbara Oakley). It helped me a lot too, as I like learning by listening and it motivated me to set a daily goals & complete them. Essentially, it taught me to follow a lesson/lecture again. Maybe this course (it's like "brain 101" or "how a brain works and how to use it efficiently") will not do the same for everyone, but is't not about this exact course - it's about to start learning again, you choose your own one.

    All in all, IMHO, procrastination is a massive fear of mental activity (rather than lazyness) and it's so harmful as almost all other fears & one should face it to get rid of it - again, like other fears, it frightens you as long as you avoid facing it. After the face-off, it's just downhill and you feel relieved. (And procrastination can never be overcomed enough and one should never let languor overtake them, IMO.)

  3925. Ask HN: Were you a procrastinator and could overcome it? How did you do? 2017-03-17 09:06:32 dvtv75
    Sometimes, there are actually reasons for procrastination. I've mentioned my disability a few times here, and now I'm going to again: as a result of it, I tend to avoid situations that make me uncomfortable, ones that I've not been in before, and just about anything that involves paperwork or having to read something and really comprehend it.

    As an example of the situations I avoid, right now I'm meant to get in touch with my doctor and ask for a referral to an organization who can help me with my disability. I've been at this point for the last 25 days - because I don't know if I talk to the office administrator, the nurse, or the doctor.

    That's it. That's the only reason, and like omarchowdhury says, it's a case of "just do it." But - and this is the killer - I have a really powerful compulsion to avoid it. It's similar to the compulsion not to climb a scaffold for those of us scared of heights, a strong driving compulsion that is difficult to overcome.

    Similarly, I've got a stack of books the length of my arm, all waiting to be read, but I haven't touched them in probably five years. I used to read a book every few days, sometimes two a day if they were short enough, but I haven't (re)developed the rule set that allows me to get back into that.

    A friend and I are developing a project (and game), and I haven't done anything on that in two or three weeks. Longer, if I'm honest with myself. Again, that same compulsion drives me to avoid working on it.

    I have an email waiting to be sent. It's almost ready, I just need to read it to be sure it's correct, re-write a small bit of it, and then I can send it. Three weeks.

    Instead, I just sit here, reading short but pointless crap on the internet, watching videos on YouTube, going off to work for a couple of hours a day, which brings me to my next point - that if I'm doing something for someone else, I can usually fly right through it with ease.

    I have no explanation for this, just that it can be a symptom of my disability, and I have no understanding on how to approach it or beat it, so I will be watching this thread with some interest.

    edit:

    Think I should point out that when I reply on here, quite often I'll forget to check and see if anybody's replied to me. When I do remember, it's often while I'm out and I'll plan to do it later, but then I don't remember. Not strictly a procrastination problem, but it falls roughly in line with it.

  3926. Ask HN: Were you a procrastinator and could overcome it? How did you do? 2017-03-17 11:31:10 salmo
    My procrastination is basically an anxiety problem. How do I deal with it now and stay somewhat sane?

    Most importantly I do a lot of working on my self-awareness, and recognizing when I'm not in control.

    Next would be medication so I can actually do something when I hit that realization. I'm fine without it until the stress hits and then it's too late. I've considered that maybe it's a placebo effect thing, but at this point I don't really care. I don't have horrible side effects or feel weird or anything I can't live with.

    I have to be extremely honest about myself all the time. If I'm behind, I say so. If I'm stressed I say so. It rarely bites me and it keeps me from having to scramble to cover a lie or exaggeration. Anxiety feeds on anxiety.

    Then there's all that agile bullcrap. I try to think in 1 or 2 week sprints depending on the project. Occasionally I look up to see what my bigger goals are and make sure my small ones make progress towards them.

    I have to work in a supportive team, so we keep each other on track and in perspective. We have to be able to cross-delegate so we don't get bogged down. It's way more fun to share in success and failure with friends.

    I get killed by long-term deadlines. Give me 6 months and I'll turn a shell script into a new language project. So I ignore the "cure world hunger" stuff and just make sure I'm making progress all the time. That way I enjoy my success rather than constantly feeling like I'll never make utopia. I focus on MVP, then MVP + 1, and so on. I never fall in love with my own work or some piece of tech, so I'm happy to scrap it when it stops being useful.

    Now I get a lot done. I have a reputation for getting a lot done in short periods of time. But I still always have to combat the feeling that I'm not moving fast enough and I'm letting people down. Talking with people who care about you (because they're friends, your spouse, or you're paying them to help) is the only way to really deal with that.

    I guess the common themes here are to be self-aware, communicate, and keep moving forward in as small iterations as is reasonable.

  3927. Ask HN: Were you a procrastinator and could overcome it? How did you do? 2017-03-17 12:37:16 aidenn0
    Figure out the reason you are procrastinating.

    For me it was ADHD; the stress of a deadline is stimulating which increases my focus. That's a shitty way to live though so getting it treated helped a lot.

    I see another comment where it was anxiety.

    If you only procrastinate certain things, you just might find those activities aversive. You can adress that, to a certain degree, by scheduling. Do X amount of the work you hate followed immediately by Y amount of work you like; it's a simple way of rewarding yourself for doing what you don't like. If all of your work is work you hate, prepare yourself for a different job if at all possible.

    Some people procrastinate just because they are poorly organized; any system (GtD seems to be popular) can fix a lot of this.

    Other times procrastination can just be a form of self-sabotage (there are many reasons for doing this; you think you don't deserve success; you are avoiding the greater responsibility that will come with success &c.). "I left it to the last-minute" is a simple excuse for doing a mediocre job and lets you avoid self-reflection for why you are sabotaging yourself.

    There's probably lots of other reasons for procrastination, but the one pattern for myself and friends who had procrastination persist into adulthood was that it was a symptom, and while treating the symptom can help in the short term, treating the problem is a better long-term fix.

  3928. Ask HN: Were you a procrastinator and could overcome it? How did you do? 2017-03-17 16:22:37 orange_fritter
    Procrastination is a holistic issue with no single fix.

    I am not a psychologist, so take the next 5 points with a HUGE grain of salt.

    1. Ask yourself if you are suppressing an impulse to perform tasks, or waiting the impulse out, or simply not experiencing the impulse at all. Ask yourself what dots need to be connected to actually lead you to performing the task. Some people procrastinate tasks that require nearly zero effort... often at great personal cost. If you notice yourself doing this, take some time to reflect(non-judgmentally) on your behavior-- its profoundness, irrationality, and what could be gained if it were changed. Think about the day-to-day reasons that a 5-minute task gets drawn out over 2 months. Rephrase your question to "am I accidentally thinking procrastination is helpful?" Procrastination may be a mood regulation technique; rather than thinking of it as "avoiding a boring task", ask if it is "the pleasurable experience of defying or hiding from an 'undesirable' task". When viewed through that lens, procrastination is a maladaptive coping mechanism vaguely like binge-eating or self-harm. The next questions become "why would I think procrastination is helpful?" and "why would I feel the need to cope?" Hypothesize your reasons-- the self-fulfilling prophesy of underachievement. The avoidance of engagement with real life. The assertion of control. What else? Be with these ideas for a while, and ask what is best for you.

    2. (rephrasing oldmancoyote's comment) 1/10 rule: for 1 minute of work, you earn 10 minutes of "break." Seriously, get 10 minutes of break guilt-free for 1 minute of work. It's a great deal.

    3. Present and patient. Practice mindfulness meditation to help with your emotional state and train your ability to be "present" in your current task. (see omarchowdhury's comment) Being able to be present without thinking about the future is difficult, but it is paradoxically important for your future. Also realize that by being fully patient and present in this menial task, you can sometimes be in a self-healing, meditative state.

    4. http://www.procrastination.ca / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhFQA998WiA

    5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_load (feel free to assert that cognitive load does not affect work avoidance) You may be experiencing a self-regulation failure due to high cognitive load. "Abnormal" brain chemistry like ADHD, bipolar, depression, etc., ... dysphoria sometimes due to a sedentary or unhealthy lifestyle, and social or personal problems will eventually sap your emotional energy and cause you to revert to coping mechanisms(see point 1). Invest in that emotional energy. Also blood sugar/insulin

    A Exercise B 1/10 idea C Therapy D Healthy Lifestyle E Meditation F Brain Chemistry

  3929. Ask HN: Were you a procrastinator and could overcome it? How did you do? 2017-03-17 19:48:35 philippz
    Procrastination doesn`t start at your work. I`m sure there are other areas in your life that could be better. Start establishing healthy habits. It will affect every part of your life and thereby reduce procrastination.

    One important point is your level of energy and a fresh mind.

    * Stand up earlier

    * Decrease your coffee consumption

    * Get used to cold showers

    * Eat healthy

    * Do sports

    * Stop using social media

    * Don't watch TV or series (make it a rule to only watch with others)

    * Don't listen to music all the time. Enjoy music. If you definitely need it, listen to some without vocals. Vocals are more distracting and so you are less focused and so you get less stuff done and so you are less motivated and BOOM, back on HN.

  3930. Ask HN: Were you a procrastinator and could overcome it? How did you do? 2017-03-17 19:52:35 vanderreeah
    Upvote for being the only person on this thread to have actually given a relevant reply (request was for people who used to procrastinate and have to some extent overcome it). Also I wish I could vote twice because - as a procrastinator myself - I've never heard it called "a massive fear of mental activity". But that rings absolutely true to me. Facing that fear seems to be the best route to overcoming procrastination.

  3931. Ask HN: Were you a procrastinator and could overcome it? How did you do? 2017-03-17 20:33:17 taphangum
    Procrastination is basically you being out of alignment with what you really want to be doing. On a larger scale that just that task that you are wanting to do at the moment.

    I've found that when I align myself mentally, spiritually and physically with what I feel I truly should be doing, procrastination reduces dramatically.

    That's a hard thing to do, though. Takes a lot of thinking and meditation. But it's achievable.

  3932. Ask HN: Were you a procrastinator and could overcome it? How did you do? 2017-03-17 20:42:23 iEchoic
    I've had a lot of success recently forcing myself to do something "boring" in the morning, while I still have willpower remaining, avoiding high-stimulation activities (internet/apps/junk news etc.) until later.

    After getting better at beating procrastination, the main problem has been is the feeling that my brain is totally dead and "heavy" after working on mentally-taxing things for hours - napping seems to help with this, but I can't always just nap whenever I want.

    Also Chrome plugins to block Reddit and HN (sorry, HN).

  3933. Ask HN: Were you a procrastinator and could overcome it? How did you do? 2017-03-17 21:37:05 neverminder
    I agree mostly and I am in a similar position. What I don't entirely agree with is that "procrastination is a massive fear of mental activity". For instance, even though I'm not a big gamer, when I procrastinate I can spend hours playing one of my favorite strategy games and strategy games require quite a bit of mental activity. I think procrastination is a fear of boring mental activity, something that doesn't provide immediate reward.

  3934. Ask HN: Were you a procrastinator and could overcome it? How did you do? 2017-03-17 23:46:33 laurentl
    I don't know if I'm a "real" procrastinator but I am definitely a "P" on the MBTI scale. This means I usually do things at the last minute. I can rarely manage to get interested in a task (especially a boring one) until just before the deadline. Also, I can't seem to do any productive work if I don't have a huge workload. (As an example, after putting off stuff all week long I'm now hauling ass to get everything done by the WE - despite posting on HN at the same time - and I'm fairly confident I'll get most of it done)

    The flip side for me is that I'm very driven by deadlines: I hate to be late (or more specifically, too late). So, to overcome my ingrained habits, I split up tasks and set intermediate deadlines for each subtask, not too far in the future. If I have a real, hard deadline I'll impose myself an arbitrary deadline the day before; this way I may slip my own deadline by a few hours, but I'll definitely make the real deadline. I may also sit on tasks for a few days (or weeks), until the accumulated feeling of urgency from all those chores to be done is enough to get me moving.

    It's more coping than overcoming, but I find it useful in practice, at least for my natural inclination. Taking an MBTI course really helped as well, it helped me understand why I behaved in certain ways and identify my coping mechanisms for what they are - I've behaved this way for a long time, but I always felt kind of guilty for having to use tactics to get anything done.

  3935. Ask HN: Were you a procrastinator and could overcome it? How did you do? 2017-03-18 08:12:50 webmaven
    > Just do it.

    Were you ever a procrastinator? Because that is something I mostly hear from folks who weren't. Sometimes people who think they are procrastinators are actually just being lazy, which is completely different.

    I don't mean that in a pejorative sense. Here is the difference, in a sitation here a task becomes larger the longer you wait: A lazy person will usually think "If I do it now it will be less work than if I wait until later", whereas a procrastinator will almost always think "if I do it later, it will only be a little bit of extra work".

  3936. Hikikomori: The Postmodern Hermits of Japan 2017-03-18 12:12:00 rootsudo
    I agree 100%! Welcome to the NHK is a great series, thanks to it, I was able to change my life around alot during my college years.

    It's sad nowadays the biggest trap we have is that our place of residence is too comfortable. Outside we have to cave into social pressure, wear clothes, behave in a certain way.

    Inside, you're free. You find ways to communicate, find online communities and procrastinate time 24/7 and your mind changes. Plasticity changes how you think and absorb information. Compared to traditional learning or talking, online information is instant.

    It's a hard cycle to break. :(

  3937. Ask HN: Were you a procrastinator and could overcome it? How did you do? 2017-03-18 18:15:04 danieltillett
    I became a really bad procrastinator after being a university professor (I am slowly getting over his). What caused this was being given tasks that changed 3 or 4 times before the deadline and/or were not missed if they weren't done.

    Administration would give me tasks to do, then change them multiple times, and finally do nothing if I didn't do them 95% of the time. I got to the point where I could not complete any paperwork unless someone from admin was standing beside me saying this had to be completed that minute or else the university was shutting down.

  3938. Ask HN: Were you a procrastinator and could overcome it? How did you do? 2017-03-18 20:15:09 mezod
    I am not sure I can say I have overcome it but I can say that my productivity has improved ever since I started doing little apps to help me be more productive, like custom todolists, custom kanban boards, etc. I've just finished an app to help me form habits ( https://everydaycheck.com )

    I've realized that if I do something every day at some point I don't see it as a task anymore but as something I do without thinking, like brushing my teeth, so I have more time of the day allocated to useful/productive stuff and procrastinate much less.

  3939. Ask HN: Where do you host your personal blog these days? 2017-03-19 03:23:54 Zelmor
    I guess it came through like that unintentionally. I had a bad time dealing with procrastination back then, where I was writing up snippets and thoughts on a blog instead of working on projects that really pushed me forward in life. Tweaking html and whatnot.

    I feel that most people crave attention more than they crave growing in whatever they are writing about. Maybe it all boils down to how I felt back then. These days, I read much more and write very little. It fits me at the moment, and I am better for not craving others attention and approval.

    Oh well, I'll stick to fountain pens for now. :)

  3940. I'm making 30 VR projects in 30 days to learn 2017-03-19 07:11:30 olivierva
    I do like it when people set themselves challenges like this. Clear beginning and end, finishing something in combination with iterative learning is very satisfying. A bit like a hackaton or a game jam. But this made me think, because in a way it limits yourself in what you can do with what you previously learned. The more you learn the more complex projects you can create and halfway through you can create something which doesn't fit in a day anymore; complexity pushes build time up exponentially. E.g. it needs some extra tooling for generating procedural content. So what I propose is instead of 'over the course of 30 days I will every single day finish a project', why not follow the Fibonacci sequence: I start with nothing (procrastinating), next a one day project, followed by another single day effort. Stepping up with a 2 day project -> a big 3 day project -> 5 day full blown project -> 8 day epic. And finally: a full 13 days working on a single masterpiece! (33 days in total).

  3941. Ask HN: Were you a procrastinator and could overcome it? How did you do? 2017-03-20 08:50:03 feydaykyn
    I keep it in check now, but it has taken years. What was instrumental: - discovering something I really love to do, programming - realizing what my procrastination always happens when I don't understand what is expected of me

    Taking these into account, I set up some nets: - started a therapy to work on the why - before starting a task, I try to identify all unknowns before running into them. If it comes from me and is not discovered while trying to accomplish the task, it's easier to overcome, and often not an issue at all - I work in programming, so I have a very high incentive to do all chores quickly so that I can go back doing something I love (not always effective!) - my coworkers/family know me and often check with me my progress on whatever I need to do for them - I know how I procrastinate and try to justify it to myself, so when I catch myself doing it I start identifying explicitly what I am avoiding and what would unlock me, even if I can't stop procrastinating on the spot. When I regain control of myself later, I know what to do and its easier. - I ask help when I am stuck for more than one week, and people has always helped me, for instance by doing the one bit I can't. Just speaking is rarely enough at that point - I try to sleep at least 6 hours a night, I love so much having energy and a working brain - I emphasis the positive consequences of my actions - I choose to procrastinate when I am too tired, I won't be able to do something of quality anyways, so I can enjoy these moments almost guilt free

    So in short, reflect on what is triggering your procrastination, and create various safety nets to catch yourself. If you have a problem solving mindset, it's quite fun to "solve" yourself. Try also to discover some solid ground within yourself, so you can use it. For instance, I can't stand boredom and if I procrastinate for too long, I get so much bored I am willing to do anything to stop feeling it, even doing what I was supposed to do.

  3942. Ask HN: How to overcome from self excuses? 2017-03-20 09:55:22 mattbgates
    Set yourself goals and accomplish them.

    If it involves money, write out how much money you can potentially make by not making excuses, and do it.

    I have been working on a project for a year and every time I lose motivation or find excuses NOT to work on it, I open up that spreadsheet to see how much my pricing is and how much money I can make.. and that motivates me to continue working on it and not make excuses.

    I also was pushing 260 pounds... and I said to myself, "Wow, I'm over halfway to 300 pounds... I really don't want this to be my life." No more excuses. Ended up losing about 80 pounds. Read more about that here: https://mypost.io/post/no-bullshit-diet

    Laziness. Procrastination. Even taking a day off. Totally fine. But for how long? Reward yourself with those things. Don't live on excuses. They don't pay the bills or get you anywhere in life.

  3943. How to Learn New Things as an Adult 2017-03-21 03:59:59 andai
    As someone who's still in the "dropped out" phase, this is tremendously encouraging. I can tell that I am improving in my concentration, discipline, catching myself procrastinating etc, but sometimes I worry that it's too slow and that I'll never develop to the point where I'll be able to complete a degree.

  3944. A hot bath has benefits similar to exercise 2017-03-21 04:21:48 jonmc12
    "hormesis" is the idea that a stressful thing in small amounts can often have a positive effect. http://gettingstronger.org/ is an excellent website on hormesis applied to a bunch of common problems (eg. improving eyesight, eliminating back pain, eliminating allergies, curing insomnia, eliminating obesity, stopping procrastination, overcoming addictions, etc.)

  3945. YouTube channels for entrepreneurs 2017-03-22 23:24:15 serg_chernata
    I share the same attitude and tend to push people into a mentality of just getting sh*t done. No amount of videos, podcasts and articles will make you successful. They definitely have their place. I am not saying this is all bad, but some people mistake procrastination for "learning". Myself included.

  3946. YouTube channels for entrepreneurs 2017-03-23 02:37:14 BrandonWatson
    The phrase I love is "procrastination porn."

  3947. LastPass: Security done wrong 2017-03-24 01:41:05 saosebastiao
    From a strict security standpoint, maybe all of this is true. But I see strong PR as a feature, not a bug...at least until password manager market penetration is closer to 100% than it is to 0%.

    Once you've adopted a password manager, you've limited the scope of potential abuse, and you've decreased the pain of recovering from abuse that does happen. Being forced to change passwords used to be a stressful problem for me, and now it is not. Before, I would procrastinate changing passwords after a breach, because I knew how hard it would be. With lastpass, I literally changed every password in my vault in less than a half hour.

    The PR matters because it's too easy to hear some bad news and give up on trying to be secure. If the PR prevents people from giving up, I'm all for it.

  3948. Ask HN: How can you frequently post to HN and also be a very successful person? 2017-03-25 09:16:04 mattbgates
    Set some time aside, maybe an hour or two a week, to just go through the posts of HN and get some ideas, information, or respond to posts. That is all.

    The rest of the week? Go about your life, your side projects, etc. I find myself procrastinating too when I'm working on something, and there is nothing wrong with it IF you control it and are aware of it.

    Imagine all the people using the Internet that aren't developers.. what are they really doing with their time on the Internet? Anything productive? Probably not. Are they scrolling through Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest all day?

    Then again: The Internet has two types of people: Creators and Consumers. Whose making money?

    I mean... I admit it: I'm an Internet addict. I am on it until I am exhausted. Don't get me wrong, I do things to exercise and stay healthy, but if I'm not outside, I'm on the Internet. However, I've managed to turn my addiction into something productive: I'm a web designer, web developer, web app creator, whatever name you want to give it. I'm always working on building something, in hopes that it will bring me some recurring revenue or even just some money to help pay the bills.

    I have my tendencies: scrolling through Facebook -- which I've now installed an extension to: 1) limit my time and 2) have to click a button to actually see the Feed (which makes me accountable for knowing what I am doing rather than mindlessly typing in Facebook.com and seeing all the technically useless information on my news feed.

    As for Hacker News? I do as I told you: 1 - 2 hours a week is usually plenty. Break it down to about 10-20 minutes a day. It can certainly be useful, but you have to pick and choose articles that interest you, choose things that you want to answer. There is a benefit to helping others and answering Ask HNs or even looking at the Show HNs. You can find programs that are helpful to you. You are helping the community out by seeing what they built and even subscribing to the things people do. They aren't building these things just to build them: They are practicing their skills and releasing products for experience or money. I have found that being on Hacker News helps you to brainstorm and get ideas or get you past a rough patch in which you are just struggling with something as well.

    If this still doesn't help you, get one of the Chrome or Firefox extensions that allows you an allotted amount of time to spend on websites. For example, I allow myself just 20 minutes on Facebook a day. After that, it won't load anymore. Just think that for every minute you spend on Facebook, they are making a few bucks off you and you are not making anything. I certainly am not knocking Facebook for their cleverness in advertising your account to marketers at your expense, that expense being the time you spend on their website, but they offer the service for free. The price of free always comes with a hidden price, doesn't it?

    But 20 minutes is usually more than enough time to procrastinate. The extension lets you put in the websites you want to block and you just set the amount of time you are allowed. 20-30 minutes is usually more than enough time to get your procrastination time in.

    Now that you are aware of your problem, do something about it.

  3949. The end of smartphone innovation 2017-03-26 01:20:29 jansho
    Wow, congratulations for the Kickstarter! I’m a bit flushed that you’re asking for my opinion, I am no phone expert.

    But okay, my opinion as a random consumer. I apologise if I’ve misread anything.

    You say that the phone is human-centric, but my first impression is that it looks very millennial. There’s a lot of mindfulness going on such as hitting the pause button and rescheduling tasks. The Kickstarter blurb also mentioned that new features will be added, like popular app compatibility. So for me, this phone is still a smartphone but with a specific flow to reduce distractions and build good habits. And that is fine!

    But if I’m honest, I probably won’t get it. I’m not bright (definitely not HN level), but my mind is devious. It’s what makes me such a good procrastinator, and no productivity app or technique works for me. It took me a while to realise that to address this problem, I have to really introspect myself, at all times, and adjust my workflow to it. As I get better, even if tiny and slow, I feel accomplished as a person. This, not the phone’s good-habit-designed flow, is empowering.

    If there’s going to be a dumb phone, then it has to assume that its users are like that already. That rather than a phone to organise their lives, it’s one that they can forget about until they really need it. Let this drive your design and then do the Apple thing: go radical and make the design so irresistible that these users are like Hell yeah, this is what I WANT. (Rather than need.)

    But! I am a random consumer, comfortable with spending Saturday afternoons in my armchair. My fully stocked iPhone SE makes me a tad hypocritical too. Stepping out of my analytical/cynical zone, actually the Kickstarter looks really good, and clearly there is great interest in it. I wish you the very best luck :)

  3950. Metacademy: How to learn on your own 2017-03-26 17:32:32 vezycash
    Learning on our own doesn't have to be complex.

    Learning via school works primarily because of the fixed, predictable and regular schedule dedicated to learning.

    Learning French on my own for just 5-10 minutes daily has taught me a few things.

    The amount of time spent on a subject is less important than having a predictable schedule.

    Here's why this is important. We all read, hear about people who have read tons of books, who spend 5 hours learning daily and want to do the same.

    And this is really bad. A recipe for predictable failure. You won't expect to eat five plates of rice because some dude you respect does it would you?

    In the past, I would procrastinate when I hit a mental block, or a difficult lesson.

    Now, I simply repeat past exercises because sticking with the schedule is more important than learning something new.

    To keep things brief, the most important factor to learning on my own is having a reminder because as an adult, my days vanish in a myriad of unpredictable activities.

    Without this reminder, i'll hit my head in six months when I remember that I was trying to learn something.

  3951. What do slaveholders think? 2017-03-27 01:38:58 paulddraper
    Eh. I've slaughtered animals.

    I'd procrastinate it too, just like mucking out stalls: becuase it's messy and work, not because of moral qualms.

  3952. Ask HN: A question for those who went to MIT/Stanford/CMU 2017-03-27 07:33:38 Cyph0n
    PhD student here, and I'm exactly the same. I procrastinate a lot (not good!), but I've been able to get things done. My current goal is to figure the optimal way to minimize procrastination...

  3953. Ask HN: A question for those who went to MIT/Stanford/CMU 2017-03-27 08:26:35 amorphid
    I've recently​ made pretty good gains at minimizing procrastination.

    First, I simply eliminated working on anything I didn't really need and/or want to do. I don't need to think about doing stuff I don't plan on doing!

    Second, anything that needed to get done, I scheduled it. For simple tasks, I just created morning and evening blocks of time for home and work. The repetitive stuff I do first, and then I work on one off stuff until I don't feel like doing it anymore. It just gets done in the next block. For example, scanning N tax documents is lame, so I scanned maybe a dozen in one block, and just did the rest the rest in the next block. For important things, I schedule a single purpose appointment, and do my best to just make it happen.

    Lastly, I bought a wall calendar, and nailed it to... aait for it... my wall. I "x" out every day I feel like I attended to the stuff I said I was gonna do. If I don't feel a "x" has been earned, it is usually for a specific reason, and I try to address that reason. I choose not to care about the "x" streak, days in in a row. I simply use the calendar to gauge whether I'm being as consistent as I'd like to be.

    I've gone made pretty good gains on transitioning from Professor Procrastinator to Captain Consistent. Will always be a work in progress :)

  3954. Ask HN: A question for those who went to MIT/Stanford/CMU 2017-03-27 09:58:00 yodon
    Lots of people responding to the "get shit done" post seem to be talking about how they procrastinate or "think" but don't like to work hard. If you want to get to the top of your field, whatever it is, it's not enough to just be smart. You also need to love to work hard in your field.

    If you don't love to work hard in your field and you do want to get to the top of the field, you're on a road to problems because everyone at the top of your field is as smart as you are AND they are driven by passion to work incredibly hard. You can't get into their league without both.

    So, if you want to get to the top of your field and don't want to work hard in it, my advice is either (a) find the joy that makes you want to work hard or (b) find a different field that does bring you that joy and desire to work hard.

    (Note there is no requirement that you want to get to the top of your field, this is just for those who do want to do so)

  3955. Ask HN: What techniques do you use to keep your current users engaged? 2017-03-29 18:38:56 wingerlang
    I am the only user of my app so far - but due to me knowing that I suffer from procrastination - I've added messages based on usage and light questions I feel I should answer.

    For example, if I use the app for X minutes in a day, the next day I will get a summary as a notification.

    It also adds light questions, to give an example it takes a random word and asks something like "how do you pronounce this?" or "what does X mean?". Tapping it takes you to the answer. They are made to require as little actual app interaction as possible, kind of making the learning (or rather, retention) almost passive to a degree.

    I found the success of this minor so far, but I think it can work fairly well. It just needs a good balance.

  3956. How to write Common Lisp in 2017 – an initiation manual 2017-03-29 19:22:53 baggers
    There are some other practical answers here so I'll take a different angle.

    Fun! CL is a language to play in, after a day of wrangling Java & ObjC issues I love settling down to just play in an environment that lets blast some code out and play with ideas. Of course this applies to other languages too and this is dependent on your interests, so the case I want to put out there is:

    Even if a language isn't suitable for your current business needs, see if it gives you joy. Languages have trades offs to meet their goals, evaluate languages for pleasure too.

    Also come visit #lispgames on freenode sometime..most of us are procrastinating making engines but it's always nice to have new folks around.

  3957. Evidence That Robots Are Winning the Race for American Jobs 2017-03-29 21:15:40 Atropos
    I am not so sure. For me at least, it was much more difficult to be in the unstructured university environment than having a job. Routines make life easier for me, I like having micro-accomplishments every day in working life etc... I know many people are probably different, but still, a life of creative work is not so easy. The tortured writer or the procrastinating PhD student is basically a cultural cliché at this point, as well as the 3rd generation killing all the rich family wealth. If you gave me 100 million dollars right now, I have a real fear I would just waste my life doing nothing but hedonistic pleasure, while telling myself I'm still working on my next novel or political theory of justice or ...

  3958. Ask HN: Does anybody follow the Pomodoro Technique religiously? 2017-03-30 22:52:04 iamben
    Not religiously, but I have a pomodoro app which I keep installed for work I'm struggling with. If I'm lacking motivation to start or finish something I'll stick it on and get going.

    It's incredibly easy to procrastinate when we have Facebook, HN, WhatsApp, email - whatever, but I know if I start a pomodoro it's only ever 25, 22, 17, 9, 3 minutes until I can take 'reward' myself with the aforementioned for a few minutes. It's easy to push through knowing I only _have_ to do (at most) 25 minutes more work. And once I'm rolling, it's a lot easier to continue.

    I use Harvest throughout the day to check how much _actual_ work I'm getting done. This helps me make better estimates of times and costs (as well as see the days I'm most and least productive).

  3959. Why do developers who could work anywhere flock to the most expensive cities? 2017-04-04 21:13:38 iplaw
    Just because developers can feasibly work from anywhere, especially remotely for already-established companies, do not immediately presume that it is best for developers to work from anywhere.

    Working remotely is not for everyone. Some people have problems with efficiency and procrastination when working from home or when working without immediate oversight. Some people have poor communication skills which are further hampered by the long distance communication and lack of face to face interaction. Some companies and, perhaps, developers prefer human interaction and team cohesiveness, which is difficult to achieve in an all-remote development team.

    In many cases, the most expensive tech cities became that way after the developers landed and earned crazy money and bonuses. Take Austin for example. A mere ten years ago, it was a very affordable city. Now, there are 800 sq. ft. homes with window-unit air conditioning selling for $600,000. Why? Austin became a tech hot spot in Texas while it was still affordable and, due to the exorbitant salaries being paid and countless millionaires being made, the demand for housing skyrocketed. With limited supply of proximate housing, the prices shot up.

  3960. An off-grid social network 2017-04-07 11:44:29 nickpsecurity
    Maybe but the person's point stands. Facebook has multiple datacenters with probably some kind of backups. It keeps things for years at a time even when it doesn't need to. It likes to because it helps the business model. Hardly anyone's pics and stuff will disappear.

    Compare that to their experience at home with personal gear. Many like the convenience and reliability of Facebook over their own technical skills or efforts. You'd have to convince those people... a shitload of people... that they should start handling IT on their own. Also note that there's many good, smart, interesting, and so on people that simply don't do tech. Anyone filtering non-technical or procrastinating people in a service will be throwing out lots of folks whose company they might otherwise enjoy.

    So, these kinds of issues are worth exploring when trying to build a better social network.

  3961. Some Lesser Known Machine Learning Libraries 2017-04-07 16:50:38 muktabh
    Here is something you should check out in that case https://github.com/eriklindernoren/ML-From-Scratch . Although be warned, everything from scratch approach l, despite being addictive, is harder than standing on shoulders of giants and takes too much resilience. If you are even a bit of procrastinater like me, it's tend to stay a sweet fantasy a lot of times. It's only when I was half working on a project and had no other option, I could go for implementing my first algorithm from scratch.

  3962. Dr John Goodenough’s story suggests some people become more creative with age 2017-04-08 06:19:09 jjt-yn_t
    ... peak oil? [ worry about starving... what about the children ? ] UBI of minor amount buys a residence? [ what ??? ] as to the rest of the sentence, I read 'internet, electricity, loudness, what do we know, ' as in biggest: electricity creative: internet revolution: it is louder after dusk nowadays human history: we should maybe ask our elders. I know I should, and the non-TV ones may surmise we should proceed with caution, if we [meaning the say-so NOT needing UBI ] proceed to tax [ half of that latter set taxing the other half, robbing peter to pay paul...] proceed at all, given the not-in-the-surplus area of the US at least, budget at the present time by almost every measure and metric. But am open to discussion, or reply, but to this post, as others, at this time I will be out of time to check a reply to this post even, so this is really more of 'my first YN thread where I reply to any I can reply to', maybe as a one-time occurance, as I've procrastinated for health reasons in many other areas. Apologies.... And as a newbie, I can edit my own posts. Apologies for the third lines above [ above Apologies ] and all the other similar lines in the other posts I've made in this thread, newbie, de facto first day responding vs daily reading. Sorry! /end errata/

  3963. Ask HN: Do you still use browser bookmarks? 2017-04-08 07:20:28 newbear
    When do you make time to purge? I find that I procrastinate tasks like reviewing. How often do you do it? Daily? How much time do you set aside?

  3964. Does it scale? Who cares (2011) 2017-04-09 13:41:34 timewarrior
    It is great that you got a few which got traction out of 8 tries. This is an incredible success rate.

    Most people see much less success. The original suggestion is geared towards first few tries that people make. Once they have made a few attempts, they learn from it and naturally build more scalable products without spending extra effort. You have already read my story about my first try which had a very poor start. My subsequent efforts have scaled in that order without needing a single rewrite.

    However, if they spend too long procrastinating, worrying about and investing in scale - they are wasting precious time which would be better spent finding product market fit.

  3965. How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week? 2017-04-09 19:40:03 javier2
    I am the same. I'll just fiddle around with boilerplate code or procrastinate off other tasks, but that is only semi-consciously. What I am really doing with like 60% of my focus is trying out different designs/architectures around a problem. This might take a few days until I figure out a design that fits the task, but once I'm satisfied, it's usually only a few hours to code the thing.

    Worth noting, this process can be significantly sped up if you have a set of peers (or smarter) people to discuss with.

  3966. Ask HN: How much of your time at work do you spend not working? 2017-04-11 07:38:48 throw110
    I spent 60-70% of my time not working because even though I'm working with interesting technology, it's stuff that won't get used by almost anyway, my peers don't seem interested, my manager is absent and the requirements are all over the place (symptom of nobody caring, whatever is done is okay as long as it impresses, for some random definition of "impresses)...

    ... so it needs to be done to check an item in a list but nobody cares. If nobody cares, I don't care either, which makes me think I'm wasting my time, which leads to depression, feeling burnt out, procrastinating even more, etc.

  3967. Great Barrier Reef at 'terminal stage' 2017-04-11 11:12:17 kakarot
    Parents will often tell their kids they need to leave at a certain time because they expect their kids will not accurately gauge their limited time and will not meet the ultimatum.

    I'm not saying this is the sole reason we get non-conservative estimates of environmental impact over a period of time, but it definitely applies. Most of us, due to various factors both in and out of our control, are too self-centered to understand that just because something will not disappear in our lifetime doesn't mean it isn't their immediate responsibility. It's best to assume the earth will shake and sky will split tomorrow and act accordingly. Sure, this alarmist approach can lead to burnout with a large, ignorant portion of the population but we can supplement this with proper education instead of trying to find a single golden bullet.

    On top of that, we can only be so accurate when speaking about time-spans of climate-related events we have never had a chance to study as thoroughly as today. But the overwhelming majority of scientists who have found themselves studying the climate feel a great sense of urgency about making changes while we can. They know more than anyone how out of our control this will soon be and how it affects our interconnected ecosystems. So there is a tendency to lean on conclusions that make waves and turn heads.

    And it's not just reefs. For example, the alarmist prophecies of our fuel supplies drying up within a matter of decades has probably contributed very positively to extreme efforts by international parties to greenify our energy production and transportation systems. I doubt people would be trying as hard to make the switch right now if we still had half a millennium of reserves left. It's kind of like how many of us tend to procrastinate on our own work and increasingly put in more effort as the deadline approaches.

  3968. Removing Home Internet Is the Most Productive Thing I've Done 2017-04-11 11:31:35 daylightyotei
    I did something similar when I was in college to fix my bad grades - I didn't have a laptop or a computer at home, and didn't own a smartphone. I did all my school related work at labs in college, and this made me much more productive at home - instead of mindlessly surfing the internet, I actually did the school work. As a result, my grades shot up to summa cum laude levels and there is a distinct step function between my freshman/sophomore year grades and the junior/senior year grades. Unfortunately, living with a girlfriend who adores Netflix, I am back into my procrastinating self when I am at home.

  3969. Removing Home Internet Is the Most Productive Thing I've Done 2017-04-11 11:38:04 stagbeetle
    What the author suggests is highly impractical, and makes adopting this way of life all the more challenging.

    I suggest for people who have a serious problem, to try out time-managers and site-blockers.

    When I was going through a highly unproductive phase, I used ColdTurkey. The software's not too good and if you're really craving for a fix, you'll find a way to get past it. But, for the regular procrastinator it does wonders for productivity.

    Don't be rash and cut out one of the most important utilities there is just because you're having some issues.

    Do be intelligent and work around the issue.

  3970. Removing Home Internet Is the Most Productive Thing I've Done 2017-04-11 14:11:34 smeroth
    After a long addiction where I had used my phones as projects rather than tools, I decided to unwind. The blinking notification light was the first one to go, as I couldn't concentrate when it was active (which was most of the time). The next step was to buy a huge battery which made my phone twice as thick, but I only needed to charge it every few days which was a huge thing not having to worry about constantly. After a couple of weeks I started disabling more and more of the apps which made my phone buzz, and at the end I had only the most basic apps.

    At the final step I realized that I had a huge expensive phone with only basic functionality and a web browser that always seemed to steal my attention (procrastinating on the web). I bought a Nokia C5-00 (dumbphone) and told my family that if they needed to reach me, they'd have to text or call - everything else would be dealt with a couple of times a day on my tablet.

    It's been a year, and I love the freedom to work and be with friends and family without constantly having my phone in my face. I also seem to handle boring situations much better as I no longer can rely on my phone to entertain me whenever I have 3 minutes to spare. I am now a 22 year old Swedish programmer with a dumbphone that I charge once every 1-2 weeks, and I love it. Also, the reactions from co-workers and train conductors scanning my SMS-tickets are very interesting.

    e: grammar

  3971. Removing Home Internet Is the Most Productive Thing I've Done 2017-04-11 15:42:58 elorant
    I solved that problem with a far simpler solution. I don't own a smartphone. I spend eight to ten hours watching a screen at work. Don't want to spend another five doing the same thing in my leisure. I also don't own any tablets, for the same reason, except a Kindle which I use every now and then in commuting. Most people I meet feel surprised when I tell them I don't have a smartphone especially considering that I'm a "computer guy". But the thing is I don't really need it. I can't do any productive work on it and even if I could I wouldn't want to. As for the PC, I'm also off any social network, excluding Hacker News which is addictive but at least I'm learning stuff so I don't consider it procrastination.

  3972. Ask HN: How much of your time at work do you spend not working? 2017-04-11 17:53:32 J-dawg
    >"I'd rather cut my toenails with a rusty butter knife than write the paper." (Okay, perhaps that's a slight exaggeration.)

    This totally describes me. The line I quoted resonates because sometimes the idea of a boring task is actually frightening to me, in the way you described. Like I get a really sick feeling about it and will do almost anything to avoid it. On the other hand I feel like I have so much going on in my head, and so much I could produce if I could only channel it properly. The TV is most definitely always on. My lack of focus and procrastination has definitely held me back in my career.

    One thing I'm wary of is medicalising what might just laziness. How do I know it's not a version of "special snowflake syndrome"? Is my own inattentiveness (and inability to get over it) really so much worse than what a "normal" person experiences?

    To give a parallel, I heard a podcast where Ramit Sethi was talking about "introvert porn", where he's saying there is all this stuff online about how hard life is for introverts, how extroverts don't get it, basically making people feel good about being an introvert and telling them that it's an integral part of who they are rather than something they can change. And he's saying that this is a dangerous and self-defeating trap to get into because people don't realise that social skills can be learned. All these "introverts" are just falling back onto an excuse to avoid confronting the thing that's holding them back.

    If I start blaming all my problems on ADHD am I just falling into a similar trap? After all, not everyone can be successful. Maybe I'm just not successful because I'm not that good at anything, not because of a medical condition.

    Possibly relevant: I am in the UK where ADHD seems to be a lot less recognised than in the USA. People here are often critical of the idea of medicating ADHD in kids (which is relatively unusual here afaik). I don't know how a British GP would react to someone asking for an adult ADHD diagnosis - I imagine it wouldn't be taken very seriously.

  3973. Ask HN: How much of your time at work do you spend not working? 2017-04-12 00:29:49 webjac
    I've been an employee for like 20% of my career and a the rest I've been a freelancer.

    I never worked more than 4 hours (of real work a day). There's the occasional super productive day where I have done over 8 hours of productive work, but that's the exception, not the rule.

    I usually work around 3-4 hours of productive work daily. Heck I'd even say 20%-30% of that time is not even productive (meetings, emails and necessary yet unproductive things).

    When I worked for companies doing 9 to 5, I wasted a looot of time doing nothing: reddit, fb, and stuff. I also recognize that I need that distraction to do some real productive work.

    I'm very fast and productive when it comes to actual work, but if I don't get the procrastination time then I just become a blurry mess of a brain and take 10 times longer to do the same things.

  3974. IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe 2017-04-12 01:16:29 georgiecasey
    didn't see this one coming! major congrats to Courtland.

    just a thought on the power of Hacker News to get noticed by 'players'. surely Patrick Collison heard of Courtland/Indiehackers and Patrick McKenzie through browsing Hacker News? so it's not all procrastination posting here

  3975. IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe 2017-04-12 03:02:21 chatmasta
    It's definitely not procrastination posting. I've formed valuable relationships from people who have reached out after a comment I wrote. Aside from that, commenting on HN is a great way to practice my writing skills, which I rarely get to use since my day-to-day work consists largely of programming. The community here is invaluable in that it provides an audience for your writing, so long as you are willing to fit your arguments into an intellectually rigorous framework and provide sources when necessary. It's much easier to hone your writing ability when you have an audience, and I am very grateful to HN for providing one. I hope the community can avoid a "eternal September" problem and continue providing a valuable service.

  3976. Ask HN: How much of your time at work do you spend not working? 2017-04-12 22:47:04 imarg
    I think procrastination time is also important and necessary.

    I just completed a course on Coursera (Learning How to Learn - https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn/). One of things mentioned is that our brain has a focused and diffused mode and both are needed for us to learn.

    So, I guess, something similar happens when we are working. You need both focus time but also a down time to achieve things. Of course, too much procrastination is also not a good thing.

  3977. Ask HN: How much of your time at work do you spend not working? 2017-04-13 02:52:41 ZeroFries
    > The line I quoted resonates because sometimes the idea of a boring task is actually frightening to me, in the way you described. Like I get a really sick feeling about it and will do almost anything to avoid it.

    This is actually an amazing insight. This tells you exactly what the root of your procrastination is. It's not laziness, because I'm sure you can apply plenty of effort in tasks where this fear isn't present. Maybe drill down a bit further on what the source of this fear might be. Were boring tasks used as punishment in your childhood?

    People with eating disorders are often afraid of boring food without realizing it. The thought of a diet is scary because they'll be missing out on their favourite foods. After adopting a bland diet for a few weeks, most find their fear dissipates, and bland food can become enjoyable. Maybe try the same strategy with boring tasks? Essentially exposure therapy.

  3978. Filing Taxes in Japan Is a Breeze. Why Not in the US? 2017-04-14 18:28:13 CalRobert
    Just filed my FBAR and every year it feels like the requirements change so they have a reason to convict you of something. This year they just moved the due date up by a few months for no apparent reason. I'm simply lucky that I happened to do it now (I normally procrastinate until June); that's a good $10,000 fine if they believe it was accidental; $100,000 otherwise.

    I'm fine with taxes, but filing taxes in the US is utter bullshit.

    To give credit where it's due, though, the state of California has free online filing (Calfile) , which is nice.

  3979. No bullshit guide to linear algebra – v2 2017-04-15 04:15:42 JabavuAdams
    Start with Strang's MIT OCW Linear Algebra course: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06-linear-algebra...

    You really only need to know arithmetic to get started.

    Use Anki to create flash-cards so that you learn faster and don't forget.

    https://apps.ankiweb.net/

    Also, manual calculation is fundamentally how you learn mathematics. Following along is a first step, but is not good enough to learn the material. You need to do the calculations and run into problems, so you can re-create the knowledge in your brain.

    EDIT> Take Coursera's Learning How to Learn Course. It sounds flaky, but will accelerate all of your other learning, and help with procrastination as well.

    https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

  3980. How many jobs really require college? 2017-04-16 00:35:15 matwood
    What you're really pointing out is that people are different. Some need more structure than others. For whatever reason, I'm a pretty motivated person. Remote work is great for me because any time I can save is more time I have to do the list of things I want to get done that day.

    My wife OTOH, requires structure. She's smart and works hard, but if she was left to work at home she would procrastinate until the 11th hour. She needed a brick and mortar college, and in that structure managed to get her 4 year degree is 2.5 years.

    One thing not discussed is that quality online degree programs can significantly lower the cost bar for students. I was lucky enough to have a decent school near my parents, so I lived at home for my entire undergrad degree. We simply did not have the money to do anything different, and I refused to take out loans unless absolutely necessary (I worked instead). It would have been amazing if there had been self paced online degrees offered by big name colleges at the time I was in undergrad.

  3981. Sylpheed – a simple, lightweight but featureful e-mail client 2017-04-17 05:05:30 generic_user
    I used Thunderbird for a long time and then switched to Sylpheed. For one its about as good an email client as Thunderbird. That's all I really used TB for. If I want to use a calendar TB is not my first choice. I would rather use something along the lines of a project manager that has gnatt charts etc. So for email Sylpheed is elegant and lightweight and focused. I check my inbox and get my mail done then close it down and get back to what I was working on. Where as with TB I constantly had it open in the background and ended up messing with calendar and to-do more or less procrastinating.

  3982. Ask HN: How many of you quit using Facebook or rarely use? 2017-04-17 16:26:24 mattbgates
    I'm a web developer.. takes me a while to get "in the zone" to do some programming, but once I'm there, I'm good to go! If I'm not, I tend to go on websites or randomly search Google for stuff which causes me to procrastinate. One of the websites is Facebook. I used to mindlessly get on Facebook and just scroll through my feed. It was the worst during the 2016 Presidential elections. Even though I really didn't care what was being said about either candidate, it was more fascinating to see how my friends were reacting. It was like watching a drama online with high school and college friends you used to have drama with back when you saw them everyday.

    It got so bad that I was doing it at work and had to install software to block myself from Facebook. I give myself a little leisure, about 10 minutes a day or so, before it locks me out for the day. It takes me a few more minutes to be mindful of not typing in Facebook or whatever other sites I blocked myself from.

    When I'm at home, if I hop on Facebook, I installed a button ( https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hide-facebook-feed... ) that makes you click in order to see it. This makes me fully aware of my actions. This has reduced my time at home to very little on Facebook. Occasionally, I'll type in Facebook and see that button and I instantly become aware of what I am doing. I trained myself to get back to something more productive.

    I think of it this way: For every minute I'm on Facebook and not being productive, that is a minute they are making money on me and I'm not making anything at all. It usually helps me get back to work. Why don't I just quit? Because I live across the country, away from my family, who I don't get to see. I do pick up the phone every few days and talk to them all and make sure they are okay. But I also feel Facebook helps me keep in touch with them. I also have lived in a few parts of the country, and I've met, befriended, and Facebook'd many of those people I like to call friends. I may not be close to them anymore, but I still like to think of it as the best way as a means to keeping in touch.

    There are two types of people on the Internet and Facebook teaches it very well: You are either a consumer or a creator. Creators make money. Consumers give money. If you spend your time on Facebook, which one are you? If you are working on something productive, even if it may not make you money right away or at all, as long as you are doing something productive: you are a creator. When you justify all of your time on the Internet, and even deal with your addiction to the Internet, which one will you be? A consumer or a creator?

    Facebook has some AI scripts in it to learn your behavior and show you the stuff you think is most important and the stuff you want to see. Every "Like" (or reaction) is not just a like, but it registers into a series of algorithms. For example, if you like a lot of a person's timeline, you're more likely to see their timeline. The more you interact with each other, the more you are likely to see each other's timeline. If you both have a lot of mutual friends, you are more likely to see their timeline. Facebook, like Google, is not just one giant database, but algorithms get created to do different things depending on your actions within the application. And if someone has a wedding or a baby, I see it, because Facebook has deemed this a very significant event, based on the reactions it has. The rest is just news or something someone is posting from a page you liked.

    And I'm on here.. Hacker News, procrastinating, but answering questions is relaxing and actually does help me to begin my focus. These are just some ways I deal with my desire to procrastinate and stay focused.

  3983. Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers 2017-04-19 20:12:20 jargnar
    It's a skill that can be learned like every other skill. You can take the "in 21 days" route or the MOOC / University course route, or constantly read business articles, Steve Jobs videos, etc.

    But some top tips stand out for me over time:

    * Talking to people, networking > Not talking to people

    * Bug free > Elegant code

    * UX > UI

    * Simple products that do one thing well > Complex products

    * Understanding entire market > understanding some people

    * Building brand > Making quick money (for the long run)

    * Sleep, exercise & healthy food > late night coding

    * Solving your problem first > Solving the worlds problems

    * Adaptability, pivoting > Ego

    * Knowledge of where the money is > No knowledge of it

    * Overestimating cost/expenses > Underestimating it

    * Patience > No Patience

    * No procrastination > Procrastination

    * Reading books > Not reading books

  3984. Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers 2017-04-19 21:15:36 accountyaccount
    I get some of these, but "don't procrastinate" and "understand the entire market" are kind of ridiculous. You might as well throw "know everything" and "work hard" in there.

  3985. Microsoft to shut down Wunderlist in favor of its new app, To-Do 2017-04-20 21:32:13 mtgx
    First item on Microsoft's "To-Do" list:

    - Shut down Wunderlist

    Now let's hope they procrastinate just like everyone else.

  3986. Ultra-low-energy consumption ultrasonic clothes dryer 2017-04-21 14:15:42 Quequau
    I live in a tiny flat in Austria. The vast majority of my washing dries overnight provided I actually get it done around lunch time... even when it's raining. I don't even put it outside most of the time.

    If I'm in a major hurry, mostly due to self inflicted procrastination, I'll point a regular fan at the rack as it dries.

  3987. US Tax Filings are down 5% as of April 15, 2017 2017-04-22 02:48:17 leggomylibro
    That's what I thought, until the IRS needed a credit card last 4 digits and phone number to confirm my identity, and said that my phone company couldn't verify my identity...?

    What an awful system. I probably wound up a day late with the postage because of that, but those assholes are lucky I filed at all. I was about ready to just throw my 1040 in the trash chute and give up my rebate as a lost cause. My time is worth more than this antiquated horseshit, and if I've learned anything from my grandpop it's that audits don't mean shit if you just keep ignoring them.

    So, there's your procrastinator's attitude in a nutshell I guess.

  3988. I Joined Airbnb at 52, Here’s What I Learned About Age, Wisdom, and Tech Industry 2017-04-23 12:16:16 bayonetz
    All true in isolation but...

    1. Sometimes "why" can lead to analysis paralysis and procrastination. Sometimes "how" is better -- as in how do we best move on to a solution?

    2. It depends on how the "why" is asked. If the asker is confrontational and implies the burden of proof is on the receiver, then the defensiveness might be warranted. In other words, sometimes people ask "why" because they are being contrarian dicks with axes to grind.

    3. Sometimes you need time to think it through but the "why" asker expects your answer immediately and if you don't have one yet, uses this line of reasoning to conclude you must not have a good answer at all. It can be hard to have presence of mind in a situation like this and realize this fallacy is being thrusted upon you. Not a very fair setup.

  3989. LSD microdoses make people feel sharper, and scientists want to know how 2017-04-25 02:54:59 cypherpunks01
    For a day when I'm working, I consider microdosing LSD if:

    - It's going to be a somewhat creative/self-directed day

    - Not likely to be a stressful day or a packed schedule

    While microdosing my brain will wander a bit more than usual in different directions, which is good under low stress but not helpful under high stress. It can help me focus on work tasks enormously, but doesn't bring me the same rapid-paced obsessive productivity mindset as adderall would.

    If I'm working and I know it's going to be a crazy day where I need to get 10 things done and can't afford to procrastinate or be otherwise distracted, I'd prefer adderall because it's more predictable in its effects on my focus.

    If I'm not working, I don't consider taking adderall at all (unless I need to be awake for something like an overnight drive).

    People should consider modafinil as well in cycling through different types of stimulants, I find it to have less of a physical effect compared to lsd or amphetamines.

  3990. Remote work statistics for April 2017 2017-04-25 23:29:17 Kiro
    A lot of people will probably disagree with me but I'm not a fan of remote work and don't think it suits most companies.

    So many employees like to slack and procrastinate. At all the companies I've been at people will instantly open Facebook, reddit or HN as soon as management can't see their screens. It's so easy to wing some BS at the daily stand-up that makes it look like you're productive. No-one really questions how long things take and even if it puts you in unnecessary crunches sometimes to catch up to some deadline you still do it.

    Working from home is like haven for slackers. No-one can see your screen and you can do whatever you want. I'm sure there are people that are highly effective working from home but I think those are in minority.

  3991. Evidence-based advice we've found on how to be successful in a job 2017-04-26 20:23:38 rawland

        The fisherman [is] not exactly helping anyone either.
    In fact, he does: By leading through example.

    And now, let's get back to work. I'm procrastinating on HN already long enough. :-)

    Thanks for your comments!

  3992. Audrey – A smart personal assistant app that helps you to get things done 2017-04-27 06:57:34 cel1ne
    > I don't want to get things done

    Exactly. This is a really, really difficult and essential observation to make. Humans are built to procrastinate because it conserves energy.

    Do an experiment: Sit down and start doing what you are supposed to do. If you're not able to work or start, don't find excuses. Don't go looking for physical reasons like "Hungry", "Cold", "Tired". Don't procrastinate. Don't walk around. Don't work around the issue. Don't change the project. Those are all excuses. Just accept that you are not able to start and keep sitting there until you start.

    When you stop finding excuses or looking elsewhere, you will realise the immense stress that's building up inside you. That is the mountain you have to scale to stop procrastinating. A kind of stress that's not always there, luckily, but it's definitely built into humans.

  3993. Ask HN: How do you keep improving? 2017-04-29 22:10:05 andai
    Interesting to see the range of responses in this thread, eg. you are advocating keeping it fun and interesting, whereas other people recommend deliberately doing things you don't like.

    It might have to do with different personality types. For instance, I am prone to procrastinate on anything that doesn't interest/excite me, so when my goal is to work on stuff I don't like, the output approaches zero.

    I resonate with the "do more than nothing" approach advocated by Khatzumoto of All Japanese All The Time[0]. Which is a great website by the way!

    It's all about how language learning can be fun. It's like 10% language learning advice, 90% "you can do it stop beating yourself up".

    [0]: http://alljapaneseallthetime.com/

  3994. How to Read a Paper (2016) [pdf] 2017-04-30 10:14:39 squaredpants
    This went way too meta for my procrastinating brain.

  3995. Are We Having Too Much Fun? 2017-04-30 23:15:46 tsunamifury
    I think this pieces core thesis, that context collapse causes us to focus on irrelevant but entertaining information, is less true in the modern era. Google actually created a world where your results and advertising is MORE contextual to your real life, not less. And for what it's worth, Facebook also made feeds information also more about you. Apple made computing more about doing real things outside. And so on.

    So I don't think we are entertaining ourselves to death, we're just doing the thing we've done best forever: procrastinating work we don't want to do. We just have better options for filling that time now.

  3996. The psychological importance of wasting time 2017-05-01 14:42:51 Swizec
    I struggle with this a lot. It's like I have to make appearances for me. Forget pointy haired bosses and managers who like to see you work. Nothing is harder on yourself than yourself. You have a very clear insight into just how much you procrastinate and slack off and everything feels like too much.

    This of course does not lead to more productivity. It leads to a lot of "productivity" where you work late into the night or early into morning, but know a surprising lot about all the latest memes and goings on du jour of the internet.

    What I found works for me is exercise. Can't convince yourself that you can sit still and stare at the ceiling for an hour? Going for a run has the same effect and it feels productive.

    Added bonus: you don't look idle to others either. Saying "I wanna read for an hour" is often met with "Ok but can you do the dishes and the laundry while you're not doing anything anyway?". Going for a run or hopping to the gym is met with "Ok."

    Both from your subconscious and the people around you.

  3997. The psychological importance of wasting time 2017-05-01 15:59:01 dualogy
    I have taught myself to not feel bad about "off days". Rather than 5 days on, 2 days off like structured employment, if I "go with the flow" my body/mind/voice might demand after say 15 days on, maybe 3-5 days off. I'll grant that. As soon as recharged, whatever down-time/"off" stuff I was into becomes boring and the work where I left off lures me back in. But you'll have to allow such off time. Having one right now, hence I'm posting here.

    As for "procrastination" through "work-days", I don't do that much, maybe an hour of "random rubbish" a day tops. Grabbing lunch is a nice short break; eating it, another; 10 minutes of weights, another; showering, (h)eating dinner, filling/emptying dishwasher.. it all adds up to just the right amount & length of brief brain breaks "aerating" the work day/routine.

    The feeling that's worse than any sort of misguided guilt about off time is when you did power through some 12-15 hours and reflect back on & summarize what exactly one has managed to produce net --- it often feels like disturbingly little for the time, given all the high-level tooling, frameworks, helper libs and the fast hardware & internet we all enjoy today.

  3998. Why Walking Helps Us Think (2014) 2017-05-01 17:33:20 AriaMinaei
    The combination of (roundtable discussions|debates|audiobooks) with (walking|cleaning house|washing dishes|other chores) is the most productive procrastination technique I have. It changes mental context, stimulates the brain, and makes the chore enjoyable. I even sometimes do it while writing code. Of course, I can't take it all in, but I still find that it enriches my experience.

  3999. Proposal to start a new implementation of Thunderbird based on web technologies 2017-05-02 23:39:16 zzz2002
    Before we start thinking about working on Thunderbird or its replacement there is a fundamental question that needs answering. Is there a future for email? Email is/was a function of the personal computer era. But as PC sales decline and smart phone sales grow do people still use email to the same extent? Is its place in field of personal communications being replaced by SMS, etc. In the business arena I am seeing some companies where internal email is not allowed. The reasoning is that email has become a way of procrastinating (send and forget). On the customer facing side of things email is being replaced by web based customer service apps that use AI (or similar) to answer the customers query ASAP, and if that is not possible get the info and pass on to a human if and only if needed (people cost money). So back to the question is email and by extension Thunderbird obsolescent. Would effort in redeveloping TB be futile as it would wind up give us wonderful app just as email disappears.

  4000. Ask HN: What are the other ‘Musk’ian problems? 2017-05-03 16:25:49 procrastinators
    high throughput brain machine interface here could be thought of as a way to merge human brain with general AI so that we don't end up being cats to AI overlords :)

  4001. How to Survive as a Solo Dev for Like a Decade or So 2017-05-04 23:12:39 rydl
    Yes, coffee and reading hn and the like. You could also say "don't procrastinate". Sure, I'll start doing this right after I read this one last post ;)

  4002. How to Survive as a Solo Dev for Like a Decade or So 2017-05-04 23:37:33 ghostly_s
    I've written tons of code in cafes. As a notorious procrastinator I find the cafe setting very helpful for avoiding the obvious distractions like Wikipedia holes, etc. I'm sure it sounds stupid to people who are more naturally focused but just the feeling that strangers _could_ be judging my use of time is pretty effective (I know I do it...I may not know why you brought your Macbook to this coffee shop but I'm pretty damn sure it wasn't to read rumours about Kim Kardashian). What I do find hard is thinking through difficult architectural problems in such a setting...often I'll spend an hour in the park with pen and paper thinking about that stuff and then hammer it out at the coffee shop. Different strokes I guess.

  4003. How to Survive as a Solo Dev for Like a Decade or So 2017-05-05 06:02:45 derefr
    Physical energy/time, and mental/emotional energy, are different things.

    Software development, for whatever reason, directly spends "spoons" (in the sense of https://butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine...) at a high rate.

    Because of this, it's hard to do much else that requires willpower after putting in a day's work as a programmer. You can do habitual things just fine; or procrastinative things. But, outside of those two activity-classes, it's hard to even do the most enjoyable of things—like, for example, watching a serious, dramatic movie—because you won't get anything out of such activities if you don't invest some emotional energy into them, and you've just plum run out.

    ---

    In a more technical sense, it's my understanding that the activity of programming somehow "uses up" a lot of dopamine, and so gradually depletes one's available store of dopamine over the course of the day in much the same way that stress, cold environments, and surprising loud noises are known to.

    Thus, a neurotypical person who spends eight hours programming in a day, will end up effectively equivalent in behavior/mentality to a person with ADHD for the rest of the day, until they can sleep it off and recover.

    (This means you could probably restore your "spoons" by taking ADHD medication just after leaving work... but that seems ill-advised, for multiple reasons.)

  4004. How to Survive as a Solo Dev for Like a Decade or So 2017-05-05 13:01:11 mcbain
    When I was working remote for 12 months I did the same kind of thing. I had the added extra of living alone as well.

    It forced me to get up, shower, put clothes on, see some kind of sunlight, even have a tiny bit of face to face interaction with another human at the convenience store/cafe/sidewalk, and then get home, log in, and probably just procrastinate for an hour or so anyway - but at least I was clean and dressed.

  4005. Ways to Read More Books 2017-05-07 06:39:07 vog
    A similar phenomenon are the various ways people try to trick their procrastination habit, not with money (fake price) but with time (fake priorities).

    However, as you correctly noticed, these techniques don't work well. That's normal, don't worry if these simple solutions don't work. Maybe you think they should work, because you often hear from people for whom "that one weird trick" worked. Or that one complicated technique. But usually these are the same people who try to sell you their book on that topic.

    Instead, you need to the root of this issues, which may involve finding your true priorities, and may involve actively changing your habits. All this may be really hard, and you'll fail and retry many times - especially when trying to do this alone. Heck, there's a whole profession around helping people to fix these types of issues - some of them are highly qualified, others are charlatans. (The latter often call themselves "coaches" as that term doesn't require much qualification, so that they can't be sued if they do a bad job.)

  4006. Don’t Let Facebook Make You Miserable 2017-05-07 12:17:21 treehau5
    Facebooks your current fixation for your procrastination, but if it wasn't facebook, I'd venture to guess it would most likely be something else that is an addicting timewaster with minimal utility because that's the exactly the kind of thing we seek out when we want to get away from things we think are more important.

    For you, facebook. For me -- videogames, particularly online competitive style. For someone else? Bingewatching brainless television on Netflix.

  4007. Ask HN: What's your working day like? 2017-05-08 22:16:42 davzie
    Profession: Web Developer, self employed working remote with startups and creative agencies.

    Workday:

    - [08:00] Wake up in a daze and make my wife and son tea and breakfast

    - [08:30] Shower, get dressed and ready

    - [09:15] After prepping water canister and tea caddy, head to garden office.

    - [09:30] Procrastinate

    - [14:00] Realise the work day is nearly over. Panic. Cram work in.

    - [17:00] Finish work, make son dinner and play with him.

    - [19:00] Put son to bed and start making wife and I dinner.

    - [20:30] Watch Parks and Recreation whilst contemplating an entire career change.

  4008. Ask HN: What's your working day like? 2017-05-08 22:34:24 luaybs
    Profession/position: Lead Software Developer (Web) - Full Time, sometimes I work remotely, most times at the office. <10 Employees.

    Workday:

    - 6:30 Wake up and have a small breakfast.

    - 7:00 Gym, includes shower.

    - 9:30 Have a large breakfast and prepare coffee ;)

    - 10:00 Start working on tasks for the day.

    - 13:00 Lunch.

    - 14:00 Get back to desk and procrastinate for a bit. I like to watch YouTube.

    - 15:00 Work on tasks, attend meetings, or pair up with our new-hire on things they're struggling with.

    - 17:00 Break.

    - 18:00 Work on tasks.

    - 19:30 Go home and unwind for a bit, or go see my friends.

    - 21:00 Dinner.

    - 22:30 Prepare gym bag and food for tomorrow.

    - 23:00 Bed.

  4009. Ask HN: What's your working day like? 2017-05-08 23:00:26 treehau5
    Profession: Software "Engineer"

    [06:15] First alarm goes off;

    [06:45] Finally wake up, get out of bed, shower, shave, make espresso for me and the wife

    [07:15] out the door, 30 minute commute to office

    [07:45] breakfast bagel at my work cafe

    [08:00] arrive at desk, begin contemplating work -- work on something I procrastinated on the previous day so that I can have a good standup report

    [9:00] everyone arrives at office, noise increases 10x, I am physically unable to concentrate anymore. Earplugs and noise-deadening headphones help some, but then having those on distracts me

    [10:00 til 05:45 or 6:30 pm] Constant battling distractions, meetings, interruptions, and general work-related chaos, trying to somehow manage to squeeze in any actual developer work. Work proclaims how 'fun it is to work here! awesome! totes cool! We have so much cool stuff! Our culture is the best culture!'

    Help me.

  4010. The Etiquette of the Victorian Ballroom: Twenty Tips for Single Gentlemen 2017-05-08 23:16:05 ghaff
    I'm not a particular fan of GTD (or time management systems in general). However, that was one thing from David Allen's book that stuck with me. You can waste a huge amount of energy or attention procrastinating about some simple item that's fast and straightforward to just do.

    I'm not perfect about it, but it's good advice.

  4011. Ask HN: What's your working day like? 2017-05-08 23:54:18 3hr0way4234
    I'm amazed by how early you all get up!

    Profession/position: Software developer - full time, office-located* - peers are remote but boss is local - <10 employees

    [9:45-10:30] wake up, shower, breakfast

    [10:30-11:00] either cycle to work if there are any bikes/slots in the local bicycle rental system, otherwise walk

    [11:00-12:15] sometimes we have a video meeting with the remote coworkers at this time, otherwise, mainly procrastinate/ do email

    [12:15] boss drops in for a chat before he has lunch

    [12:20-14:30] work- usually developing some new feature to report at the next video meeting, bug fixes, whatever is needed

    [14:30-15:00] lunch

    [15:00-15:30] work

    [15:30-16:00] go for a walk

    [16:00-18:30] work, easily my most productive time of the day

    [18:30] boss usually leaves, we chat for a while

    [18:30-19:30, or beyond to 20/21 if needed] finish up work

    [19:30] head home, hope to be able to cycle again

    [20:00-21:30] make dinner, eat, clean up, watch youtube, make lunch, do laundry

    [21:30-01:00] play video games, spend time online, whatever

    [01:00] try to fall asleep

    I kind of hate my job honestly, there are no processes at all, no supervision, no contact with coworkers outside of meetings, no structure, no collaboration or code review. But equally, there is basically zero pressure or stress either, no deadlines, I just have to be fairly busy and make good reports in our meetings. Basically I'm making good money(in comparison to my needs and my family's background) and have things fairly easy, but I desperately need to move on if I want to get any real career progression. Or a social life or contact with real developers I can actually learn things from. Sick of working on my own in isolation writing code that no one but me will ever look at, previous job was the same too.

  4012. Ask HN: What's your working day like? 2017-05-09 00:05:03 strictnein
    > [08:00] ... work on something I procrastinated on the previous day so that I can have a good standup report

    lol, me too, I'm afraid to admit. Every dang day.

  4013. Ask HN: What's your working day like? 2017-05-09 00:13:24 alexmorenodev
    I was a "Professional Blogger" for a while.

    - [11:00] Wake up, sit on desk, first thing on the morning, write until I get tired

    - [14:00] Usually I get tired 3 hours after, then I stop working, cook food for the day and procrastinate lots of things that I was planning to do in my free time in previous day, and thinking about how I would do 3-5x more money if I spent more time working on my blog, but I'm lazy / I want to work as less as possible to earn money to live and spent my time doing whatever I wanted to (which turned out to be nothing relevant)

    - [21:00] Gym

    - [00:00] Watch funny videos until sleep

    - [02:00] Sleep.

  4014. Ask HN: What's your working day like? 2017-05-09 00:24:47 grecy
    I am seeing a lot of depressing posts here (and mostly in humor, I think)

    Lots of talk about sleeping in, procrastinating, pretending to work, etc. etc.

    I used to be a Software Engineer and I can relate extremely well. Now I am attempting to be a travel writer and photographer, driving around Africa. I spring out of bed in the morning, and have some of the best days of my life, day after day. It's hard, but I love it much more than my previous live. The money is not so good, but what do I need money for anyway? Gas in the tank and food for dinner and I am happy camper (literally)

    My advice: We each only have one life, make sure you live the one you want to. Save some money, quit for a while and try your dream. If it doesn't work out you can always go back (I did, twice already, just to earn fast cash then hit the road again. I am hoping this time there is no going back - it's going OK so far)

  4015. Ask HN: What's your working day like? 2017-05-09 02:05:36 erikb
    Yeah, not for me. My experience with building stuff on my own: Very stressful and long winding, a lot of procrastination and unsocial habbits start to creep in after a week, solution is not really valuable to anybody since nobody is familiar with it.

    The biggest, most used solutions I helped building usually happened when I cooperated with others. The same discussions that happen in your head, just that part of it is coming from another brain.

  4016. Ask HN: What's your working day like? 2017-05-09 02:24:55 dasmoth
    I think most answers can be summarized as "When I'm left alone I get into the flow mode, and that's enjoyable". The same way I mostly get it when working together with a colleague on a problem. Both ways may not always be the most productive, but due to producing a good feeling we prefer these.

    I think it's hard to separate the questions of productivity and satisfaction. It's satisfying because you're being productive, but conversely it's easy to dodge the urge to procrastinate because the results are satisfying. So the two go hand in hand.

    (And yes, I entirely recognise that for some people the satisfying+productive mode does involve intense, fine-grained collaboration, while for others it doesn't. I've seen both modes work, and don't really see why they shouldn't coexist -- although ideally with walls and doors to keep the noise of the collaborative types at bay!)

  4017. Ask HN: Technical book publishing? 2017-05-10 01:19:51 jetti
    I started my book on C# and XML back in 2013 doing the self publish route on leanpub. That fizzled out because I just wasn't motivated enough to finish on my own. I was contacted last year by Apress and decided to go with them. Their structure made me actually finish the book whereas I wasn't able to before. My overall experience was positive. I procrastinate a lot, so there was some stressful nights meeting deadlines

  4018. How Homeownership Became the Engine of American Inequality 2017-05-10 02:05:17 naravara
    >And empirically, a home mortgage is perhaps the most successful mass-market forced-savings program in American society today, with much higher participation than tax-deferred retirement accounts[2].

    You just made an argument for a forced-savings program, not for a home mortgage deduction.

    Moreover, I think the issue with savings is a service problem, not an impulse control problem. Tax deferred accounts are complicated to figure out for a lot of people and it can be difficult to keep track of for people who don’t do regular, salaried work. I still have 2 or 3 401ks from previous jobs that I haven’t gotten around to rolling over just because coordinating with them and getting the form filled out is a bit of a hassle and it’s an easy thing to procrastinate on. And I have the advantage of actually knowing how this stuff works!

    If it was as easy as just having a chunk of my salary taken out on a regular basis, and made opt-out rather than opt-in, you'd get a way higher participation rate.

  4019. How Privacy Became a Commodity for the Rich and Powerful 2017-05-10 03:20:04 aqsalose
    >Everything else basically just boils down to "they get to show you better ads" which honestly seems like a win-win to me.

    I am not really sure if targeted ads, targeted news, targeted posts, targeted everything in social media is a good thing for a society in the long run. The physical reality is still the same for us; it would be great if we all lived in the same mental reality, too.

    On a personal level, while some of the advertising is good (it's useful knowledge to know which online bookstores ship to my country and what are their prices), I've always found the idea of advertising bit scary. A certain kind of optimized stimuli will make me some percentage point more like likely to want to buy a some kind thing I did not want before? Brr. I want more control of what I want.

    And some tradeoffs are not about the data. I've also noticed that an infinitely long feed that you can scroll and scroll ... is slightly addictive. I've read that it is so on purpose: all social media platforms popular today make money by advertising, or in other words, by having their users spend their time procrastinating on Twitter/FB/etc (so that they see the ads). I don't think this is a net benefit to individual users or the society as a whole, either.

  4020. Opera is Reborn 2017-05-10 22:22:24 sangnoir
    There's a world of a difference between planned "distractions" (mental breaks) and random interruptions: HN even provides a handy no-procrastination timer.

  4021. Human behavioral complexity peaks at age 25: study 2017-05-11 08:10:32 ue_
    That's an interesting story, though I find that I oscillate between periods of perceived dread (though, as your Calc professor mentioned, I am privileged in this regard to not have it as much of an issue) and periods of a kind of laid back-ness in which I procrastinate and put things off as much as they possibly could be put off. This has been a recurring problem for me, possibly because the enjoyment of playing games or watching TV is an instant relief and pleasure.. the years of my life after university are distant and contingent.

    On one hand I know that I need to work in order to get anywhere, on the other hand I pass it off by saying "you don't have to do this work to succeed". Couple this with the fact that whenever I want to start working there's a huge mass of things to choose from and I don't know where to start with it, or that I have very little willpower to stay with a question if I don't make progress.

    It's hard, and I fear I may never learn. I tried to study in the library but alas no habit formed, even after a few weeks. I had diminishing returns by doing that.

  4022. Human behavioral complexity peaks at age 25: study 2017-05-11 08:51:55 mlpinit
    You might benefit from this Coursera course [1] "Learning how to Learn". It addresses many of the issues you've mentioned above. It provides a few helpful tricks to combat procrastination and it's straightforward.

    https://goo.gl/brJ0qN

  4023. Human behavioral complexity peaks at age 25: study 2017-05-11 09:19:49 Cyph0n
    Look, I think everyone procrastinates in one form or another. The key is to know when it's time to procrastinate on the procrastination (meta, huh?). In other words, you have to delay your procrastination to get the job done. It differs from person to person, so you need to find a way to do that effectively. I'm also guilty of procrastinating pretty frequently, but I've figured out how to manage it such that it doesn't affect my grades and/or work performance too much.

    Regarding your comment on ECE, I also found that I enjoyed some courses more than others (I did enjoy most though). For example, I absolutely hated my power systems and power electronics courses. The latter was one of the only courses I got a B+ in, so I didn't do well in it either. As one of the other commenters mentioned, you need to get used to the fact that you won't enjoy everything in your field/job. The trick is to learn how to deal with it and get it over with, or try to work on it with someone who loves the topic you hate.

  4024. Human behavioral complexity peaks at age 25: study 2017-05-11 14:16:54 Jach
    Have you tried drugs? Seriously, even something as basic as making sure you have a minimum amount of caffeine each day (pills are cheap and don't ruin your teeth) can make all the difference, much better than reading and trying to apply the latest in Motivational Techniques or Learning to Learn or plain inspirational writing/shows/music/games. Other drugs like modafinil (http://www.gwern.net/Modafinil) have their benefits too, or melatonin supplements if you need help getting to sleep. Talk to a psychiatrist to see if you need such things yadda yadda, I don't think you'd be all that receptive to "therapy" as a solution but could be wrong. I only mention drugs because your posts reminds me of myself as well as a former close friend. I won't say drugs like caffeine are solely why I'm in a cushy software job and he's doing dishwashing or something (last I got in touch he seemed to have found a happy place in life though) but when we were close we were both chronic procrastinators, I sacrificed a lot of sleep and just managed to finish more things and doing that has a way of compounding your ability to finish more things later (even if much slower than your 'ideal self' that is fully focused all the time).

    Another strategy is to study with another person, in person. It can be hard to apply if you're relatively antisocial though, or worry too much about bruising your ego by exposing ignorance. If it helps study with a person you think is 'dumber', like you're doing them a favor, though really it's for yourself, and if nothing else you might be surprised they're not so dumb.

    Last thing, learn shortcuts, embrace laziness (one of the Three Virtues of Programming), and automate. Learn some math software. In your example of solving three simultaneous equations, every time I had to do that I would do it with my TI-89 calculator. And not always the same way! But usually I used a slightly different (and imo simpler when not done by hand) matrix method. For 3 equations, get them all in the form of Ax+By+Cz=D, construct a 3x4 matrix with each row containing [Ai Bi Ci Di], and compute the row reduced echelon form to leave you with a diagonal of 1s in the first 3 columns telling you x/y/z correspond to the rows in the fourth column. With the calculator, it's as easy as typing rref([A1,B1,C1,D1; A2,B2,C2,D2; A3,B3,C3,D3]) Nowadays I'd probably just use Octave, which is the same syntax except without the commas. Similarly one course in my program had a section with lots of problems involving partial fractions expansion to help compute an inverse laplace transform. I'd just let my computers do the inverse transform directly, or at least do the partial fraction for me, since doing that crap by hand is tedious and of little value.

  4025. Ask HN: How much time per week do you spend on side projects? 2017-05-11 23:56:35 gremlinsinc
    Sounds like me...only I procrastinate and spend all the time I would working on a side project --thinking up ideas, or 'researching' what others are doing so I can copy/make better/build it and make$$.. Seems I never get past that 'market research' phase .... spend too much time on hackernews/reddit/indiehackers.

  4026. Self-Compassion Works Better Than Self-Esteem 2017-05-12 02:11:51 nothis
    There was an article about procrastination that really stuck with me and it argued something similar: One of the reasons we put off work is because we don't look at our "future selfs" as the same person or even as someone you feel sorry for. Basically, we think "I don't give a damn, let my future self deal with the consequences!". By thinking of your future self compassionately, you can much better motivate your current self to do work you'll depend on being finished at a later date.

    This might sound weird but I try this sometimes. "Thanks, past self, for having done this on time, now I can enjoy the weekend because I'm done with this tedious work!" You don't have to literally talk to yourself or anything, but it's IMO a healthy state of mind. It's also the only way I've found to directly tackle the underlying problem of procrastination instead of just telling yourself to "not be lazy, stupid!".

  4027. Self-Compassion Works Better Than Self-Esteem 2017-05-12 08:46:13 Thrillington
    My wife made the observation a few years back that anytime she thought, "fuck it" while procrastinating or avoiding responsibilities that you could replace it with, "fuck you, future self"

    That phrasing helps immensely. Sometimes it's worth it to push out the pain, but usually it isn't.

  4028. Self-Compassion Works Better Than Self-Esteem 2017-05-12 16:39:16 aaimnr
    There's one more component of self-compassion helping with procastination. Procrastination is mostly caused by the fear of failure, - once we feel how serious the situation is, the monkey in us can't stand the tension and escapes into dark playground of denial and guilty pleasures. TFA mentions how self compassion decreases fear of failure, thus removing the main trigger of procrastination cycle.

  4029. The Brain Can Only Take So Much Focus 2017-05-15 03:08:12 closeparen
    It's helped me immensely to move from a moralistic "I'm procrastinating because I have a weak constitution" belief to an "I'm procrastinating because I set up the environment wrong" mindset.

    It turns out that I get more done, run faster, and find both intellectual and physical work much easier when I've taken excellent (rather than merely okay) care of baseline needs like sleep, nutrition, exercise, and household chores.

    Willpower as a finite but manageable resource is a much more useful belief than willpower as a character trait.

  4030. The Brain Can Only Take So Much Focus 2017-05-15 03:51:03 thanatropism
    I find the Pomodoro technique much too confusing and detailed.

    Whenever I'm in an impossible procrastinating mood (and I feel that this is what is: a mood) I put e.ggtimer.com to the minimum amount of time I really think I can put together. Usually by the timer is gone I have to reset it and keep working. If I'm really getting into a good place, I increase the time, if it seems I'm going to be done soon, I decrease it.

    Reasonable expectations.

    > Using self-discipline techniques help in the short term, but in the long term I find them harmful.

    This seems a case of Stockdale's Paradox: http://ndoherty.com/stockdale-paradox/

  4031. What if jobs are not the solution but the problem? 2017-05-16 08:29:28 cbanek
    "How do you make a living without a job – can you receive income without working for it? Is it possible, to begin with and then, the hard part, is it ethical?"

    What about retirement? social security? disability? You might not be "making a living", but you are getting an income without working for it. Same for investing money. Really "working for it" is a loaded term in and of itself. You might be "working for it" by taking risk, or putting in labor. The author obviously doesn't think any investor is "working for it" by the the tone of the article, but this is precisely what retired america is doing?

    "If you were raised to believe that work is the index of your value to society – as most of us were – would it feel like cheating to get something for nothing?"

    I don't think this is the right question at all. People take for granted whatever they have, and likely may feel it's cheating, until they start taking it for granted.

    I think the more interesting question is, if you could live even if society didn't value what you were doing, and you could do anything (even nothing) and still be provided with everything you need to survive - what would happen to individuals and what would happen to society?

    People by nature I think are very externally motivated (society, wealth, materialism), and if you didn't make people go to work, would they? If they did, would they still put up with the crappy parts of it?

    I think what defines a satisfied life is doing things that matter to you, make yourself work, try hard, think, make yourself smile a few years down the road (after you've forgotten the hard parts). But even when you have all the opportunity in the world, some people just procrastinate or fall off the wagon somewhere...

  4032. Let employees work from home 2017-05-19 21:14:04 Morgawr
    From what I've seen in my team, it's very subjective. I think it's more of a "you need to have a reason to WFH", it's fine if once in a while you just stay home and work and all that matters is your deliverable, but ideally you should attend to all the meetings you need to and be reachable. If you keep doing WFH every day then yes, that's frowned upon.

    I'm honestly neutral on this, I prefer when my coworkers are around me because it's easier for me to interact with them (I noticed I'm a big procrastinator with remote communications, I keep thinking "I'll message them later" or "I'll send the email later", but that's a personal thing), it's easier to have the casual chat that leads to some form of rubber duck debugging or simply just an innocent exchange of opinions that ends up solving a problem/implementing a feature. I honestly don't get that while WFH.

    However, some people feel the opposite of me and think they are more productive at home so I'd say leave it to the person to decide and, as the author of the article said, calibrate your employees based on deliverables, not on their presence in the office.

  4033. So You Want to Write Your Own Language (2014) 2017-05-20 02:07:47 KirinDave
    There is another article about FizzBuzz I wrote roughly 5 years ago (forgive the pronouns, I need to rebuild the site and I'm procrastinating on the css).

    http://dave.fayr.am/posts/2012-10-4-finding-fizzbuzz.html

    This uses a slightly different set of abstractions with the same problem.

    But perhaps more specifically, when you select a monad stack (group of effects) to compose to solve a problem you're building the features of the language and its effects. And if you use the "final tagless" or "Free" approaches you're doing that even more directly.

  4034. Ask HN: Which websites do you visit? 2017-05-20 04:00:06 neuigkeiten
    http://www.gnoosic.com to find new music

    http://www.ventusky.com to check the weather worldwide

    http://www.xkcd.com for a quick procrastination break

  4035. Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer? 2017-05-21 17:44:23 titanix2
    For your Youtube channel, I'll advise you to prepare a few more before launch: this way you'll be able to skip a week or two easily... which should lessen the fear of not being able to keep the pace. Also you can choose a two weeks release schedule which is easier to keep (video is a lot of work).

    Having deadline helps a lot to start and finish projects. Procrastination can also be change in productive procrastination: instead of making you video you can write a blog post. For example, I'm right know programming a game I wanted to start for a long time instead of writing a research paper (and oh, commenting on HN).

    Finally I use visualisation before starting something. Instead of just thinking or writing down "write the blog post about XXX" I envision the final product for some time and how it will affect positively my life. Then I have more motivation to actually start it!

  4036. Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer? 2017-05-21 18:10:07 factsaresacred
    How much spare time do you have, what are your living conditions like, your energy levels, hours of sleep, computer speed, monitor size, task management approach?

    I ask because you need to:

    A. build an environment conducive to producing.

    B. practice discipline.

    Like you, I had some half-baked blogs and projects that were doomed for failure. After way too much wasted time it was obvious that I wasn't living a lifestyle congruent with my goals. No successful person ever prioritized Facebook over their project. I was lying to myself and had to snap out of it.

    So I began applying a version of the Broken windows theory* - which argues that if you prevent small crimes it discourages large crimes - to my life. (In this case the smaller crimes were procrastination and the larger crime was not getting my shit together like I know I ought to).

    The rules were simple:

    1. Everything I did had to align with my goal to produce. I got a faster laptop, dual screens (this makes a difference, trust me), began sleeping well and eating well, rationed consuming to 2 hours a day, stopped drinking (hangovers are dumb...for now at least).

    2. Apply discipline everywhere. I made my bed first thing each morning, the apartment was always spotless, I worked out every day. Even began doing stuff like not using auto-correct on Chrome - fight your lazy brain and spell the word correctly dammit. The idea was to practice discipline as much as possible so as to train it like a muscle.

    End result: I learned how to code, built a product, quit my job and am now at 500 customers.

    So you can do it. It's just going to cost you - dates, meetups with friends, a slight drop in Facebook-notification-induced-dopamine. But, I assure you, the joy from creating something that people enjoy eclipses all of that.

    This approach is geared more for an all in lifestyle change. If you just want to be a better blogger, even a fraction of the above will do.

    Worse than the fear of commitment is the tinge of regret. Took almost a decade to figure that one out.

    *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

  4037. Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer? 2017-05-21 18:13:15 touchofevil
    As an extremely dedicated procrastinator, the most insightful idea I have found regarding this topic is something called "The Procrastination Doom Loop"[1]

    I'd also highly recommend a book called "The War of Art"[2] which was written by a procrastinator who eventually made good.

    I'm still struggling with procrastination, but my personal feeling is that the key is probably to create a routine where you just execute your productive work during a set block of time everyday, much like a job. This is just so you don't have to decide whether or not to do the work "now" which will break the procrastination doom loop. Good luck!

    [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/08/the-pro...

    [2] https://www.amazon.com/War-Art-Through-Creative-Battles/dp/1...

  4038. Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer? 2017-05-21 18:18:51 superasn
    Having been a similar situation myself my advice for you would be to first of all stop blaming yourself for being lazy, or not doing enough. I don't know if you are but it's easy to fall into that trap.

    My most unproductive period was when I was trying to do too much, all sorts of things, with insane deadlines. It really had an opposite effect on me wherein I started procrastinating a lot and then felt guilty for wasting another day. Weird part was that I wasn't even having fun with my time. It was just a weird state where I was working without actually accomplishing anything.

    Anyway, I got my mojo back when I just said fuck it and said goodbye to those imaginary deadlines and started doing the so called time wasters like watching Netflix, reddit, hn, etc 100% guilt free. Instantly without the pressure and guilt, the quality of work and more importantly stuff started getting done again. It may be a unique case but try it for a few days. Maybe it'll work for you too!

  4039. Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer? 2017-05-21 18:20:00 nickjj
    I schedule out my time.

    For instance, Wednesday and Friday are dedicated to nothing but writing blog posts. I tend to spend half the time researching and the other half writing.

    By the time Wednesday rolls along, I'm pretty eager to start writing. I usually keep a buffer of a month's worth of posts.

    Then the rest of my time is spent producing content of other types (courses, etc.) and consulting.

    Luckily I don't use FB, IG and barely use Twitter. HN and Youtube still soak up a pretty decent amount of time, but I use various browser extensions and other tactics to keep myself in check. In fact, I blogged about that[0] a few months ago and this combo works better than anything I've ever tried.

    [0]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-overcome-procrastinati...

  4040. Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer? 2017-05-21 18:32:30 marvin
    I'm going to say something that might be wildly unpopular among ambitious people: If you have a full-time job, you are by far not a passive consumer. You presumably contribute >40 hours every week of creatively demanding, high-quality labor to society.

    For most people, the premise of this question is wrong. Procrastination, when you don't obviously have a lot of available time and effort, is a symptom that most of your creative energies are already spent elsewhere and are unavailable for other high-energy pursuits. I commend the effort to organizing your remaining free time to produce something of societal value, but for most people this is an exercise that will in the long run lead to burnout. Your mind is already subconsciously telling you this.

    I know some people who have energy levels that allow them to sustainably burn the candle at both ends, but they are a small minority. I am quite envious of this group; they appear to have a big leg up in accomplishing great things, but there appears to be a component of either genetics or upbringing that leaves only a small portion of people with this capability.

    If you are not in this minority and you strongly desire to produce more creative output outside of your full-time job, there are two options: You can set small goals, e.g. spending 3-5 hours a week of dedicated time towards your pursuit, or putting everything else in your life on pause for a year or two while you go at it with all your effort. The latter course of action will likely not be sustainable, and you have to listen to your mind and body when it's had enough of it.

    My preferred choice would be to get a job that pays enough to sustain your lifestyle but has much smaller hours (e.g. 60% or 40% of a full-time position), if this is at all possible. Most places, sadly, it isn't an option. If you can organize this, you free up a significant portion of your creative energy, which can then be used for other ambitious goals.

  4041. Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer? 2017-05-22 00:03:18 scriptstar
    It's a combination of several things like 'fear of failure', 'fear of success' and procrastination.

    1. Just build something very very tiny thing and sell it for less than 5 quid something like $1.99.

    2. Repeat until you see some success and get motivation.

    3. While doing this just be in the same tribe who's making things like you. Talk to them and share your experiences with them. Grow with them, together.

    4. The momentum automatically move you to the next level.

    5. Finally find a mentor who's been in this journey before and embrace his/her advise.

    Let me know where can I buy your first tiny product and I will buy no matter what it is.

    Good luck!

  4042. Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer? 2017-05-22 01:21:55 daddyo
    For me blogging worked best when blogging on a subject I just turned novice in. I'd write as if writing for myself 1 year ago. This worked out really well. Positive feedback made me write more. Now I've become more expert on that subject and I don't want to write simple tutorials anymore (it feels too much like work). I also gained a fear of being wrong, as I realized how deep and nuanced the subject really is.

    As for Youtube: seems like you fell into the trap of planning too far ahead. Most channels never work out. Even if you stick to a weekly schedule, viewership will only steadily rise. Why not release your current videos, try a (bi-)monthly schedule and see where it goes?

    Fear of commitment is a rationalized excuse your brain makes to avoid burning calories :). Or it's to avoid a setback: you put in all this effort and it did not work out. People avoid relationships for fear of commitment too, without ever giving it a shot, or asking if the other person also wants commitment.

    For open source or research I give myself very small timeframes. You can think about it the rest of the week, and have a very productive hour or two coding or writing.

    As for procrastination, check out "productive procrastination". It helped me get stuff done, when even more important stuff needed to be done :).

    http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/10-ways-for-pr...

  4043. Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer? 2017-05-22 05:59:56 jng
    Here's some shared experiences that may be applicable to your case. I am a 43 year old that struggled with procrastination all my life. Even then, I did achieve some impressive things, in various ways, over the years. Wrote a book to learn x86 assembly and got it published quite successfully when I was 21. Led the technical team of a AAA team. Built and sold a software product online for 11 years, 6 figures sales. But then I failed many times in achieved my creative goals. I think I just wasn't looking at things from the right angle.

    With creative stuff: writing, music, etc... I had to find another way. Technical projects tend to be big. Don't be wrong, something like "publishing a youtube video every week" is a huge amount of work and very scary, involving time, energy, creativity, and the very logical fear of nobody giving a shoot about it.

    What worked for me creatively was to bring projects down to the smallest expression. I wanted to write short fiction stories, I decided to write "tweetstories" in 140 characters. I wanted to do storytelling, did a lot of stand-up comedy, 5min sets. For music, short piano pieces. Make it such that the amount of work is not the problem. And then you will find what the real issue is.

    For me, I had to accept producing bad stuff. We sometimes don't produce stuff because we're scared to produce bad stuff. And there's no way around it. You can't choose to be a good artist, but you can choose to be a bad artist. And that's the only way. Watch Ira Glass's video on creativity, he describes it perfectly.

    Good luck. This is very reasonable stuff to struggle with.

  4044. Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer? 2017-05-22 13:24:33 pacomerh
    We all function differently, let me give you an example. There's the kind of people that don't need much help doing things, they don't need advice or productivity tools, or reading motivational articles that are actually only an excuse to avoid starting things. These kind of people will tell you that if you really want to do something you won't need to spend your life procrastinating, because if you want it so much, the energy to do it will come out natural. This might not have happened to you because you haven't found the right thing to create. But not everyone is like that, not everyone knows what they should be prioritizing. Some people need inspiration, for these kind of people I would strongly recommend collaborating with others. Work with others, get inspired by commitment and sharing ideas. For some people the problem of not having energy to create things is related to not having small social rewards that keep you going like fuel. Energizing by others is important and will get you going.

  4045. Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer? 2017-05-22 14:42:50 marenkay
    Having been there myself after becoming a single parenting dad, I can recommend a few things:

    - instead of consuming, try producing small things. Personally I started out writing a daily diary. First thing in the morning next to coffee is writing. That gives a good impression of what you actually did. - figure out what you actually like, what picks your interest in an amount that it can pull you off of procrastinating. I would recommend learning something completely new. I went off learning a new language, looked into two new programming languages, and started doing something that is the opposite of my day job.

    If you want to try out Open Source:

    - find projects you actively use. Improve them. Even making a README nicer is a start. - find something that you can Open Source. Personally I went with pushing out a new OS project every week and do that for two months now.

    In the end it is very simple: you have to reach the point where you are fed up with just sitting in front of social media, etc. That mostly means realizing that doing has more value for improving ones self.

    Stick with it. And that is the hard part.

    Parting words: if you lack discipline and fall back to procrastinating, reserve fixed times in your calendar for activities.

    Best advice for the end: enjoy yourself. Be you. Do what fulfills your inner self.

  4046. Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer? 2017-05-23 15:50:12 beeps
    > Also would like to contribute to open source software projects, or write more for my blog, but I just can't force myself to do it. This is kinda a mix of fear (of what?!) and procrastination habits

    Start answering questions on stack overflow. You can also find a more noob friendly oss project (kubernetes, Django) and start fixing docs, or look for "help-wanted" type labels. Lurk around their IRC/slack channels for a while, and if that doesn't help, lurk moar.

  4047. Get your loved ones off Facebook 2017-05-23 21:24:34 lowkeyokay
    To my experience, quitting Facebook has been quite easy. I quit four years ago. Sure, it's an extra burden on friends and acquaintances when they want to invite my to partys and such. They have to email or text me. (yeah, not on WhatsApp either). I might not hear right away when an old friend has a baby but for closer friends and family, I don't miss out on anything.

    Note: I actually quit because I thought it would mean less procrastination, but then I discovered HN...

  4048. 1Password Travel Mode: Protect your data when crossing borders 2017-05-24 06:30:53 mowenz
    In our busy and overwhelming lives it is easy to procrastinate about civic responsibilities while still caring about living in a just and fair world.

    My phone has not been searched, either, but the issue here is to stand up for your rights. If you have never been wronged by a person or organization in position of authority in US government then consider yourself lucky. I and most people I know living in the US have.

  4049. Helping a Million Developers Exit Vim 2017-05-24 13:24:32 balladeer
    I don't know Vi(m) well at all and that's mostly my impatience and procrastination. Just like I could never truly touch-type. But I totally get how Vim is excellent at what it does and hence why it's important. Not using the mouse and not having a lot of distraction are godsend when doing any work worth your time involving lots of text whether it's reading, or writing code, or a story. Also, I've kind of never even seen all those ancient gadgets you have named - I feel this based on my exp with computers (and starting with a Dell Vostro) since 2007.

    edit: I've been getting slightl better at it by forcing myself to use VimFx on Firefox and cVim on Chrome and now I am planning to get IdeaVim for WebStorm and Android Studio.

  4050. How Social Media is Built for Addiction 2017-05-25 22:58:35 localhost3000
    I built a chrome extension to help me with this addiction. It replaces the distracting parts of social networking sites (like Facebook's News Feed) with a todo app to keep me on task whenever I look to these sites to procrastinate.

    The app unlocks the site for a configurable amount of time after I've completed my tasks.

    Also supports Hacker News, Reddit, YouTube, Twitter, and Product Hunt.

    It has helped me a lot with a. Recovering lost productivity and b. Feeling less addicted to these sites.

    If curious: Todobook https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/todobook/ihbejplhk...

  4051. How Social Media is Built for Addiction 2017-05-26 00:45:25 arximboldi
    That is awesome! I have been using News Feed Erradicator for a while but that is next level! Too bad I am using Firefox ;)

    Also, recently I realized that when I in nervous procrastination mode I also check GitHub too much to look at the stream of updates and "someone starred ..." stuff, I have looked for disabling the stream but could not find it... I guess I could try play with the Stylish plugin to make it disappear or sth.

    Admittedly, sometimes I wish I could remove all "points" and "numbers" from the web, even on HackerNews. There is this quick brain sugar rush when you see these numbers rise, but just a minute later I feel empty, sad, and dirty for having this narcissistic automatic response.

    This is one of the reasons (the other ones go around privacy and tracking) that I don't do Google Analytics nor any kind of access.log aggregation/analysis on my websites. Maybe this is a stupid rationalization, but I'd like to think that we value stats too much and that they distract us from doing better qualitative design and analysis...

  4052. MediaGoblin – Self Hosted, Decentralized​ Alt to YouTube, Flickr, SoundCloud 2017-05-26 02:18:50 throwanem
    I love the motivation, but this is way too generic - I don't see anything that distinguishes it, for this use case or honestly for any other, from any other JS application framework I might choose, and there are a lot of other ones out there that are much more thoroughly baked than this one. (Another way to say this might be "it's a good idea, but I want to see a finished version of it before seriously considering helping out.")

    Sorry to be that guy, and I know it's not a nice thing to hear. But I'd hate to see you burn a ton of time on something that's born under the cloud of "there are a million other ones just like it and no reason anyone can see why this one is worth investing effort into". I'd rather see you take all that effort and skill, find a project that's already got some momentum behind it, and get behind that and push - everybody saying "I'll build my own!" is half the reason we've got where we are in the first place.

    On the other hand, maybe your framework has a genuine USP that I'm just not seeing. In that case, you'll have an easier time getting interest if you find a way to surface that, front and center, so that even the most disinterested professional engineer who's skimming HN by way of procrastination before the next code review can't help but see it.

    Either way, hope this helps, and good luck in your future endeavors!

  4053. Why I Quit Being So Accommodating (1922) 2017-05-26 04:27:02 stvnchn
    > “You are thirty-five years old,” I said to myself. “More than half of your life has already been spent. Who is living your life, anyway? Is it actually yours? Or is it a kind of public storehouse of odd jobs? A pile of days and hours put on the counter of the world with a sign inviting every Tom, Dick, and Harry to take one?”

    This was probably the best part for me. We have longer life spans and so we trick ourselves into thinking that we have more time to waste on things we don't really want to do. We can procrastinate all we want but in the end, we still come back to this question without a single clue of how to answer it.

  4054. Ask HN: I don't want to be a founder anymore 2017-05-26 09:28:29 bhalperin
    Wow, this gave me the realization I needed about why I've been procrastinating on a project. Thanks.

  4055. Why I Quit Being So Accommodating (1922) 2017-05-27 04:23:45 lomnakkus
    Let me preface this with: I'm quite drunk, and this is probably a lot more ranty than I intended. I have read it through a couple of times and I think it holds up even when sober, but I'll let you be the judge of that. I don't think I'm being dishonest or frivolous.

    As you say -- as far as I can tell -- it's probably "just" about honest communication... or maybe you're just irresponsible! (That was a joke!)

    Just out of curiosity when+why didn't you "do something I said I would"? Of course you mention that you don't remember her saying it, but that just leaves the question of... why don't you remember it? I'm not trying to be an asshole, I'm really curious about this dynamic.

    My "troublesome" friend person is probably very similar to you -- not having access to your or his internal monologue, I can't be sure -- but honestly, I think maybe he's just prioritizing badly, if you know what I mean? Maybe he lacks empathy to see how much distress his procrastination sometimes causes?

    I should also add that "we" have obligations to third-parties[3] which means that his procrastination sometimes means that "we" + "others"[2] have to do 24h+ shifts just because he didn't prepare/do-it-in-time. Just out of curiosity, is this this something you would do (intentionally or not)?

    (I won't lie, that shit is stressful. Even if you want and are willing to get it done on time this "$X isn't quite ready" thing is extremely stressful until "you" get it done.)

    [1] Because Psychoanalysis is mostly bullshit.

    [2] External accountants and that sort of thing. It's absurd how far this procrastination (about fully known calendar dates) is.

    [3] Think drug cartels... or the Tax Man. Take your pick! :)

  4056. Ask HN: What are some examples of successful single-person businesses? 2017-05-30 03:24:54 sixQuarks
    Same boat here, I only have to work about 2 hours per week to maintain $500K annual profit. I'm the biggest procrastinator in the world and don't know how to program (although I'm now learning just for fun).

  4057. Upstart – Find newsletters to promote your business or side projects 2017-05-30 23:15:10 pixelfeeder
    The searchable database is the real product, but to protect myself from procrastinating on this I forced myself to launch quickly. Hence the v0.5 solution.

  4058. Going for the 5 hour workday 2017-05-31 16:49:57 lbill
    My contract specifies a 7.5h workday... But I do only 6h/day, and so do most of my colleagues. I am very lucky: I live in France, this country has a strong culture of "stay late at work and the boss will like you", yet my firm does not care about that. It cares about getting sh*t done.

    This is a broader subject than "work hours": my firm thinks that staying more hour to procrastinate is not not useful, and it believes that employees are more efficient when they are happy! In order to have an efficient workforce and less turnover, I think any business should try to answer: "for each employee: what conditions does he/she need to be happy at work?".

  4059. Self-Interruption and Distraction 2017-06-01 16:10:47 sjellis
    It's worth noting that Hacker News has an anti-procrastination feature: set the "noprocrast" option in your profile to "yes", and then it will time-limit your visits to "maxvisit" in minutes, and block you for the "minaway" period.

    I don't know of any other site that does this. It's a very cool thing for Y Combinator to have done.

  4060. Ask HN: How to stay focused? 2017-06-02 01:52:45 sjg007
    It's not clear that procrastination is bad per se. Drugs and escapism might be. But imagine the future and work to it.

  4061. On the Unhappiness of Software Developers 2017-06-03 01:13:17 ThomaszKrueger
    In the company's eyes you should be 100% or even more committed. Perception is everything in this case. But you must do it by creating your own reserve space, where you are really 90% (or less) committed while using the remainder to worry about your next gig, because it will come. That's when you learn to apply proactive procrastination (sometimes it pays off to hold off on something you suspect will be cancelled), and absolutely use all the time estimated and allocated. Say whatever they want, managers and people in general take estimates for what it must be. Therefore you make it so.

  4062. Pinboard Acquires Delicious 2017-06-03 02:55:22 sixQuarks
    dude, don't tempt me. I swear I'll do just as soon as I finish reading my book on how to fight chronic procrastination.

  4063. On the Unhappiness of Software Developers 2017-06-03 22:48:41 wojt_eu
    In general it's about pressue to get the main task done quickly. I thought of some common reasons I feel this pressure:

      - external, e.g. bug hurting our clients.
  - feeling bound by an overly optimistic estimate, like couple hours vs. a week
  - can't focus, procrastinate and then rush to get the work done
  - imposter syndrome and constant feeling that I should have done my assigned task long time ago
  - personal issues forcing me to take some time off and delaying shipment
  - having already spent considerable time in some other rabbit-hole, especially without asking for permission 
  - misunderstood something, wasted lots of time implementing wrong thing but don't want to admit
  - scope creep, a feature that's too big and too long in not-yet-ready-for-deployment, risk of interruptions, merge conflicts and being too big to test properly grows
    The first one is fundamental and sometimes things are simply urgent. Addressing rest of them is an ongoing effort.

    Without this kind of pressure I often find solving problems like debugging library code or git forensics quite fun.

    I'm fine with fine-grained time accounting. Part of a decade of remote freelancing. Nowadays I do it habitually without being required.

  4064. We Bought a Crack House 2017-06-05 18:59:36 bshimmin
    The strapline: "We were cash-strapped, desperate to move and hemmed in by a hot market."

    I read the article in full (nothing like a bit of procrastination on a Monday morning) and I think probably the two most abhorrent aspects are: 1) the utter and seemingly limitless stupidity of their decisions; 2) the way their back-up condo is casually introduced about halfway through - "Luckily, we still owned..." (An honourable mention goes to the wealthy English godfather making a sudden, ridiculous appearance. This bit sounded totally fictitious, to be honest.)

  4065. Weekly links to help you become a better developer 2017-06-06 01:27:17 real-hacker
    This looks good. But I really shouldn't subscribe this. I read HN/high scalability/morning paper, there are so much to learn about that I don't have much time left to do serious work. And I always prefer reading web posts to doing work when I tend to procrastinate. Maybe I should read some time management posts ;)

  4066. Ask HN: Women in tech, how do you find non-toxic work environments? 2017-06-06 19:15:17 exelius
    Yes! Time spent at the office != time spent working.

    I often have to retrain my employees because I'm gone by 6 and idgaf if you stay later, but if something is due by end of day, that means I need to have it by 5 to review. Not 11 because you procrastinated and spent all day swiping tinder.

    Working late should be a badge of shame. And I make sure my employees know that expectations are not lower as a result.

  4067. Ask HN: What keeps you up at night? What do you worry about? 2017-06-08 04:01:38 deftnerd
    Money & being the sole income earner in the house (wife and 3 kids) and doing it by freelancing. Like most Americans, we live payment-by-payment.

    The other problem I have is anxiety, procrastination, and similar issues.

    If you're asking this to fish for product ideas, I would love to see a managed task-master assistant service.

    Remember that story of a guy that used to pay someone to sit next to him and hit him whenever he was procrastinating? Something similar could be set up where when your day starts, you connect with your assistant via video chat. They can watch everything happening on your screen.

    At the start of the day, they should spend some time asking what you want to get done and break it down into a task list for you and feed you pomodoro-like chunks. An assistant could monitor 4 to 8 people at the same time with the right software (screenshots and list of open window titles).

    A paid task-master or accountability-buddy. Maybe $3 or $4 an hour for the service.

  4068. Ask HN: What keeps you up at night? What do you worry about? 2017-06-08 05:49:31 iSloth
    The past few years have been really hard with family health. On a similar theme, my fitness could be better, but it's not something that keeps me up at night.

    Outside of the family/health stuff, I'd say my biggest worry is actually getting something meaningful done in my life. Don't get me wrong, I've got a good job with a well-paid salary and benefits, good family life and financially comfortable, I'm happy and grateful for all that as well.

    However, I know I'm technically capable of doing or building something interesting, and ideally profitable to a point that it could be a business to support me. But I always seem to be stuck in the somewhat cliche spiral of pointless procrastination, browsing HN under the false pretence of fishing for ideas and inspiration, which is really just fueling the procrastinating.

    I'm not sure if my head is just wired differently to others, but I really struggle to find ideas that aren't a blatant copy of others, and the original ones I can tell are flawed by design or the market is so small that it'll never me more than a little bit of Adsense revenue etc. Similarly, I'm envious of others people's focus to actually get something built, shipped and profitable.

  4069. The Future of the Word Processor (2016) 2017-06-09 03:47:48 derefr
    "Word processors" were always a stilted compromise; they try to weave together the acts of composition and layout, when each necessarily constrains the other. As you compose a document in a word processor, you end up "fighting yourself"—making changes on the composition side that require matching changes on the layout side, or vice-versa. And not only this, the two tasks are mutually distracting—fiddling with layout after writing a single sentence can be used as a means of procrastinating from writing the next sentence; and endless copyediting can be used as a distraction from deciding on layout. A program that functions to do both tasks concurrently, is often far less than the sum of its parts, in productivity terms.

    Everything is much simplified if you just avoid this weaving altogether, and adopt a content pipeline approach, as every commercial book publisher, newspaper and magazine does. In this approach, you use pure-composition programs for your composition, and pure-layout programs for your layout. When you are working on one, you are not distracted with the demands of the other.

    In fact, two different people can be working asynchronously on these two components; and, indeed, if the work of one stage is finished first, this enables an extremely useful static constraint on the work of the other, simplifying the decision-making for it greatly. Layout can determine target word-count; or word-count and paragraph composition can decide layout.

    What you don't have is the constant tweaking, pitting half-finished layout and half-finished prose against one-another. Each is effectively opaque to the other until the end of the process.

    The most wonderful thing that has happened to composition in recent memory is the GUI Markdown editor. Until these, all composition programs that weren't simply plaintext, had at least some layout elements. (This is because their target format was RTF, and RTF contains things like per-line margin settings.) But .md is a fine format for storing compositions: it lets you specify the "tone" of text with markup, but contains no mechanism to (reliably) specify final appearance.

    Combine such documents with a program like Publisher or InDesign (or, partially, LyX or Pages) for layout, and you've got a very nice workflow. And, as a side-benefit, the prose created during the composition step will be exactly what is needed for web publishing as well.

  4070. The Future of the Word Processor (2016) 2017-06-09 16:06:37 accordionclown
    > adopt a content pipeline approach, as every commercial book publisher, newspaper and magazine does

    the main reason they do it that way is because they have different people doing the writing and the layout tasks.

    but the writers of today and tomorrow are much more likely to be self-publishers, who are pricing their work such that they don't have the margin to employ others to do layout.

    now, it's true that some people are incapable of doing both tasks at once, and find themselves procrastinating by doing one task when they should be doing the other.

    those people will have to learn how to fix that bad habit.

    but it is equally true that other people are quite capable of doing both tasks at the same time, and they'll typically do the complete job in much faster time doing both at once.

    and they often end up doing a much better job too, because they're working with a tight feedback loop between the tasks.

    now, i do agree with you that a light-markup editor can enhance such a feedback loop. a 2-pane setup, a la the ghost interface, requires the entry of clean text and couples it with a display that lets a writer confirm they will get the output they want.

    (indesign is outdated. if you need a .pdf today, repurpose your .html using prince, renting it on a monthly basis via docraptor. that way, a single input creates .html, .epub, .mobi, and .pdf.)

  4071. The Future of the Word Processor (2016) 2017-06-10 04:31:27 accordionclown
    > You realize that I'm not talking about a problem that you either have or you don't, but one that everyone has to some degree, right?

    i don't see it that way. i especially don't see it as involving "willpower". i see it more as a specific skill.

    now, as i said quite clearly, some people lack the skill. and some of those people will be totally unable to learn it. the most unfortunate ones should adopt your 2-stage workflow.

    but most people can learn to drop the procrastination habit and pick up the skill of simultaneous writing and layout.

    plus, on the other side, some people thrive on that method. not just do they not "have a problem" with it, to any degree, but they actually perform better when they work in that way.

    > It's (sadly) not usually feasible in large orgs, given that there are separate teams with separate skillsets

    i agree that such organizations won't change their workflow.

    but i'm not really all that interested in empowering _them_.

    > iBooks Author

    > It's honestly a shame that the EPUB 3.0 standard

    it's much better if i don't get started on either of those topics... :+)

  4072. Hunter S Thompson: A Man Has to BE Something 2017-06-11 09:03:28 cmurf
    There are few 20 year olds with the imagination to recognize "But a man who procrastinates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance."

  4073. 10x engineers take long naps 2017-06-14 00:42:09 dukoid
    Two extreme cases that happened to me:

    - "I have to get this done today, no matter how long it will take" -> procrastinate the whole day, waste the night to do the stuff in low quality, using "it's late now" as an excuse.

    - "I have to leave early today" -> productive focuessed work to get some stuff done before the time runs out

  4074. 10x engineers take long naps 2017-06-14 01:59:07 jblow
    I disagree. That ratholing and reading is not resting at all, it is procrastination. If you want to rest, go to lunch or take a coffee break, or meditate or something.

    > You can only concentrate so many hours a day. Without that resting your productivity drops.

    This is the kind of thing people tell themselves to justify procrastination. If you are unable to concentrate for long, maybe you have damaged your attention span by too much internet browsing, and the cure is just to stop?

  4075. 10x engineers take long naps 2017-06-14 07:48:10 Roybot
    Case 1 happens to me when I don't completely understand the problem so I don't know where to start. This leads me to procrastinate. I lack a sense of direction in those cases.

  4076. The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (1939) [pdf] 2017-06-17 01:38:06 tryitnow
    Considering that I am currently procrastinating on HN, this is probably the last thing I need to read right now.

  4077. Palm-sized Apple II Computer 2017-06-17 16:03:21 AnOscelot
    I kinda like your unicorn.

    My preferred size would be 8 to 10 inches. I think 10 inches would be a sweet spot, for me personally. Especially since I would want to use the eink screen as a reader as well as a screen for editing. You'd lose pocketability, but gain some additional flexibility and greater readability.

    My wish list:

    Eink screen, 360 hinge so the thing could be used as a book, backlit keyboard as a stretch goal.

    Super user friendly & distraction free writing interface, but with Linux underneath and maybe a checkbox in advanced options to open the shell / vi / emacs for use. One very nice feature would be allowing split screen between two editors, or the editor + pdf / epub. Removes the potential distraction of looking away from the editor when you need to reference something. But no web browser, since that would encourage procrastination, even on a slower eink screen.

    Wifi with automatic backups to the major cloud providers or user specified private servers. Plugged into USB and it shows up as simple storage.

    Anyways, thanks for the fun idea which led to some fun thoughts. I hope we see something like this one day.

  4078. Ask HN: Do you plan your next day ahead? 2017-06-18 06:46:52 terminalcommand
    For the last 3 years I've been trying to find a way to organize my life.

    Before that I was in a rebellious phase, I didn't believe in time management and plans. I thought they caused stress and inefficiency. I thought there was enough time for everything.

    However, then I crashed and realized that professionalism and proper planning have their place. But I could not and cannot manage to adopt a system.

    I tried org-mode, the to-do list on my phone, some calendar apps. I tried the flash card system from Cal Newport's book Focus. I managed to stick to it for a week, and actually got some work done.

    Nowadays I don't plan ahead, if something needs my attention and needs to be done I write down a checklist for the task with minimum self-explanatory items on a piece of paper.

    Most things that I perceive as tasks are either not important in the end, or they go away. The ones that remain receive my undivided honest attention and in the meantime I procrastinate.

    I don't trust myself, so I don't plan ahead. If I plan, I don't think I'll stick to it. If a task has the potential to haunt me, make me anxious and rob me of my sleep, I try to be cautious with it and get it done ASAP. Other than these types of tasks, I don't force myself to do anything and simply pass the time.

    I wish I could be an organized person, procrastinate less, tidy up, live healthier etc. But knowing from experience that it's quite unlikely that I'll do all that, I try to focus on the bare essentials and try to feel less guilt.

  4079. Ask HN: Do you plan your next day ahead? 2017-06-18 07:13:43 dsr_
    "Most things that I perceive as tasks are either not important in the end, or they go away. The ones that remain receive my undivided honest attention and in the meantime I procrastinate."

    Every honest organization system is trying to teach you that very point.

    You can amass an infinite tasklist in finite time, but only the important things matter. It's much better to accomplish one important thing in a day than twenty inconsequential jobs.

    ...the difficulty is in discovering what isn't important.

  4080. Ask HN: How to manage my bookmarking habit? 2017-06-18 13:58:12 axaxs
    Organize them into folders. All of them, with no exceptions. Having to take an action on each one will lead to removing many. Hoarding is a symptom of procrastination.

  4081. Ask HN: Fear of launching a product 2017-06-18 16:37:26 mattbgates
    I can tell you that I am in the same boat: I have been working on 3 side projects for over a year now (and I have plans to build about 5-8 more) and I'm a little fearful of releasing them. I've been working on them since March 2016 and I was supposed to go live in June 2016, then February 2017, and now I'm pushing July 2017.

    My delays aren't the fear of launching, however, as much of the time it has been life issues: from trying to make sure my lady is happy, to having to work extra hours at work, to having to spend time with family and friends, to having to fix bugs and update features (I had to update everything from PHP 5.4 to PHP 7), to running out of money to support the projects -- as I pay third parties for their API, to procrastinating and being unable to focus, to just plainly being exhausted, where I've opened up the project to work on it, and the next thing I know.. the laptop is next to me, sometimes even on my chest, and it's morning time.

    I run a semi-popular website called Confessions of the Professions ( http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com ) a few years ago that began with just 3 visitors: my mom, my girlfriend, and Google bot. And yet today, it receives about an average of 1,000 visitors. A few weeks ago, several articles went viral, and for two weeks, it was receiving 10,000-20,000 visitors a day.

    I released another project, a free web app, called MyPost ( https://mypost.io ) that was really a test to see if people would even use something I created. With over 3000 posts created and worldwide use, I'd say it taught me a lot but gave me confidence to know that people actually would use the things I build.

    These were easy to launch as I really didn't feel any pressure to "make sure everything worked 100%" and even sometimes I catch things broken.. and I just fix them, and no one complains. I think I may have had one person just let me know that something wasn't working correctly, but for the most part, I don't feel any pressure in knowing that these two projects have their minor issues. It also helps that both are free to visit and use.

    However, lately since I'm working on projects that I actually charge for, I fear the launch.

    My fear is not really the launch itself, but the fact that: What if I launch it and there are a ton of errors while live? What if I launch it and not a single person signs up? What if everyone hates it? Although I have done my best to test and test and even got other people to help with beta testing and there are no major issues, I still have that fear of that one error that we all didn't catch that is going to wreck me and cause me to be a failure.

    I am nearly done with all my testing enough to say: Let me just go for it, at least, get friends and acquaintances to use it before I go completely public with it. I just keep convincing myself to move forward: I want to turn these side projects into a business and make a living off of them. That is what keeps me going. If I don't, someone else will.

    KEEP GOING MAN! KEEP GOING! YOU CAN DO THIS! YOU GOT THIS! DON'T LOSE HOPE!

    There may be failure, but if you never launch it, than how will you ever know? Besides, failure always tends to eventually lead to success. With every thing you do, you are constantly learning. Now you and I .. we just have to learn to have that confidence in ourselves to know that our products aren't that bad at all.. and other people may find them useful. If anything, at least we find our own products useful.

    Good luck. Just know.. there are others out there... like me, who are going through exactly what you are going through.

  4082. How to name things: the hardest problem in programming (2014) 2017-06-21 05:19:05 ardit33
    That's why almost all IDEs have "renaming" a class as a feature.

    I'd say roll with whatever name comes first, as you can always change it later. Dwelling too much with it can be a sign of perfectionism.... or procrastination, or ADD.... or just in-experience.

    As I got older and had more experience "naming" things stopped being a problem, as I always knew I could change things later on, and trying to be perfect on first shot is futile.

    Thinking of programming as an essay that will need some editing/revisions when done, helps a lot.

  4083. How to name things: the hardest problem in programming (2014) 2017-06-21 05:27:26 Omnius
    "I'd say roll with whatever name comes first, as you can always change it later. Dwelling too much with it can be a sign of perfectionism.... or procrastination, or ADD.... or just in-experience."

    -- I will take "things i will never do" for a 100 Alex.

  4084. Ask HN: What are your most valuable habits? 2017-06-21 11:38:54 rdavidw
    1. Earlier I used to procrastinate but now I have overcome it by 50%. The power of ruling my mind is the most valuable thing for me. 2. I usually write 200 words a day, it keeps my mind healthy and busy. 3. I share my knowledge free of cost. I don't want people to be a follower but I want to create more leaders.

  4085. Ways to Get Better at C++ 2017-06-23 23:32:48 kabdib
    Nobody I know uses it.

    On the other hand, the Whole Tomato refactoring tools are pretty awesome, and most of my cow-orkers have them installed. They make large projects a lot easier to deal with (near instantaneous search across a large project is a wonderful thing). But you don't need them, especially when you're starting out.

    My basic principle is, when learning a language, doing stuff that isn't involved in learning that language is, well, not learning the language. It's like the aspiring writer who just needs to find the right laptop, the right software, the right printer / coffeeshop / corner of the house . . . it's all excuses and procrastination, just sit down and write.

  4086. KeePassXC 2.2.0 released with YubiKey and TOTP support 2017-06-26 12:21:46 watersb
    I am playing with YubiKey storing certificates, then using the certificates like any other GPG setup, so I can have redundancy and revocation. But I have yet to make it dead simple enough to use for real-world application.

    Or maybe I am just procrastinating.

  4087. Efficient music players remain elusive 2017-06-26 17:07:55 ClassyJacket
    "Originally, Parkinson's law is the adage that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion", and the title of a book which made it well-known. However, in current understanding, Parkinson's law is a reference to the self-satisfying uncontrolled growth of the bureaucratic apparatus in an organization."

    Hmm, I can see how they're related, but it doesn't seem to be quite what I'm talking about. I'm more referring to the overuse of resources by individual elements assuming or acting as if they're the only thing using it, like in the above examples of a teacher acting like their class is your only one, or a thread consuming resources like no others are active.

    Parkinson's law more seems to be the result of the effect that I'm talking about (among others, like procrastination).

  4088. Ask HN: Do you use creatine as a brain supplement? 2017-06-26 23:28:22 mrleinad
    Well, I didn't know that. Maybe I should expect a rise on my cog-skills now that I started taking it last week for exercise.

    On a side note: As others pointed out, Modafinil is really what you want if you need a brain supplement. I've been taking it since November last year on a daily basis (100 milligrams, half a pill) and I can say that I've been able to make a lot of progress to actively stop procrastination. It's not magic, I still struggle with it a lot, but I've been able to manage it and build a routine of meditation and exercise that I hadn't been able to build before (I'm 35 y/o). There's a lot of work left to get to point where I can say I've actually won and I'm not a procrastinator anymore, but this year so far will be one of the most productive I've ever had.

  4089. Ask HN: Looking for Python Roadmap, specifically when is python 4 coming? 2017-06-29 05:42:46 fosco
    2 is my concern - I started learning in 2.x most of my scripts are broken in 3.x and I am not a programmer so before I start diving into learning which I aim to do I want to know if its possible my scripts can break again :-)

    thanks ofr the input that is what I've read but was hoping if python 4 was coming out soon I can just procrastinate a little more.

  4090. Ask HN: What are some of the better Hacker News apps? 2017-07-03 06:02:39 jitl
    The best option I’ve found is https://hckrnews.com/

    Not an app, but I think it’s better than almost all of the apps out there. Clean, quick, and has an “open in new tab” feature.

    Rather than writing my own description, here’s the pitch in the site’s own words:

    > Hacker News is a great resource. However, I seemed to constantly run into two issues. 1. If I didn't visit at least once a day, top items would scroll off the top pages and I would never see them. 2. If I was procrastinating and visiting the page often, I would find it difficult to determine what was new on the page. That frustration led to hckr news, a chronologic list of items that have made it onto the Hacker News homepage.

    (https://hckrnews.com/about.html)

    I think apps don’t have much to offer since HN has thread collapse and vote-undo these days.

  4091. Ask HN: What are some of the better Hacker News apps? 2017-07-03 09:07:23 JonRB
    +1 to that - I love that it's time sorted instead of prioritised by what other people have voted for. I procrastinate/visit enough that I can usually keep up to date with what's happening.

  4092. Busy to Death 2017-07-03 17:52:41 yrio
    I think the last problem is commonly called "procrastination" and different from workaholism & doing busywork like creating needless meetings, reports, etc.

  4093. HN is my new Facebook 2017-07-04 17:20:57 nicky0
    There's a lot of potential for timewasting on procrastination on both HN and Facebook.

  4094. Why Some Men Don't Work: Video Games Have Gotten Really Good 2017-07-04 22:00:35 sofaofthedamned
    Had a girlfriend ages ago addicted to Candy Crush. I remember one Sunday - she'd invited her sister and mum round for Sunday lunch, which I was cooking.

    Came out of the kitchen and saw all 3 playing the same game. Went outside for a cigarette and the lady upstairs was leaning out of her window playing the same game but with the sound on ('tasty...' etc)

    We didn't last long after that.

    I'm not having a go at them playing the game, I am pretty good at procrastinating myself in different ways (on this site for example), but I swear there has got to be a scientific study somewhere on the birthrate being affected by people playing CC or mooching on Facebook.

  4095. Entropy Maximization and intelligent behaviour 2017-07-07 07:58:32 clickok
    There's a lot details that need to be filled in to get a working algorithm from this idea, though. Like how to properly explore enough of the state space that you can estimate the ensuing entropy, and if it's possible to learn the utility and its variance in a sample-efficient manner using an RNN. It might be better to start off with an environment with unknown dynamics but an exact representation before going full nonlinear function approximation.

    Nonetheless it's an interesting post; I like the idea of coming up with abstract "goals" that can be applied to any environment (without having to construct a reward function) that yield complex behavior. Even if it doesn't do precisely what you want it's useful for exploration and perhaps a good stepping stone towards the desired behavior.

    On a related note, I believe you can learn to predict the entropy of a Markov process using reinforcement learning, so it might be possible to extend it towards control.

    I wrote up the basic idea: http://rl.ai/posts/generalized-returns-entropy.html which argues that if you had some sort of state transition model you could construct a reward function from it, and then learning the value of a state is also the "expected entropy" starting from that state. The state transition model can itself be learned, so no simulator is required. The reason I say "I believe" is that this is the product of original research, that is, procrastinating on my thesis. So there's a risk that I've made an error somewhere or missed prior work.

  4096. Why I deleted my Facebook account 2017-07-07 16:48:40 adgasf
    For those looking for a replacement "hit", why not divert your procrastination into something useful, like StackOverflow or Codewars?

  4097. Ask HN: Ways to deal with ADHD? 2017-07-08 00:55:09 starwaver
    that sounds like me a lot :) It doesn't sound like ADHD but rather a common procrastination habit (my apologize if you are actually medically diagnosed though).

    I have problem focusing on things that I'm not interested in as well, but I've learnt to accept that and not feel too guilty about it. Especially since sometime procrastination has some pretty nifty benefits: https://www.ted.com/talks/adam_grant_the_surprising_habits_o...

    What I've found really helpful for things I need to get done but have trouble doing is to make a to do list (highly recommend the Todoist app). And put in things to do in the list for each day. For example, do assignment A for 20 minutes, do assignment B for 20 minutes, exercise for 30 minutes etc. Make sure you make it simple enough such that it feels achievable (don't put things like finish an entire assignment as a task unless you know it's a short one). This helps me put myself in short burst focus mode and actual be productive instead of trying to be productive and totally failing at it. Not everyone can handle the 12 hour work day and I don't think you should force yourself to. I myself can only work for 3 hours most before getting exhausted (with plenty of rest in between), but I can do these 3 hours at hyper-focus mode and get more done than what other people can do in 8 hours.

    The core things to do are: - accept the fact that not everything interest you and you'll be able to do it with focus. There's a myth in society that the longer you work the harder you work. Totally not true. - don't overwhelm yourself with tons of tasks, the key is to make it seem like it's really easy to do to get things done. The more overwhelmed you feel the less motivated you are to get started. - take a walk if you are getting depressed or overwhelmed, it helps A LOT! - And don't be afraid to try different things! Maybe you are just stuck in a bad career :)

  4098. Good at programming competitions does not equal good on the job [video] 2017-07-08 03:18:50 kazinator
    People who enter programming competitions are looking for some sort of glory: to be stars. When they don't get it from the job, they get bored.

    I suspect that the people good at programming competitions could easily perform well on the job, if the motivation were there. I don't think it necessarily has anything to do with short-term versus long-term problem-solving focus.

    There are plenty of short-term problems that you have to solve on the job to be effective. You're not doing them in competition against anyone such that if you procrastinate, you will lose, so the motivation vaporizes.

    Also, since job interviews are like programming competitions, people who are good at programming competitions figure they can easily get a job anywhere, and to do that repeatedly. They are not motivated into working hard by job security concerns.

  4099. Famous Last Words: Three Memoirs of Mortality 2017-07-08 03:52:52 miceeatnicerice
    Elsewhere in the fertile field of morbid Conservativism, there's good rumination to be had in the shady corner that is Book III of the Alan Clark Diaries. Despite being likeable and witty, the man's an aristocratic snob, a bigot, a serial womanizer - and his miserable end, retold explicitly, renders him palpably futile. The last chapter is written by his observant wife, as he lies wrapped in sheets gurgling and voiceless.

    I pose it as if I enjoyed it, but I didn't - it was a terrifying read. Makes you wonder, you know, what to do with your own life (which is to plug the gap with a platitude). Maybe Alan Clark would have been saved if he'd regularly procrastinated on Hacker News? Fingers crossed.

  4100. Ask HN: Ways to deal with ADHD? 2017-07-08 07:21:30 throwaway_adhd
    >Long term fix: try Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)

    I started a few months ago David Burns Feeling Good book. But unfortunately procrastinated reading it further, thanks for reminding me to finish it finally.

    >"The main idea behind CBT is to go against the grain" [...] "it's the opposite of bullshit spiritual retreats in Peru "

    I had on my first trip some mixture of feeling of dying(the burning in hell kind of dying), a panic attack and an existential crisis. So I don't think that this is the opposite of going against the grain. I got really confronted with the negative aspects of myself (although nothing lasting came from it eventually). But I get your point, your approach is to grow oneself more stoic and stronger instead of having feel-nice experiences.

    > Short term fix: I bought a Xiaomi Mi Band 2

    Will buy one, thanks for your advice

  4101. Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't? 2017-07-08 07:33:55 nevster
    I have a whole bunch of registered domains I haven't done anything with. For example : http://www.procrastinationjournal.com/

  4102. Evolution of Sexual Intimidation: Male Baboons Beat Up Females, Increases Mating 2017-07-08 07:35:55 Aron
    Most people spend a great deal of time fighting their impulses in order to behave in a proper socialized manner: go to work, be nice, clean up, call your mom, don't procrastinate, etc.

  4103. Ask HN: Which sites you visit on a regular basis for knowledge and inspiration? 2017-07-08 19:33:42 Pandabob
    Hacker News, Marginal Revolution and the Financial Times. Reddit mostly for leisure, but occasionally also for knowledge and inspiration.

    Recently I've tried to make my procrastination more useful, and read random Wikipedia articles instead browsing news sites. Let's see if the habit sticks.

  4104. Ask HN: Which sites you visit on a regular basis for knowledge and inspiration? 2017-07-08 21:59:42 Mahn
    Wikipedia is probably the most dangerous procrastination tool on the net. There's not limit there, the rabbit hole just goes deeper and deeper.

  4105. Research does not say that people produce more when working 40 hours per week 2017-07-09 06:07:43 dheera
    I'm considering "work" to be related to things you have contractual or financial obligations to, i.e. your primary employment or company that you own. Work that you enjoy doing still counts as "work" if you have obligations to customers, bosses, employees, investors, or anyone.

    I consider "recreation" to be things that you are doing because you want to, and do not have obligations to do (of any kind, including but not limited to contractual, health, etc.).

    I consider side projects (real side projects, not 20% projects) to be recreation. You're allowed to rest when you're tired, you're allowed to procastinate, you're allowed to take breaks whenever and however long you want, you're allowed to take your laptop to the beach, you're allowed to abandon them, change them, and do as you please with them. This kind of mental freedom is very, very important to qualitatively count as recreation.

    If side projects evolve into a contractual obligation, then it becomes work by my book.

    Exercise counts as recreation if you're doing it because you want to. It doesn't count as recreation if your work makes you do it (i.e. move boxes in a warehouse). It doesn't count if you're working 100 hours a week and spend 5 of those hours exercising in the office gym out of necessity for your health because you couldn't find time to exercise in a way that you find fun.

    I hike for exercise. I hike because I want to, and nobody makes me do it. That counts as recreation.

  4106. How I didn't become a SoundClouder 2017-07-10 23:40:10 bphogan
    Really? As a potential member of my team, I really do want those questions answered because how you answer them tells me about your character, personality, and thought process.

    I don't care what your biggest weakness is. You could have severe OCD or addiction. You could battle depression. You could be a chronic procrastinator. None of those matter. What does matter is if you give a solid straight honest answer, rather than some canned crap you read on a web site somewhere.

    Same goes for how you manage multiple high-priority things. Every job I've worked on, every team, it always happens that there are multiple high priority things. Do you try to do them all and then crash and burn? Do you do them half-assed? Do you fight to get priorities aligned? Do you call the sponsors together and share information about the deadlines? Do you under promise and over-deliver? Do you ask for help from your team?

    The way you answer is often more important than what you answer. Unless it's "Fuck off."

    :)

  4107. New business apps in Office 365: Connections, Listings and Invoicing 2017-07-11 00:23:01 dade_
    I think their business benefits are real: Small business owners are often brutal at sending out invoices. They procrastinate like everyone else. The sooner you send out an invoice, the sooner you will be paid. Also, tracking payments provides structure to follow up with your receivables. Often a reminder is all that is needed for payment. Customers just forget, but do want to pay. Clear invoices that are easy to understand will also have fewer questions and are less likely to be contested.

  4108. Ask HN: How can I get over my lethargy, lack of focus, and other problems? 2017-07-11 09:10:14 tcbawo
    I'm not sure if you are fighting procrastination. But, in the last some of the things that help me is to have a keep a list and keep knocking off the #2 item. A lot of times, when I introspect, I realize that I was procrastinating due to fear (sometimes failure, sometimes losing a purpose). But, I think lists are habit-forming and will help you get and stay organized.

    Also, seek out a mentor, coach, or someone to be accountable to. This will help keep you on track.

  4109. Ask HN: How does one overcome the need for instant gratification? 2017-07-12 20:57:01 sharemywin
    Weird I'm kind of the opposite. I will procrastinate before I start something big usually a day or two and then it's kind of like my subconscious gives me the answer. And I'm like that's how I need to do this. This has to do more with design than programming tasks.

  4110. Up to 14% of community college students are homeless, new study says 2017-07-12 22:03:17 erroneousfunk
    I got my master's in software engineering half time while working full time as a software engineer. During those four years I was also volunteering once a week, had a few side projects going on, wrote a book that made >$50,000 over the last two years, did freelance work, and maintained a relationship (got married two days after I graduated!).

    There were certainly periods of time where I didn't see friends much, and my husband had to (gasp) cook dinner once in a while, but it was doable, and I graduated with a 3.7 GPA. I'm not a genius, I certainly did my fair share of procrastination, it was mostly just about making almost every day a "work day" (at least for a few hours), keeping things interesting by alternating between different types of work, and finding creative times/ways to study (commuting, lunch break, doing class busywork watching TV in the evening, etc)

    I don't think I would have gotten "more" out of the program by quitting my job and just doing that full time. If anything, the financial stress would have made things more difficult.

  4111. Battle for the Internet 2017-07-13 01:55:30 hoschicz
    I have a virtual mobile operator here in Czechia that has boasted about its offering of zero-rating (not counting towards data cap) traffic to Facebook and Messenger. They also have very competitive prices, which is why I have migrated to them once they launched.

    Because I am a poor student, what I use now is a plan where I pay an equivalent of 3 euro per month for 80 MB. After I use these up, the internet gets slowed down to 32 kbps (really more like 128 kbps). That is enough to send chats, find buses and receive notifications and it prevents me from procrastinating too much.

    I am an avid user of Twitter and browse only Twitter when I am on WiFi. However, on mobile data, I browse only Facebook (Facebook runs fast even when I have hit my cap). I also watch videos on Facebook on the bus very often since they are free. I usually use up about 1.5 GB of data per month.

    Next month, because of a law (they say it's because our regulator told them to) , they will no longer be allowed to zero-rate only Facebook. What they are doing is overhauling their plans: the smallest one is 500 MB for general use plus 250 MB of data for social media for the equivalent of 4 euro. (https://www.mujkaktus.cz/kaktusite) Social networks include Twitter, FB, IG, Snapchat. Before the changes, I could get only 200 MB for the equivalent of 4 euro (with Facebook).

    I love that. I can finally use Twitter on the go and I'll get more freedom and mobile data for the buck. This clearly benefits the free market. Their customers are complaining, however, because they use mostly Facebook given the choice and they switched to them because of it.

  4112. Ask HN: How do you manage your daily non-work related tasks? 2017-07-16 22:53:47 erikb
    I can't do any of the todo-list stuff after work, for the basic reason that it also feels like work when done this way. Also I usually spend too much energy at work so afterwards I don't have any left to motivate myself etc. Ergo: Zero effort or it won't be done.

    So the first thing I do is I put reminders where I see them. For instance there's a contract for a telephone provider I need to quit. The box connected to the provider is laying right there next to the computer I'm typing this on. This way it gets into my head and if I don't have higher priority tasks I will think about it regularly, without ever actually pushing myself to it.

    Then instead of already resolving the issue (which in itself would cost energy) I procrastinate by planning or doing simple steps toward the goal. In this case it may be checking out on the website of the company how their quitting process works. After that I feel like I achieved something and successfully avoided doing actual work at the same time. That's the best reward for doing part of the job, feeling like you cheated your boss (in this case your inner moral guard).

    And when there's really not anything left it most often means that the last step really isn't any effort anymore. So when I have everything prepared I just need to write a short text, and send it to the company, and be done with it. Because everything was planned out and prepped already.

    Last but not least, if I really can't convince myself to even do a small step like googling the website of the company, then it probably means I'm too exhausted and instead of doing any serious tasks I really should take a walk and a nap, which I then also have motivation for since it also avoids doing the painful highest prio task.

    Yeah, it's a slow process, but it actually hacks your brain into doing real work while it thinks it's procastinating, instead of the other way around.

  4113. Ask HN: How do you manage your daily non-work related tasks? 2017-07-16 22:57:26 5_minutes
    I'm using Things 3 for the moment. It's nice because it integrates also with Gmail Calendar and iCal.

    Truth is, I'm cycling between to-do list productivity tools every few months. OmniFocus could do anything you want, but can get quite complicated too. Things and Todoist are simple and straightforward, but are missing some essential (advanced) things. I can't seem to find the tool with that right sweet spot. I guess I love procrastinating with fiddling for the best tool configuration.

    That said, I also often fallback to using pen&paper, and writing in the morning the 5 things that really should be completed today, and that seems to work very well too.

  4114. Show HN: tttfi – Middleware for IFTTT 2017-07-18 15:20:25 toyg
    Yup, and it will be reviewed and likely changed at some point:

       This recommendation will be periodically reviewed over 
   the next few years, and updated when the core development
   team judges it appropriate.
    So it's likely that at some point between here and 2020, or in 2020 at worst, the recommendation will change.

    IMHO Python 3 has now reached a level of maturity and backward-compatibility where it can safely take over as system python. It's now shipped by Fedora, which means the next RHEL will also ship it. Updating old scripts should mostly be a matter of grepping and shebanging from python to python2, and there is now no point in procrastinating further with this move.

  4115. Decaffeinating a Large CoffeeScript Codebase Without Losing Sleep 2017-07-19 07:21:19 nothrabannosir
    The only bandwagon I've ever witnessed explicitly was this "I'll lose nerd points for being so anti establishment" thing, that's been going around forever.

    I loose "nerd cred" for it. Please. Give me a break. Half the people here will fall over themselves agreeing with you and you know it. Heck, I agree with you.

    Can we please, as a community, get over ourselves? Can we get over this "ermegerd I'm not gonna use the latest JS framework! Guess that makes me 'not cool'! Haha I'm so level headed teehee guiltyyy!" We get it! Most people, the silent majority, don't use new things. We know! We are them. It's ok. Stop. dont humblebrag about how productive you are on Procrastination News.

    I've never been on Tumblr but I imagine this is what some of it is like.

    Sorry for singling you out. It's just a bugbear, is all. You're probably a solid guy / girl and I do believe you deliver great value for your clients. Honestly.

  4116. Decaffeinating a Large CoffeeScript Codebase Without Losing Sleep 2017-07-19 09:11:23 jessaustin
    dont humblebrag about how productive you are on Procrastination News.

    Haha that should be written across the header on the main page.

  4117. How a Reddit forum has become a lifeline to opioid addicts in the US 2017-07-20 00:44:19 pat_space
    I agree with you and think the hubbub around r/the_donald is amusing. In my opinion, r/the_donald is a "beautiful" example of mob trolling. If a subreddit doesn't interest you, just unfollow it. If you are browsing /r/all, you're probably procrastinating anyways!

  4118. Things I’ve Learned from Reading IndieHackers 2017-07-20 22:19:34 corpMaverick
    It is also a way to procrastinate. We often do it because we want everything to be perfect. It is really fear of something not being perfect what that causes the paralysis. Reading blogs is just a way to convince your brain that you are being productive. But you are not.

    So forget about perfect and just do it. Once you start moving it is easier to get going. You will get a chance to improve things later on.

  4119. Ask HN: How do you spend your free time in office? 2017-07-21 00:49:17 chubot
    When I was working, I settled into a rhythm of being in the office for about 4 hours a day, with almost no free time. No YouTube, no social media, not even checking personal e-mail accounts. I think I would check HN, but I would save the articles to read later and not read them in the office.

    It also helps to write down the major things you want to do before you get in the office. When you get there, just start doing it rather than slowly warming up. Also I find that test-driven development helps get rid of this "warm-up" procrastination.

    Not everyone can do this, but programmers can sometimes work themselves into that position (e.g. work for a place long enough that people don't question your hours.)

    Though I would usually take a break for tea (with no computer) and occasionally a nap... I think those are productive uses of time.

  4120. Claude Shannon: How a Genius Thinks, Works, and Lives 2017-07-22 01:11:58 zzzeek
    > "Letters he didn’t want to respond to went into a bin labeled “Letters I’ve Procrastinated On For Too Long.” ... Inbox zero, be damned."

    moving things to folders is... the definition of "inbox zero"?

  4121. Claude Shannon at Bell Labs 2017-07-22 10:30:29 gwern
    I understand fundamental research just fine. I suggest you reread my comments and perhaps also read the bio and earlier materials on Shannon like _Fortune's Formula_. Finishing papers does not blight precious snowflakes like Shannon, nor would it shatter his delicate psyche. Not finishing drafts of papers was not critical to his genius and creativity. Shannon is far from the first person to procrastinate and be passive-aggressive, and the remedies would have been the same for him as for anyone else if his environment had been less in awe of him and following Romantic ideas of geniuses like those you espouse where their sacred solitude cannot be disturbed.

    > Your idea of 'shipping' also seems to indicate a misunderstanding of the research process.

    Publishing is pretty darn critical to the research process...

  4122. Ask HN: Murphy's Law 2017-07-22 17:43:03 muzani
    Often Murphy's Law is just poor planning.

    1. Two is one and one is none. Redundancy helps for critical situations.

    2. 95% of the code is usually done by launch, but that remaining 5% is often the hardest part that people procrastinated on. Usually certain kinds of bugs.

    3. People tend to cram in more features on the last minute, adding more bugs.

    If anything projects should be planned out with lots of "do nothing" padding right before launch.

  4123. The non-linearity of productivity 2017-07-22 21:08:49 amelius
    > Being stuck and being moving are dependent on each other.

    Yeah, but in times of being stuck, it's much easier to get distracted and procrastinate.

  4124. The non-linearity of productivity 2017-07-22 22:22:31 matwood
    > Yeah, but in times of being stuck, it's much easier to get distracted and procrastinate.

    A bit, but I tend to do directed procrastination. Go the gym, do some research on a different problem, write some emails, etc... As soon as I stop actively thinking about the problem a solution will come.

    Another solution (and this works well with coding and writing) is just to start coding/writing. I'm writing an article now for a newsletter, and the top of my document is a bunch of stand alone sentences that eventually lead to a full article.

    In programming, I'll often do the same thing and just start solving the problem even if I know it's not the right solution yet. Usually this leads me to a better understanding, and eventually the solution.

  4125. The non-linearity of productivity 2017-07-22 22:54:52 jansho
    Directed procrastination works for me too. I usually hate admin type of work; sorting out my room, doing the laundry, responding in social media (yes, that counts too..)

    But when I hit the inertia part of the productivity cycle, this saves me. It's always better to do something than just being stuck. And while I mechanically do those tasks, my head also gets in order, I start dreaming and slowly, I'm on the roll again.

    When the right time comes, I slide back into the 'real' work. I can't quite regret for 'wasting' that time, because usually the reward is a new perspective, and the ideas that come with it.

    Shrugs, we're not machines.

  4126. The non-linearity of productivity 2017-07-22 23:56:29 corysama
    > As soon as I stop actively thinking about the problem a solution will come.

    The book 'Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind' has a good explanation of how that works, what it's good at and what it's not.

    I get a lot of side chores done with directed procrastination. But, what works for me to get the main task done is to just open the IDE even without a goal. Instead of "Ugg... I need to make X work today...". Just open the editor and do anything. Refactor a function. Comment something. Whatever. Once you get started, it much easier to continue.

  4127. Give in to Procrastination and Stop Prefetching (2013) [pdf] 2017-07-23 09:09:13 lainon
    Related: http://people.csail.mit.edu/lenin/papers/Procrastinator-Pape...

  4128. Give in to Procrastination and Stop Prefetching (2013) [pdf] 2017-07-23 10:16:52 wgjordan
    Abstract – Generations of computer programmers are taught to prefetch network objects in computer science classes. In practice, prefetching can be harmful to the user’s wallet when she is on a limited or pay-per-byte cellular data plan. Many popular, professionally-written smartphone apps today prefetch large amounts of network data that the typical user may never use. We present Procrastinator, which automatically decides when to fetch each network object that an app requests. This decision is made based on whether the user is on Wi-Fi or cellular, how many bytes are remaining on the user’s data plan, and whether the object is needed at the present time. Procrastinator does not require developer effort, nor app source code, nor OS changes – it modifies the app binary to trap specific system calls and inject custom code. Our system can achieve as little as no savings to 4X savings in bytes transferred, depending on the user and the app. In theory, we can achieve 17X savings, but we need to overcome additional technical challenges.

  4129. Ask HN: What are some good tools for keeping a software project on track? 2017-07-23 15:27:03 jwdunne
    Another dark side to tools is that they are a vector for procrastination. You can convince yourself (or justify at least) that you need a new X and that's the answer. You'll spend a few hours evaluating various Xs.

    You might end up using it for a few days but then you quickly fall back to the tools you usually use.

    I've seen this with email clients, todo apps, project management tools, etc.

  4130. Ligatures in programming fonts 2017-07-23 15:49:38 frou_dh
    Ligatures in programming fonts really seem like something you'd only get into in the midst of a hardcore procrastination bout.

  4131. EU Prepares "Right to Repair" Legislation to Fight Short Product Lifespans 2017-07-24 19:11:31 beobab
    That's good to know, actually. I have grown up with an "it's broken - chuck it and buy a new one" mentality, and the fact that it often costs a comparable amount: £30 for a repair guy to come out and "see if he can fix the problem", and then undefined labour costs and parts vs known cost of a new one doesn't help.

    I suppose if you're chucking the old one out anyway, it's worth trying to fix it yourself for a bit, but I've always got time constraints (I'm a serial procrastinator), and I never do.

  4132. Ask HN: How do I program with more discipline and less emotion? 2017-07-25 07:14:30 sm4sp
    When I get overwhelmed and feel that tension that comes from digging in to a new project here are a some things I do.

    1. Schedule clear time to work on the project - I want to be intentional with my time so there is no ambiguity on what I should be doing. ex. 9AM - 12PM work on this feature

    2. Win the war before going to war - A lot of the time, procrastination stems from not being clear of what exactly needs to be done. The task is either very complex or simply not clear. Cognitive complexity is the precursor of inaction. So before I start I try to describe what exactly I'm going to do before I even open my IDE. For example, 1. Get the requirements, 2. Create a flowchart of the data, 3. Describe what I think would be the best approach.... etc

    I'll even drill down to actual classes and methods I should be making. This really helps get me unstuck

    3. I have 5 truths of work that I remind myself of. Here they are

    1. No where does it say that work must be easy for me to do it 2. No where does it say that work must be enjoyable for me to do it 3. This work is important 4. You don't have as much time as you believe 5. Your self worth is not determined by the success/failure of this so just attack

    Those are some of my personal methods but in the end, it's about experimenting and finding what works for you.

    Hope this helps

  4133. Ten Years of Worthless Side Projects 2017-07-26 01:56:38 Kiro
    > Stop Thinking about Money

    That has been my approach all the time. For me, the problem is quite the opposite though. I tend to build things that go viral and become potential cash cows. I have no interest in that though and as soon as something gets popular I abandon it.

    Sounds crazy but when my pet project becomes serious business I get cold feet and can't even touch it. The creative choices all of a sudden seems really crucial and I start procrastinate. I just want to experiment and build stuff without pressure.

  4134. Ask HN: How do I program with more discipline and less emotion? 2017-07-26 18:21:33 muzani
    Speaking of writing, Tim Ferriss's Tools of Titans interviews writers heavily. A very consistent pattern is that they do work late at night or morning and often with some kind of music repetitively running or meditation.

    A lot of them also procrastinate heavily, some even making it a routine to procrastinate half the day, feel guilty, then use the guilt to channel energy into their work.

    Learning this made me question my disciplined attempts and wonder whether it's really possible to be productive without binging. It doesn't help that YC programmers are notorious for working really hard for really long hours.

  4135. Ask HN: How is your standing desk working for you? 2017-07-26 23:43:31 chad_strategic
    After debating and procrastinating, I finally got a standing desk. (Ikea) Should have done it a long time ago. I have a floor mat was well. I usually stand during the day and sit / stand at night.

    People should note that with any new position it takes a little time for your body to adjust to the new position. So if you are standing, your legs will hurt for a week or two. But then you will get over it.

  4136. Want to Be Happy? Buy More Takeout and Hire a Maid, Study Suggests 2017-07-31 07:23:03 vinceguidry
    It works so long as you're only doing laundry for one person. Otherwise you have to do more. And also solve the political problem of wanting to devote space in a dwelling for procrastinated chores.

    It takes me perhaps half a week to do laundry. I load up all my laundry in one load in the washer, with a ColorCatcher to avoid dye bleeding. Once it's done I move it all to a dedicated spot in my closet, where I take all the things that need to be hanged and hang them, and leave the rest for the next day.

    Over the next few days I'll extract the other outerwear, then the underwear, until I'm left with socks. All of my socks are inside-out, so one day I'll turn them right-side-out and the next I'll fold them and put them up.

    Works because it's just me.

  4137. Want to Be Happy? Buy More Takeout and Hire a Maid, Study Suggests 2017-07-31 07:58:08 vbuwivbiu
    I use cleaning and tidying as a procrastination to organize my mind before work and it makes me feel happier.

    Even the best takeout food is low quality. You can't trust the ingredients.

  4138. Ask HN: Experiences going part time? 2017-07-31 19:04:29 perilunar
    I went part-time recently so I could spend more time on my side project. So far I've wasted most of the extra time procrastinating. :(

  4139. Ask HN: Experiences going part time? 2017-07-31 19:34:00 robinwarren
    I find if I am procrastinating in situations like that it is often that I don't actually know what the next step is. YMMV but that may be worth thinking about :)

  4140. Ask HN: Experiences going part time? 2017-08-01 00:31:16 lj3
    I sympathize. I spend a lot of time in the dark playground myself.

    https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_mas...

    https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrasti...

  4141. Ask HN: I've lost the ability to concentrate. How can I fix this? 2017-08-03 01:12:59 o2l
    I can strongly relate to your situation. To me it felt like there is a constant unrest in life, you are not happy about how things are but not that motivated either to change overnight.

    The quickest way to get what you want is trying out small changes which can have big impact on your day, which gives you hope that you can change.

    Below are such small changes that made a big impact on me. I have come to know about these methods from the book "Mind Hacking" by Sir John Hargrave. It is a free GitBook and I strongly recommend it. Not a long read. -

    1. Mindfulness Meditation -

      I follow the below order

  - Be aware of your breath for some time
  - Be aware of your thoughts for some time ( don't fight them. Let them free but observe )
  - Identify negative loops (Things that you believe in or repeatedly say to yourself that puts you down. Eg. I am a bad dancer)
  - Write positive loop for each negative loop ( Eg. I love dancing. Literally write this on a piece of paper everyday for a couple of times. It is to make it stick in your head )
  - Simulate situations in your head which you are afraid to face or are confused about.
  - Think of the best possible future situation, 4-5 years down the line. Think in as much detail as possible.
  - Think of the perfect day where you get everything done exactly as you wanted to. Again, think in as much detail as possible.

  Also, try to stay mindful of your actions and thoughts throughout the day. It will help you control yourself and your unwanted habits like checking phone frequently or procrastinating.

  You don't have to identify negative & redefine positive loops everyday unless needed.

  This routine takes 15-20 minutes in the morning and has helped me be clear minded and motivated throughout the day.

  I owe my current job ( which I am very happy with ) to this routine. It inspired me do things I won't normally do. The rush of positive energy I felt during the first few days was something I have never felt before, as if I was high on something very strong but positive.
    2. Writing down a detailed to-do list the night before

      You have to make a list of things you think you can do the next day and write them down in the exact order you want to do them in. Keep the list very practical and write in on a piece of paper or white board. Try not to do it on your phone.

  Then, on the next day strike out the things you have done. This will give you a clear sense of accomplishment and in case you are ahead of schedule, it will motivate you to do even better.

  This also eliminates the need of thinking what to do during the day and you will have very less confusion.

  I implemented this a few days ago and it was the most productive and satisfying day I have had in several months, not just work wise but on a personal level.
    The key in both the above methods is that you are actively taking effort in the process of figuring out what you really want to do in life or just the next day. Implementing either one of the methods would only take 15-20 minutes of actual thinking every day, so give it a try.

  4142. Dumbo: CIA system to take over webcams, microphones 2017-08-04 00:26:07 gutnor
    Confirmation that this is something real and not a theoretical risk. Similarly to Snowden, it wasn't newsworthy because it was possible and probably done, it was newsworthy because it existed and was currently done. (obviously the scope of this news is much more reduced)

    If you are a US citizen, that tells you how you tax money is being spent. If you are a foreigner, you may have a few more ammunitions to get the funding for whatever security project you are working on.

    Even on HN very few front page items are really worthy of anything more than procrastination material and it succeeded perfectly well at that: both you and I had better things to do than comment on this article.

    That's a very blasé attitude btw, reminds me of the first time I have seen a wild tortoise, my family just commented: "yeah I see them all the time on TV, what's the interest?"

  4143. Manuscript Was Due 30 Years Ago, University Press Still Wants It 2017-08-05 02:45:19 ajarmst
    I've often referred to TeX as the result of the most awesome case of procrastination in the history of humanity.

  4144. Ask HN: Do you get more done working longer hours? 2017-08-07 16:30:36 mattbgates
    My company operates during business hours and then some (6 AM - 2 AM). I think, for the most part, they have decent hours, but I'd say we could be just as productive with working 10 hour days, 4 days a week, instead of 5 days a week at 8-9 hours. But generally, I work 9 hour days 5 days a week. About 4 hours of my day is somewhat busy, but not always. Once in awhile, my entire shift is busy.

    Luckily, my company doesn't have a policy that anything I work on during my shift is theirs. They don't mind me doing me during downtime, and in fact, they encourage it. I believe its right in the handbook that they encourage us to go on social media if we have nothing else to do and have gotten all of our work done. I work for a media company, so it kind of makes sense that they would want us to be up to date with social media trends and news.

    I've built several successful websites during downtime and off-hours (after I leave work and continuing on it). I think much of my success outside of work has to do with the hours I've had downtime at work. We can definitely get busy... but we pretty much sit around, waiting for an inbox to have work in it, and we just get it done when it comes in. After it's done, I return back to what I was doing before.

    While I definitely procrastinate, it's rare for me to not do anything. Always working on something. In my early days, I had started up a side gig freelancing, building, maintaining, and editing websites for clients, and then I started up a side business while working for my main job and currently in the process of starting up a second side business.

    None of my side businesses steal away any business from my company, and if anything, only compliment their work and mine. In fact, I try to reel in business for my company so that I can keep doing what I do. Everyone wins.

  4145. Show HN: Startuper's life – Damn True moments from startuper's life 2017-08-07 19:10:20 fredley
    On my screen, every time I click the button the different text width changes the button's position, making lazy repeat, procrastinatory clicking hard work.

  4146. Ask HN: What is your advice to new HN user? 2017-08-09 13:11:35 mattbgates
    Don't become so addicted you don't do anything else. Honestly, take an hour or two once a week to enjoy procrastinating, reading up on the latest Hacker News, answering the Ask HN questions, but don't become so enamored by it that you aren't doing anything else. Don't go on Facebook either.

    Go do something productive with your time.

  4147. Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan 2017-08-09 18:26:27 bipson
    Everybody arguing for open office plans and stating that they or "some people" thrive in such environments should finally come around to read Peopleware [1].

    Although they might base some statements on assumptions I do not fully agree with all the time, and before reading I was had not decided if I was strictly for or against open office plans, their conclusion is spot on: open plans do not foster collaboration or communication. They may cause a constant buzz and seem productive, but nobody will be smart, creative or productive in that environment, compared to a silent, uninterrupted workplace.

    All you multitaskers and procrastinators (including me): You are lying to yourself.

    [1] https://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-...

  4148. Apple staffers reportedly rebelling against open office plan 2017-08-10 00:43:42 intoverflow2
    It's not really goofing off, I absolutely work in several focused spurts during the day. Which is also why I'm never that fussed about turning up on time because I never do any real work in the morning anyway.

    Can't dig it out now but John Cleese did a good talk on creativity explaining why this works and how brains solve problems in the background which is why inspiration hits in the shower and on the train. By alternating between focusing then procrastinating and ignoring work you can force a decent cadence of creativity into your work.

  4149. Designing Zachtronics' TIS-100 (2015) 2017-08-11 08:39:53 Cogito
    That is a deep well to dive down. It's similar to the feeling I get when I am procrastinating on the weekends - I want to be 'productive' which in that case means spending some time playing one of the games I have going.

    The feeling of "I could be using my time better".

    The main difference here, specifically, is that the game has a well defined set of constraints. It is a limited environment with a known correct solution; it has an achievable goal.

    There are well defined and measurable metrics, and you quickly learn systematic methods to improve your results with respect to those metrics.

    Furthermore, the ability to achieve the goals and improve your stats is entirely within your own control.

    Unfortunately, the real world is a mess of subtle complexity. Sometimes not so subtle!

    Constraints are poorly defined if at all. Often there is no 'known correct' solution, because most of the time there isn't a well defined problem. Bug reports are a good counterexample to this, however.

    Often the metrics aren't defined at all, or different people measure them in different ways. Most of the metrics people care about won't be measured automatically, and you have a limited ability to directly incrementally improve them.

    Lastly, your ability to make any impact at all is almost always dependent on other people working with you to that end.

    There have been lots of attempts to 'gameify' real-world code development; I wish the world weren't so complex. Sometimes I wish I didn't have that nagging in the back of my head that I could be spending my time better, but to be fair it's probably the one thing that keeps me from getting bored!

  4150. Ask HN: Projects that don't make you money but you're doing it out of sheer joy? 2017-08-11 14:53:44 apancik
    I made Plain Email [0] just because I couldn't find any email client with clean work flow without distractions. I use it pretty much every day. Thinking about open sourcing it - just can't find the time to refractor it nicely.

    I also built news aggregator 10HN [1] with throttling (ten best articles every morning and every evening). I use it daily and it helped to fight my procrastination a lot. It's also interesting to watch the data how stories evolve and get popularity.

    [0] http://www.plainemail.com/ [1] http://10hn.pancik.com

  4151. How I, a woman in tech, benefited from sexism in Silicon Valley 2017-08-11 19:15:47 masondixon
    Yeh, US is pretty intense for social justice. I'd love to see a timeline and some kind of justification as to why it became such a strong force. I remember not even knowing what "social justice" mean't.

    Like all the people's time and energy invested in social justice today...what would these same people have been investing their energy in before 2010s?

    What I see is that people love being outraged, purpose-driven, and procrastination. And with social justice, while you're procrastinating, you can be outraged, and you can join a movement and gain a purpose.

    Social media is probably to blame.

  4152. MIT team’s school-bus algorithm could save $5M and 1M bus miles 2017-08-13 00:51:54 Mz
    I am trying to figure out how to proceed forward with this:

    http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/07/my-old-colle...

    http://solanorail.blogspot.com

    Perhaps one day while incredibly bored and procrastinating on the decision of pants or no pants, you could look it over, die laughing and send me an email. My email address is in my profile.

    Thank you for replying.

  4153. I’m an Ex-Google Woman Tech Leader and I’m Sick of Our Approach to Diversity 2017-08-15 02:49:38 d--b
    No I mean it's a subjective view from the boss that doesn't mean anything.

    She could have said that they were procrastinating, or could have said that they were consistently tired and whiny about it. Or maybe these particular women did not want to work all their weekends away and complained about it. Or it could mean they weren't cheering at the beer pong event. Who knows?

    I'm just saying that 'women I hired lacked energy' is the kind of blanket statement that overgeneralizes and that fans the vicious circle she described as damaging below.

  4154. Ask HN: How do you cultivate discipline? 2017-08-17 05:51:33 gcheong
    First let's define discipline. I will define it as 1. Choosing to take a desired action despite feeling like doing otherwise and 2. Refraining from taking an undesired action despite feeling like doing otherwise.

    Having a goal around your actions is somewhat implied here.

    So what can help us cultivate discipline? Well, each time you practice discipline you are cultivating it. So what can help us practice it?

    1. Mindfulness; whether through meditation or other practices, practicing mindfulness can help you gain some distance from your thoughts and feelings and make a more reasoned choice to act towards your goals.

    2. Environment; setting things up to make taking action easier (e.g. putting you shoes by your bed if you want to go running), or making things harder to do (throwing out all your junk food, not shopping when hungry)

    3. Having compassion for yourself. You will never achieve perfect discipline. Realizing that you will screw up, especially in the beginning, and having compassion for yourself when you do (as you might have towards a friend who is struggling) makes it more likely that you will continue to cultivate discipline.

    There is a good podcast that covers a lot of this that I think is well worth a listen. Don't let the title of it dissuade you; it is much more than just about depression and procrastination:http://www.myownworstenemy.org/podcast/why-procrastination-m...

  4155. Why the Brain Needs More Downtime (2013) 2017-08-18 23:39:13 sitkack
    Just In Time Procrastination.

  4156. Ask HN: How do you cultivate discipline? 2017-08-19 00:17:19 arconis987
    This is bizarre, but a simple algorithm works for me. Whenever I am exhausted and don't feel up to tackling another task, or whenever I'm afraid to approach a daunting project, I remember the inspiring words of my high school baseball coach. He'd say this partially in jest but partially seriously:

    "Hey! Stop being a lazy piece of ...!"

    When I tell myself that a task has world-class difficulty, and that accomplishing it would be an amazing feat, the task becomes highly daunting, and I procrastinate more. However, when I tell myself that the task should be done as a matter of course but that I'm being too stupidly lazy to accomplish it, the task becomes less daunting, and I procrastinate less. Expectations of normalcy change.

    A similar effect occurs when you join a world class team and suddenly learn that they're doing ten tasks in a day that you once considered remarkable to finish in a week. Expectations of normalcy change, and big tasks seem far less daunting, so you procrastinate less.

  4157. Our Minds Have Been Hijacked by Our Phones 2017-08-20 03:14:35 jacobolus
    As far as I can tell his point is that he suffers from a kind of “information addiction” and it prevents him from engaging with the people around him as much as he would like or accomplishing other goals, and that he switches reading a newspaper (still a form of compulsive solitary procrastination) if for whatever reason the internet isn’t available.

    Your comment is a non sequitur.

  4158. Ask HN: What's your spectacular burnout story? 2017-08-20 04:04:45 ZephyrP
    I get the feeling that this is a really cool story but it's hard to see how any of these events relate to one another.

    So your buddy PI slogs through a series of bad 'investigations', and is finally asked to do some work he initially enjoys but later procrastinates on. Wait though! It's all set because, surprise surprise, the as-yet-unmentioned baddie was faking the results all along!

    I get the feeling that your last paragraph is supposed to be a stunning wrap up, but after some reflection I've concluded this is only because of the preexisting motif that everything after "and it turned out.." is a galactic burn.

  4159. “We are working on getting Sublime Text 3.0 final ready to launch” 2017-08-23 01:24:26 rishabhsagar
    I love ST3, paid for it personally and influenced my ex-boss to stop procrastinating and actually buy it.

    I wonder if they could look at staggered pricing system; where you can get:

    N-1 release at £X; N-2 release at £(X-0.1*X) etc.

    Where N is devel release channel.

    That way people in N-2 will know what is coming and approx when.

    People who want 'clarity' for the sake of it can pay less and STFU?

  4160. 1 in 3 Americans Have $0 Saved for Retirement (2016) 2017-08-23 17:44:58 kamaal
    This makes the future even more scarier. In India where I live, there are colleges and schools aplenty in too much abundance. To a point you could say most institutions are bad replacements for MOOCs. The problem with things like these is Universities and college education, offer time based deadline within which you need to finish your academic work.

    Most people aren't that disciplined, if left on their own, many will procrastinate heavily.

    But those serious will make great progress, the gap between the two groups will too high. You will arrive back at the inequality problem.

  4161. Ask HN: Does working with computers have a negative influence on life for you? 2017-08-23 20:19:39 ihateneckbeards
    I always worked with computers unfortunately... I work about 40 - 45 hours, it's not that intense, I have time to procrastinate a bit

    I suspect it's not that related to my job, I used to have the same effects when I spend lots of time playing video games. Like if the screen was 'sucking me in'

  4162. Windy.com 2017-08-25 21:59:20 rodolphoarruda
    Thanks to this website I discovered that procrastination can reach new levels... there's no limit to it.

  4163. Cooling the Earth with a cloud of small spacecraft near the inner Lagrange point 2017-08-26 16:03:50 patrickdavey
    I'd argue that the more energy you use, the more comfortable your life is.

    I'd also argue that energy use (at the moment) is pretty linked to how much CO2 you emit.

    A lot of the biggest emitters live in democracies.

    So, how do you get the majority of the population to vote in politicians who are going to make their lives less comfortable (by taxing / controlling / lessening the amount of CO2 they use)?

    Frankly I reckon we, as a civilization, are going to dither and procrastinate up until the point it's far far far too late to do anything meaningful, and then people will try jump on the geoengineering to hack things into place. There was a nice piece in the book "This changes everything" where they were talking about geoengineering. I'll paraphrase, but basically someone said "we'll just alter things in this way", and someone else said "that'll mean droughts in my country". Fun times ahead.

    If you haven't read it yet, I recommend "Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air" [0] to get an idea of just how much less energy we need to use if we want to get by with just renewables. I really hope we can get there!

    [0] https://www.withouthotair.com/

  4164. 6 months of working remotely taught me a thing or ten 2017-08-29 04:48:25 pier25
    I've been working at home for about 8 years now.

    It can be very difficult and it's not for everyone since you ned a lot of mental discipline.

    Sometimes you need to overcome procrastination but in my case it's much more common to prevent working 12-15 hours per day and neglect every other aspect of my life.

    There are days I wish I could just go to an office and leave at 6pm and say "fuck it".

    Remorse and guilt are very common feelings in remote workers.

    https://www.hanselman.com/blog/BeingARemoteWorkerSucksLongLi...

  4165. Self-flying planes are now a marketing issue more than a technical one 2017-08-29 12:03:21 foota
    I always procrastinate when booking flights (anything). :)

  4166. PhD Productivity Strategy: Do Deep Work in Less Hours 2017-08-31 01:06:55 naturalgradient
    My answer from the trenches is that it just does not work that way. You have to try out if something works. Something can make sense forever in your head until you try it in the real world.

    I'd say not testing your ideas and instead spending forever overthinking/planning them is actually a leading cause of procrastination for PhDs.

  4167. The FCC.gov Website Lets You Upload Malware Using Its Own Public API Key 2017-08-31 21:37:30 dsfyu404ed
    The description of the author of the pdf that made the rounds yesterday is exactly what I expected.

    It's a shame most organizations do not do a good job handling vulnerability reports from outside sources and everyone knows is (so nobody tries to alert the organization). I would be very surprised if he was the first procrastinating college student to figure this out.

  4168. A Bourne-style shell built from scratch in 35 minutes [video] 2017-09-02 02:19:49 torstenvl
    For my system programming class we had to write a Unix shell in C. I procrastinated and wrote the whole thing in one 38-hour caffeine-fueled sprint on a 32-bit SPARC SunStation. I don't think it supported pipes but it did support input/output redirection and ANDing of commands. Not my best product, but some of my best work.

  4169. Barriers to Equality in Academia: Women in Computer Science at MIT (1983) 2017-09-03 03:19:01 watwut
    The complain in the article was that teachers and other students assume the girls are in MIT not with the goal to learn or work, but that she is there only or primary to find husband.

    So, unless you assume your classmates are in school just to find husbands and assume all girls are like your friends, the preferences of your friends are irrelevant.

    I knew people who had trouble to keep up in school, because they came basically for party life and procrastinated too much. I don't assume all guys are like that. Similar thing (through being family oriented and willing to accept negatives of being at home is more noble I guess).

  4170. You are not 'behind' 2017-09-03 22:13:21 jondubois
    For the past 10 years, I only spent about 4 to 8 hours per week on entertainment - All the rest of my time was divided between work and sleep (I only sleep 5 hours per day on weekdays). Financially, I have nothing to show for it unfortunately so I really feel like I'm behind and that I've missed the boat on many things. What makes it particularly difficult is that I was working really hard the whole time - When I read articles about (comparatively) lazy people who feel that they are behind, it makes me upset because it reminds me that I should be feeling worse than I'm actually feeling - Because I actually tried and I could have been having fun or procrastinating instead - I would be happier overall because I could accept my predicament more easily (and my mind wouldn't be burdened with ambition).

    If you're behind because you were lazy, you can laugh about it. If you're behind because the stars didn't line up for you (E.g. the carpet got pulled from underneath you several times) then it's hard to laugh about it.

    In retrospect, being lazy isn't too bad.

  4171. Ask HN: How to be curious about last uninteresting 20% of a task? 2017-09-05 07:06:30 foxhop
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=arj7oStGLkU

    Watch this video. It sometimes helps me. I've become a worst procrastinator as I have grown and have more and more responsibility. I like to get things done.

  4172. How to Recognize Burnout Before You’re Burned Out 2017-09-06 23:18:41 ajmurmann
    You might want to try pairing a portion of the time. I've been pairing part time on a side project and it's going really well. We pair about twice a week on harder work or stuff that involves decisions that aren't really undone. On our own time we then work on more mondaine stuff. It's great because there is always opportunity to be productive of the scheduled don't align, but at the same time you have just enough pressure to keep going while also having the safety net of being able to pair with someone if you get stuck. So there is little opportunity to procrastinate which I usually do when stuck.

  4173. Ask HN: How to start afresh in a new domain after years of expertise in another? 2017-09-07 02:49:41 treehau5
    Define what "catching up" means. If you are like me, you have some idealized version of an expert in this domain, and you may or may not have the right idea. What does success mean in this field? What does success mean in this role? Often times we set the bar impossibly too high, and it makes us procrastinate getting started even more. Set a relaistic goal after researching and conceptualizing what "proficient" means, and break up how you will get there. Believe in the law of serendipity -- lady luck favors the one who tries. By even doing this you are already succeeding. You have my fondness. I hope it works out well for you because I am sure we will all need to do something similar at some point in our lives, especially when the big AI monster comes and eats all our jobs. (last part is a little facetious)

  4174. Ask HN: Tips to beat procrastination and lethargy? 2017-09-07 07:54:27 Blackstone4
    I sometimes suffer from procrastination and I've been sleep deprived due to stressful personal circumstance and anxiety.

    I find meditating calms the mind and sets it up for the day. Try doing 10 minutes every morning. You can use the free sessions on the Headspace app to learn how to do it.

    I find making lists helpful. Whether that would be what I need to do today or long-term goals which I review every week.

    Also you might find the following book helpful: The Chimp Paradox: The Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness

    It really helped me! Amazon link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Chimp-Paradox-Management-Programme-...

  4175. Ask HN: Tips to beat procrastination and lethargy? 2017-09-07 08:01:57 afarrell
    > I'm a horrible procrastinator

    Having a terrible sleep schedule will predictably cause this.

    > I wake up at a decent time

    When do you go to sleep? How much sleep are you actually getting? Some people need 9 hours per night. If you are getting 7 hours per night and telling yourself that you're getting enough sleep, try getting 9 consistently. Then dial it back to 8.5 after a few weeks.

    > don't get up til early afternoon

    So your sleep schedule fluctuates by multiple hours day-to-day? That makes things a lot worse. Give yourself a consistent bedtime.

    ------------

    Things that you can use to improve your sleep:

    - The app Freedom, which you can use to block websites on your phone while you are working. You can also schedule it to auto-block starting at your bedtime.[1]

    - The apps SelfControl and ColdTurkey, to do similar things.[2][3]

    - The habit of running for a kilometer every day on a treadmill or sidewalk/pavement. You won't lose weight, but it will make your sleep and your focus better.

    - The habit of repeating to yourself "this is uncomfortable but it is worth it and I am stronger than I think." When you have to do something you feel proctrastinatey about. For more on this, learn about Stoicism and Rational Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. Consider a therapist.

    - The app Rainymood, which you can use as a cue to your body that it is time to sleep. Will also help you sleep through random noises.[4]

    - Music that is up-tempo and mostly instrumental, such as taiko drumming, Lindsey Stirling, Natalie McMaster, or VNV Nation.[5]

    - Amazon dot, which you can use to set a go-to-sleep alarm that you don't need to get out of bed to turn off for $50. [6]

    - A physical alarm clock separate from your phone so you don't go from waking up to reading HN in bed.

    - A sleeping mask to block the light out from your eyes for $9. [7]

    - A better mattress for $190. [8]

    Some of these things cost money. Losing your job costs more.

    [1] https://freedom.to/

    [2] https://selfcontrolapp.com/

    [3] https://getcoldturkey.com/

    [4] http://rainymood.com/

    [5] https://music.amazon.com/user-playlists/a3d974e87a5b4c38b304...

    [6] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Amazon-Echo-Dot-Generation-Black/dp...

    [7] https://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/store/product/bucky-reg-40-...

    [8] http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/products/mattresses/mattresses-top...

  4176. Ask HN: Tips to beat procrastination and lethargy? 2017-09-07 08:47:37 k_sh
    If you're experiencing persistent procrastination, you may be suffering from ADD!

  4177. Ask HN: Tips to beat procrastination and lethargy? 2017-09-07 14:16:01 ribrars
    You're burned out. You need to sleep 8 hours a night consistently (use melatonin, l-theanine etc. if you need it)

    Procrastination is a symptom of your burnout...

    See if you can take on less work, but work that has higher pay. Rearrange your life so you don't have to kill yourself just to get by. Good luck!

  4178. Ask HN: Tips to beat procrastination and lethargy? 2017-09-07 14:51:51 ohyes
    When you go to bed, imagine exactly what you're going to do in the morning. Like imagine jumping out of bed invigorated and taking a shower and making breakfast.

    When you're procrastinating, do it by switching to a different important task (dishes, laundry, exercise, other work) rather than something like tv or reading the internet. You won't feel as demoralized that you accomplished nothing and it will help your overall well being.

    When you're starting a task, break it into manageable chunks. A lot of procrastination for me is being overwhelmed by the scope of the work. Knock out a small chunk of it to feel like you've accomplished something and you'll remember that you actually like the work and overcome the initial dread.

  4179. The Incredible Growth of Python 2017-09-07 15:28:37 nyrikki
    Linux doesn't require 2.7, and will be switching soon. But you can remove most of the pain from a future migration by just adding the following to all your 2.7 code and changing your code.

    Note that these future modules were all available in 2.6 which was released in 2008. But just like the ruby 2.0 upgrade people procrastinate. But you only have 2 years before python 2.7 is no longer maintained.

    from __future__ import (absolute_import, division, print_function) __metaclass__ = type

  4180. Show HN: DeepSense – Know people better through AI-built profiles 2017-09-07 23:02:42 saycheese
    Following is based on using his Twitter profile as an identifier:

    "Donald J. Trump is a spontaneous individual and takes life as it comes. he generally dislikes coloring within the lines and does not stress over the little things but sometimes struggles with procrastination. He is a very dynamic individual who is easily excitable and sensitive. Passionate and impulsive, he wears his emotions on his sleeve. He is slightly emotional and judgmental. He is competitive and challenging as well as frank and believes in speaking his mind. He is a usually thoughtful individual who likes his space. He is extremely positive and optimistic."

    SOURCE: https://frrole.ai/deepsense-app/realDonaldTrump

  4181. Ask HN: Tips to beat procrastination and lethargy? 2017-09-08 02:37:11 agitator
    Personally I found that the times I am most in a long term lull of procrastination, is when I am not getting enough sleep. It's sort of a self fulfilling cycle. I stay up late working, next day I try again, but I am too tired to focus, so I stay up later but get less done, next day I stay up late with even less productivity, etc. If I just break and get sleep, I am more fresh and ready to be more productive the next day. Also keeping organized, setting small task goals, eating healthy, and staying hydrated are all important for productivity.

  4182. Ask HN: Tips to beat procrastination and lethargy? 2017-09-08 02:51:31 twoquestions
    1> Now I'm working three different jobs and going to school

    2> I wake up at a decent time, but feel extremely sluggish and tired

    3> I'm a horrible procrastinator

    I think 2 and 3 are direct results of 1. It looks like you're already squeezing yourself as hard as possible, and I don't think any amount of discipline will force more productivity out of yourself without extremely bad consequences. You may as well ask how to save up for a house when you can only spare pennies every week!

    Once you're not so atrociously overcommitted your sleep and execution will get much better. Having to work 3 jobs to keep a roof over your head while going to school is an environmental problem, not a personal one.

  4183. Ask HN: Tips to beat procrastination and lethargy? 2017-09-08 03:06:29 jotjotzzz
    Sleep is a pretty vital process with a lot of health implications for the brain and for your body. Reading Ariana Huffington's book "The Sleep Revolution" was pretty eye-opening, also see this article: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/07/arianna-h...

    Sleep helps your body regulate stress including mood. The lack of sleep can be attributed to your procrastination, as well as other possible health issues such as a lack of focus and lack of self-discipline. You're not at your optimum best.

    In addition, I noticed avoiding caffeine (or going decaf) is pretty helpful. Too much caffeine reduces the quality of sleep. I personally noticed sleeping upwards up to 8 hours and feeling like I only slept 3 hours -- because my body was over-caffeinated. Cutting-down caffeine (or going cold turkey) helps a lot in the quality of sleep.

    For focus -- meditation will help greatly. Learning how to meditate and doing it daily even for 10 minutes will train/discipline your mind.

  4184. We Can Achieve Anything If We Stop Trying To Do Everything 2017-09-08 19:18:48 ikeyany
    Procrastinators will feel vindicated by this.

  4185. Ask HN: What systems do you use to stay productive? 2017-09-14 09:14:23 afarrell
    1) Get good sleep on a regular schedule. Consider getting 9 hours a night.

    2) Do about 20-30 minutes of vigorous exercise a day. I like to run for 1.5km and then do some weights/situps.

    3) The app Freedom, which you can use to block websites on your phone while you are working. You can also schedule it to auto-block starting at your bedtime.[1] The apps SelfControl and ColdTurkey, do similar things.[2][3]

    4) The habit of repeating to yourself "this is uncomfortable but it is worth it and I am stronger than I think." A good way to practice this is by taking a cold shower in the morning. When you have to do something you feel proctrastinatey about, repeat that to yourself. For more on this, learn about Stoicism and Rational Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. Consider a therapist.

    5) Planning your tasks ahead of time. Writing out what things you feel least confident in and explicitly listing good resources to draw from. At the end of the day, explicitly schedule time to search for resources to build the sort of mental models that let you predict the behavior of your tools and feel a sense of mastery.

    ------------ Things that you can use to improve your sleep:

    - The app Rainymood, which you can use as a cue to your body that it is time to sleep. Will also help you sleep through random noises.[4]

    - Amazon dot, which you can use to set a go-to-sleep alarm that you don't need to get out of bed to turn off for $50. [6]

    - A physical alarm clock separate from your phone so you don't go from waking up to reading HN in bed.

    - A sleeping mask to block the light out from your eyes for $9. [7]

    - A better mattress for $190. [8]

    Some of these things cost money. Lost time costs more.

    [1] https://freedom.to/

    [2] https://selfcontrolapp.com/

    [3] https://getcoldturkey.com/

    [4] http://rainymood.com/

    [6] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Amazon-Echo-Dot-Generation-Black/dp....

    [7] https://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/store/product/bucky-reg-40-....

    [8] http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/products/mattresses/mattresses-top....

  4186. A simple heap memory allocator in about 230 lines of C 2017-09-17 21:44:07 katastic
    I remember years ago my friend was gong to college for CSCI and had to write a malloc for a course. He procrastinated till the last... night... and wrote it. In the free() routine, he simply wrote "return true;". The TA's unit-tested code because there were over a hundred classmates to test. Well, the unit-tests must not have been very good because he said he scored a 100.

  4187. In an 8-Hour Day, the Average Worker Is Productive for 2 Hours and 53 Minutes 2017-09-18 17:06:54 gexla
    Maybe this depends on the job. I can do tech support all day long. Programming comes with productivity traps such as difficulty getting into a zone, procrastination due to feeling overwhelmed due to deadlines or project difficulty and limits on creative productivity. My brain begins to melt after 4 hours of straight problem-solving on average. Problem-solving requires creativity, which burns out and leads to busy work.

  4188. Cutting your salary by 40% 2017-09-18 23:04:20 panarky
    > Pfft. A man-hour of labor is a man-hour of labor.

    Not all hours are created equally.

    I do my best work with hyperfocus.

    I don't just mean more work, but far higher quality work that's at the edge of my intellectual capabilities.

    This is the work that's most rewarding and gives results that I'm proud of.

    But I can't get significant time "in the zone" on a 40-hour week.

    All the normal but necessary distractions take at least four hours a day, and I need at least an hour or two of "non-zone" work before I can hit my stride and achieve flow.

    So I find 60-70 hours a week is essential to doing my best work.

    But I can't sustain that level of effort continuously for years.

    So I balance that out with a week a month of low-intensity "work" (slacking/procrastinating/socializing) plus at least twelve weeks per year of contiguous time for uninterrupted travel, long-distance trekking, rebuilding relationships damaged by hyperfocus, etc.

  4189. Toys ‘R’ Us Plans Bankruptcy Filing Amid Debt Struggle 2017-09-19 14:55:03 jedrek
    The way adults say no to alcohol, cigarettes, sex, procrastination, and using their smartphones?

  4190. Facebook’s war on free will 2017-09-20 08:15:17 elihu
    I think the grey men in Momo are different; the grey men encourage people to save time by being more efficient (and thereby neglecting human relationships and the things that made them happy).

    Facebook, on the other hand, encourages people to use their human relationships to waste time via superficial interactions with so that Facebook can profit directly from ad sales.

    Some strategies work well against either threat; spend time with people away from the computer, don't go along with whatever everyone else is doing.

    But they are exploiting different vices: the grey men exploit people's long term greed to entice them to accept an intolerable present, whereas Facebook exploits short-term procrastination and addiction psychology: "I wonder what's going on on Facebook right now... it'll just take a couple seconds to check." (This isn't unique to Facebook. I tend to waste a lot more time on Hacker News and Reddit than Facebook. At least HN doesn't have a profit motive, and I do learn a lot of interesting things here.)

    edit: I'm not sure how this relates to the Dune quote, as it's been a long time since I read it and don't remember the context of that quote.

  4191. How I got to 200 productive hours a month 2017-09-22 15:19:49 McMini
    Reading this while procrastinating feels good

  4192. How I got to 200 productive hours a month 2017-09-22 15:39:57 kobeya
    > Two years ago I could spend a week not working because I was avoiding some task.

    This is a great article and there’s plenty to talk about in organizational systems, even if this seems to be subtly pitching his own products in places. But if anyone reading this identifies with this sort of chronic procrastination, consider seeking psychiatric help. This is a giant red flag for adult ADHD, which is a serious and often misunderstood issue, and one of the few psychiatric diagnoses for which there is solid treatments (stimulants) with near universal efficacy and very few side effects. Getting on Adderall, then Vyvanse changed my life for the better, and basically solved this issue overnight, as well as a bunch of other benefits.

  4193. How I got to 200 productive hours a month 2017-09-22 16:23:06 te_chris
    Not even a just diagnosis as specific as ADHD. I was a chronic procrastinator due to anxiety and high expectations of perfectionism. Working with a psychologist using CBT has transformed my productivity by allowing me to learn that it's possible to let things not be 'perfect', whatever that meant anyway.

  4194. How I got to 200 productive hours a month 2017-09-22 16:38:51 csdreamer7
    Thanks for posting this. I suffer from perfectionism too and it leads to a lot of procrastination. Realizing that getting things to 'okay' was fine was an important step for me, because my okay was often others 'good' or 'excellent'.

  4195. How I got to 200 productive hours a month 2017-09-22 16:43:39 deepGem
    Can I ask what is considered chronic procrastination. For instance, I am sitting on a tax filing task for almost 2 months now. It's not gonna endanger my life, but it's one of those things I can't get my mind to do.

  4196. How I got to 200 productive hours a month 2017-09-22 20:01:50 te_chris
    My pleasure. It was only about halfway through my course of CBT that procrastination and perfectionism came up as related to anxiety. It was a mind-blowing moment.

    The weird thing was I knew it all, but something hadn't connected in my thinking that it was better to do/make/release things than to not. The mind is weird place.

  4197. How I got to 200 productive hours a month 2017-09-22 21:07:08 nickjj
    I wrote about this last year. I called it the "social loop of death":

    https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/schedules-arent-a-constraint-...

    It's super distracting, but you can easily break out of it with being accountable for your time.

    Nowadays I've found a healthy balance and am more productive / happy / successful than ever.

    A lot of it had to due with following these 3 things too: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-overcome-procrastinati....

  4198. How I got to 200 productive hours a month 2017-09-22 22:07:00 anbende
    Mental health professional here (well, currently on internship). "Giant red flag" is a bit of an overstatement in this particular situation. It is very common for people without significant attention problems otherwise to have major difficulty self-motivating and structuring when working independently. Many of my depressed and anxious clients became so by getting further and further behind, because there was no structure or accountability imposed on them and they simply did not know how to do it themselves. Most of them did not meet criteria for ADHD and improved quickly with scheduling, goal-setting and accountability systems.

    That's not to say that procrastination is not a symptom of ADHD. It is. But the modern world is built to distract even the normal, and most people are capable of developing bad habits.

    Also, the actual ADHD diagnostic procedure is very involved (3-5 hours of testing that can cost upwards of 2k). A lot of diagnoses aren't actual diagnoses, and no one is qualified to make a Dx from a brief verbal assessment.

    So long as we keep those cautions in mind, I agree that if a person thinks they might have ADHD, by all means look into the symptoms, do a little research and consider getting tested.

  4199. How I got to 200 productive hours a month 2017-09-22 22:15:19 dlfsdkfnlk
    Yes, because the argument is that the US over-diagnoses ADHD. As in kids being kids and not being laser-focused are suddenly diagnosed with ADHD. In this case, someone procrastinating because they have something difficult to do would be ADHD. It may not be the case.

  4200. Other ways to read Hacker News 2017-09-22 22:15:33 Darkstack
    The best way to read HN for me is no browser, 2 mails, one in the morning, one in the afternoon I use a custom version of this python script. (since I have a big tendency to procrastinate)

    https://github.com/lrusnac/hn-notifier

  4201. How I got to 200 productive hours a month 2017-09-22 23:01:51 kazagistar
    Afaik, it's not chronic in the sense that you procrastinate the one thing, but that you procrastinate lots of things constantly.

  4202. How I got to 200 productive hours a month 2017-09-23 00:09:16 ashark
    The worst part is when you procrastinate on everything that's not as important (but still important!) as the main thing you're avoiding, because how can you justify doing those things instead of working on that other, more important thing?

  4203. How I got to 200 productive hours a month 2017-09-23 00:57:24 skinnymuch
    I'd like to know how others do this as well. I left my iPad Air on a plan. Older iPad I have is too slow to be used leisurely. iPhone is okay but sometimes I like having a more involved break. In that case I'd prefer having an ipad at minimum. I like to walk around at a fast pace while taking my break too when possible so a chromebook wouldn't work so well.

    Because I just have my phone as my break device. I've started to blur the lines again and take breaks at my desk too much and feel like I procrastinate more now. I just set up a productivity app that blocks sites and apps. Will see how it goes until I buy a newer iPad or think of something.

  4204. How I got to 200 productive hours a month 2017-09-23 03:18:52 mljoe
    I don't understand how what you described is ADHD and not average human behavior. If people were not easily distracted by Twitter and Facebook, they wouldn't have a functioning business. There are entire business models that rely on the truism that a huge fraction of the population will procrastinate on a trivial task that will clearly and unambiguously benefit them. Mail in rebates for instance. When does this become ADHD?

  4205. Ask HN: How much of your time do you actually spend coding? 2017-09-23 08:05:30 psyc
    Probably 50/50 over the long term, but I'm usually either in a mostly-design mode or a mostly-coding mode. If in design mode, I'm spending 1/3 of the time doing productive work, and the rest procrastinating. If in coding mode, I'm spending 8-12 hours a day head-down writing code, with small breaks to step back a bit and think.

  4206. How I got to 200 productive hours a month 2017-09-23 14:55:10 fouc
    A few years ago I finally filed my income taxes, all 15 years of it that I had been procrastinating on since I was 18 years old. Achievement unlocked!

  4207. How I got to 200 productive hours a month 2017-09-24 00:35:41 phasnox
    "Procrastination itself can have different causes — maybe the task is too complex or too boring, fear of failure or simple laziness. Even a slight presence of these negative factors can make us go for instant rewards"

    My entire life described in 2 sentences.

  4208. How I got to 200 productive hours a month 2017-09-24 02:42:28 dispo001
    I work 7 days most of the weeks but its physical labor. (the mind is reserved for personal use) I've convinced myself that the joy of relaxing depends on how hard you've worked and that the longer you relax the less enjoyable it gets. You pretty much have to get back to work asap.

    I stay productive by eliminating idle time between tasks. Switching should be seamless. If at any time you don't know what you are going to do after you've done the thing you are doing you are doing it wrong.

    My coworkers all work harder than I do. End of the shift I've done just as much but they are totally worn out (when I go to my next job)

    I do procrastinate for a total of 20 min or so by spending excessive attention on details. This amuses me greatly specially when it infuriates coworkers.

    It is like a sport, the work it self is not important it is all about the experience. If I ever get bored with this routine I take 3 or 12 months off right at that very moment. The thought is very comforting. No way I'm going to push it into burnout.

  4209. Ask HN: Share one thing that profoundly increased your productivity 2017-09-24 13:27:35 mattbgates
    Don't code on an empty stomach ;)

    But don't go for the junk food or fast food, either.

    I keep some almond butter or peanut butter handy. Something to snack on just keeps me focused. Every few hours, I take another tablespoon with a drink of water and I find myself being able to get right back into what I was doing, even with less procrastination.

  4210. YC’s Essential Startup Advice 2017-09-26 03:46:40 rgbrenner
    Who said anything about social media, and facebook likes, and advertising. Just stop. That isn't your product.

    If your product is just a squarespace page... then that's the entire part of that step.

    Do that, and then go talk to your customers. The rest of that is just procrastination, and frankly a waste of time and money at that stage... because there's no way you have product market fit that early, so why are you buying ads?

  4211. How I stopped procrastinating, learned to code, and launched my first product 2017-09-26 21:39:55 fao_
    I wonder how many people this article temped into procrastinating by reading it, rather than doing their work, after it hit the front page of HN...

  4212. How I stopped procrastinating, learned to code, and launched my first product 2017-09-26 21:51:36 gnicholas
    As someone who procrastinates and is interested in how people learn to code, I was looking forward to reading this. But there is no substance here about how she stopped procrastinating or how she learned to code. There's a reference to a coding school that she dropped out of, but we don't know why she dropped out, what she learned, or whether she'd recommend others to do the same. As for procrastination tips, the word "procrastinate" appears only in the title.

    Looking forward to reading the sequel: How I stopped procrastinating, learned to write, and launched my content marketing blog.

  4213. How I stopped procrastinating, learned to code, and launched my first product 2017-09-26 22:02:15 krono
    Many people try to solve their procrastination by trying to renew their motivation. I find this to be very unreliable and it also has the potential of leading you down the rabbit hole of less important things like watching videos or reading articles like the one linked to here.

    The only solution that worked for me and keeps me from relapsing into procrastination behaviour is the non-zero-days concept: Every day you do at least one thing to help you get closer to your end goal (whatever that is, can be multiple). It doesn't matter how much you do or how big the task is that you completed, just do something. Small things add up and before you know it you're already halfway there.

    More often than not, this gets me in the right mindset and I end up accomplishing more than just the one small thing I set out to do.

    This was a bit off-topic but hopefully it helps you.

  4214. How I stopped procrastinating, learned to code, and launched my first product 2017-09-26 22:24:37 it_learnses
    The Japanese concept of Kaizen to beat procrastination is similar: everyday at the same time, commit to working on your goal for 1 minute.

  4215. How I stopped procrastinating, learned to code, and launched my first product 2017-09-27 00:32:15 p-funk
    Procrastination is actually just a mild form of discomfort about what one perceives to be an overwhelming task. The "no zero days" mindset is excellent because it gets you past the initial discomfort and gets you into the stage where you're actually working on the thing. Once you are working on it, it becomes easier to keep working on it because you realize it isn't as bad as you perceived before you started.

    The pomodoro technique is another thing that's commonly recommended, which is essentially the same. It helped me big time.

    The great thing is that it applies to pretty much anything. Having trouble picking up a new programming language? Just look at the wiki on it and you'll probably find something that sparks your curiosity. Having trouble keeping up with exercise? Just walk for 1 minute and you won't want to stop. It's all about consistency over time.

  4216. How I stopped procrastinating, learned to code, and launched my first product 2017-09-27 17:25:21 nyandaber
    That's right, people often talk about motivation, but motivation is overrated. It's a fleeting and elusive feeling, and if you rely on it to get things done, you'll most likely get burnt sooner or later. Having the discipline to do things no matter what is the right approach, not only when coding but for other areas of life (like sports, dieting, or anything that doesn't give an instant reward and prone to be procrastinated).

  4217. Ask HN: What is the best way to spend my time as a 17-year-old who can code? 2017-09-29 23:18:44 alagalah
    My advice? Don't ask, just do. At this point it's not necessarily an area that matters because if any of us could predict the future we wouldn't be commenting on Reddit. :)

    Having said that you have one major attribute going for you, and don't take this as a pejorative, and that's naivety. You don't know what isn't possible cos you haven't been beaten down by experience (a double edged sword).

    Take that naivety, think of something crazy that floats your goat. Can you write an AI for gaming? Can you make a filesystem faster? Whatever it is, set a goal, double it (ie an AI for gaming that can beat the top 10% in the world, a filesystem 5x faster than exists today)

    You'll learn something far more valuable than a coding skill... You'll learn you are capable of much much more than you ever believed.

    Just don't procrastinate, think big, fail big, and beat fear.

  4218. Sitting down too much is doing more harm to your body than you can imagine 2017-10-01 21:43:35 Fnoord
    It is about loving yourself, granting yourself this time for yourself, form a habit, and stick to the habit. There's no need to get to the gym to become a body builder, start slow and aim low instead and compliment yourself for the achievements you made. Being critical of your performance or lack of exercise is only going to demotivate you as beginner.

    If you do not exercise at all right now, doing very little is already a big improvement over essentially nothing. The diff between 0 and 15 min is far greater and significant than 15 and 30 min.

    You can start with something simple like doing some minor exercises every 5 min after 1 hr of sitting. It is going to help you focus more as well, because your brain will be in diffused instead of focused mode whilst you're exercising.

    I can highly recommend Nederland in Beweging on Dutch TV (tho I doubt you're Dutch, American TV is massive so I hope there's something akin to it). It is 15 minutes a day with a warming up and cooling down. The Dutch government (or well, "gezondsheidsraad") recommends 21 minutes a day of movement and twice a week heavy exercise. With those 15 minutes, you're well under way to reach 21 min and the exercises are different every workday, and target different muscles, so your entire body is in the end in shape. That's in contrast to say running 3 times a week. You meet the heavy exercise requirement, but you won't meet the 21 min one, and various of your muscles (e.g. hamstrings and more or less entire arms) will be weak.

    Doing this may also very well increase your overall happiness (and decrease depression), increase your focus, decrease your fatigue, and decrease your procrastination.

  4219. Passing the torch 2017-10-02 23:50:57 phlo
    TBH I mostly just lurk there and use it as a feed of interesting things when my need for procrastination exceeds what even HN has to offer. It's surfaced some nice stories though, that I didn't see on HN.

    From what limited view I've had into the community, the quality of the discussion seems similar to HN. With a lot less volume, of course.

  4220. Techniques for dealing with lack of motivation, malaise, depression [video] 2017-10-06 20:10:26 d--b
    I haven't looked at the video, but it is funny that I spent most of last week procrastinating by playing (and finishing) The Witness... Great game, but really the best piece of advice I could have received was to not start playing it!

  4221. Confessions of a Failed Female Coder 2017-10-08 03:03:23 skinnymuch
    Is there a specific part of what you're referring to with

    > This is why I dislike Damore. I don't care what his manifesto says, but I bet that he knew exactly what he was doing. Playing games is pathetic, dude.

    I haven't read the manifesto and don't want to procrastinate now. Are you saying he knew his stuff about women being inferior for the work Googlers do (which I wholly disagree with) was him partially BSing and just stirring shit up or trying to get his sexist viewpoint across with any excuse possible?

  4222. Ask HN: What essay/blogpost do you keep going back to reread? 2017-10-08 22:24:09 dasboth
    I have a couple of go to pieces on procrastination/getting things done:

    Procrastination is not Laziness (http://www.raptitude.com/2011/05/procrastination-is-not-lazi...)

    6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person (http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-yo...)

  4223. 150 days of living and coding in a van 2017-10-10 21:43:37 koolba
    Haha. The look on that guys face just made my day.

    I'd be paranoid that the monitor would fall on me. That may be good thing though as I'd avoid procrastination to get out of the danger zone as soon as possible.

  4224. The majority of the advice given to us works. We don’t 2017-10-12 00:37:28 cko
    I think I’m a self-help junkie. I’ve read enough self help blogs and articles and books to become a ‘guru’ myself. Anywhere from personal finance to minimalist living. The weird thing is I still read those articles even though I’m already financially independent and own less than many self-proclaimed minimalists. Maybe it’s me patting myself on the back and procrastinating.

  4225. Where's the Proof That Mindfulness Works? 2017-10-12 04:57:22 Danihan
    Your previous comment is about procrastinating for 6.5 hours every day while dreaming of changing careers.

    You realize not everyone has the luxury of living like that, right?

  4226. An open source re-implementation of RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 2017-10-13 20:59:59 sitepodmatt
    True, but I also think part of it's the Internet and much more opportunity to procrastination (i.e. now). When I was lad... we had slashdot.org, theregister and theonion, you'd be done within 20 mins. Now we have HN, SO, reddit, podcasts, blogs, twitter, etc.. When Sawyer started on TT I don't think 14.4 modems were even widespread.

  4227. Ask HN: Why do you keep coming back to Hacker News? 2017-10-14 03:16:44 no_one_ever
    I'm able to procrastinate at the office and claim I'm working

  4228. Ask HN: What changes in your life did you make to become more productive? 2017-10-17 01:10:10 kowdermeister
    Try FaceApp and see yourself aged 30+ years. You will eventually become that person so it's worth taking steps towards making that person the best version of you.

    "We treat our future selves like strangers" https://www.vox.com/2014/12/18/7414105/procrastination-futur...

  4229. Ask HN: What changes in your life did you make to become more productive? 2017-10-17 02:41:51 otterpro
    The greatest productivity boost was to get rid of internet altogether at home (say goodbye to Comcast) and work only at the office. Also, I downgraded my phone service plan and switched to 1 GB limit/month on the data plan. I also recommend getting rid of cable TV.

    I became more efficient at work, with clear goal in mind that I had to finish my daily work in order to meet my hard-set deadline of 6pm. I was able to really focus and concentrate with greater intensity, since I couldn't do more work at home.

    There were also other unintended benefits.

    Not having internet at home allowed my mind to be free from "distractions" at home. At home, my mind was still engaged in the work-related stuff. In order to switch gears and to unwind, I was spending time on Youtube and mindless entertainment, but more often, I was vegging out and becoming an internet couch-potato.

    Now, I tend to spend more time with the family, and I am able to focus on people and not technology. I am free from the burden of FOMO. I am thinking more clearly and creatively. I have more time for hobbies and side projects. If I really needed to Google something , I'd use my phone for quick search (again, being limited to 1GB limit so I didn't get side-tracked). I can't procrastinate by going on the net and getting lost in endless research.

    And since I couldn't be online while at home, I was unconsciously building good habits. I am reading more books (and buying more paper-based books instead of e-books/Kindle books). I am writing more, journaling more, and getting more exercises and working out. I'm also sleeping better and no longer have insomnia, probably due to limited screen time in the evening.

    I also became more selective of the type of entertainment, preferring quality over quantity, and elminating my binge-watching. Instead, I watch movies on Bluray/DVD and is a much better viewing experience. I recommend Netflix (snail mail service, not the online version).

    During weekends, I have an excuse to go to a local coffee shop with good coffee and fast internet connection. For dealing with urgent issues that come up during off-hours, I can use my pre-paid LTE hotspot (Karma).

    I also use my phone less, and now I use it mostly for maps, weather, and email.

    If cutting the cord is not an option, an alternative is to set the parental control on the wifi router and use time restriction to block internet during evening and on weekends.

    Also having good set of tools AND having mastery over them are important, but that's another topic.

  4230. Anonymisation attack challenge – up to 5000 USD per attack 2017-10-17 18:39:54 probst
    Sorry, this ended up being a duplicate post (other here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15482089). Due to the procrastination setting on hackernews I thought I hadn't submitted the first one and ended up with a double post).

    If a moderator can delete this one, please do.

    Thanks

  4231. Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs to turn 800 acres of Toronto into an “internet city” 2017-10-18 10:00:33 serhei
    I'm more concerned about whether the streetcar running on top of there will ever be more than just a sketch. An extension of the streetcar network in that direction has been proposed, canceled, procrastinated, debated for years but nothing actually happening so far.

  4232. Show HN: Send Gmails automatically – ScheduleThatEmail 2017-10-18 18:09:25 tabacitu
    Hi guys,

    Long time reader, but first time poster on Hacker News, so please be gentle :-)

    I've built this tool for myself a few months back and it has been so useful to me that I decided to turn it into a product. I would definitely pay for it, so naturally I'm wondering if others might too.

    The idea is simple - everything in my life that happens every day/week/month/etc and I can turn into an email, I do it. Meetings, follow-ups, catch-ups, weekly tasks, monthly reminders, etc. Usually I procrastinate this kind of stuff, but I discovered once I send an email to someone, that's basically a promise, so I don't back down. It's replaced a lot of things I kept in Google Calendar, Asana and Todoist and kept postponing, and it makes me look like a productivity machine :-) I've also managed to turn 5-6 short meetings every week into status emails, so I personally save >10 hours/month thanks to my own service :-) Not bad, right?

    I run an open-source project and a small web dev company, so the most helpful thing I use it for is to send an email to each client, every 6 months, to ask what's up and "_who do you know who can use my services?_". I knew I was supposed to do that, but I never did. Now I do do it, because it's automated. And the first time the emails got sent, I got 2 new leads. So yeah :-)

    Eager to see what you guys like, what you don't, and what emails you decide to automate. Always looking to automate more of my professional life, so looking to you for inspiration.

    Thanks, cheers!

  4233. Students learn more effectively from print textbooks than screens, study says 2017-10-19 11:32:10 downer71
    I believe it. Learning how to operate a machine to control what gets displayed is such a distraction, in and of itself. Endless diversions and digressions, even if the devic has no internet. Procrastination just explodes exponentially.

  4234. Ask HN: Do you have any kind of self-destructive habit? 2017-10-19 22:07:45 thecupisblue
    - Smoking, drinking, drugs

    - Overspending

    - Overpartying

    - Undersleeping

    - Content addiction

    - Overthinking

    - Too much sitting

    - Procrastination

    On the outside, I'm an overachieving dude who has his life together. On the inside, I'm a wreck.

  4235. Ask HN: How many hours a day do you actually work(specifically developers)? 2017-10-20 06:24:18 Artlav
    Can be anything from zero to 30+ hours a day.

    It gets closer to zero when i have problems focusing and so go into runaway internet time burning. This typically happens when some exciting/problem solving part of a project concludes, and i'm left with either a million possible ways to move forward past the solved problem, or a need to do the boring "awesome, now make it work" part of a project.

    Procrastination is a problem solving decompression sickness.

    It get closer to "code until a non maskable sleep interrupt fires" when there is a problem and the solution is close or something does not work but should, or something that haven't worked for a while finally starts to.

    Between the two extremes there is pretty much any times depending on things to be done and free time available.

  4236. Training exercise boosts brain power, Johns Hopkins researchers say 2017-10-20 08:23:37 jpamata
    Same. I learned about it while in uni and got into it thinking that it'd help me improve my academic performance. While I don't know of a good way to measure if I have really increased my intelligence, I did noticed that I could focus longer on my tasks: studying, coding, solving problems, etc.

    Nowadays, I could study for a couple of hours before going for a short break. I know that some of you don't think that's good enough but for someone who used to struggle with procrastination and being "easily distracted", I am happy with the result.

  4237. Ask HN: Do you have any kind of self-destructive habit? 2017-10-20 14:30:16 eager_noob
    Procrastination. Haven't been able to get a handle on that problem since a long time.

  4238. Ask HN: Do you have any kind of self-destructive habit? 2017-10-20 22:50:10 imd23
    We need to feel worth it in life. It doesn't matter that there are 8 billion people around. I think if you can imagine helping other in some area you are good at and other might be struggling, you can pretty much stop procrastinating right away. I recall a psychologist who said that for every hour that patients go them they must do two of for charity work where they directly help others. He finalized saying that he doesn't know if his therapy is good but that the other two hours were working extremely well.

  4239. If all cars were autonomous 2017-10-23 00:22:14 11thEarlOfMar
    Last week, I got an e-mail from Subaru telling me my windshield washer fluid was low (it was). The e-mail provided information on how to refill it, and, a link to make an appointment for service if I felt something else needed attention.

    If, instead, my brake pads were worn and the car were fully autonomous, I could have scheduled it for service while I am at work and it could have driven itself in, got new brakes and driven itself back to my office. No loaner car, no time off from work, no hassle waiting in line for a service adviser, ....

    File under the 'productivity' column, and I expect cars will be better maintained than now, since we procrastinators will be able to simply click a link and forget about it.

  4240. Richard Turner’s Full House 2017-10-23 22:44:42 vlucas
    Favorite quote: "You know what I consider the worst disability of all? Procrastination and laziness." Ouch. Well said.

  4241. Seven habits of effective text editing (2000) 2017-10-23 22:59:34 jonahx
    > I would be very interested to a) see this claim tested

    I would too. But I'd be willing to wager on the results beforehand.

    > b) see if it makes a difference in productivity. (Most of what makes me slow at work is trying to understand technical problems, not trying to find parts of text in my editor.)

    There's no doubt that things like understanding technical problems, avoiding procrastination, and many non-technical factors are the high-order bits of productivity.

    That said, the context of this conversation is text-editor optimization. Also, I think the true benefit of an optimized text editor isn't in raw time savings but in increased flow and just the joy of having a tool that feels like the extension of your mind, rather than something your mind works around.

  4242. Don’t Quit When It Gets Hard 2017-10-24 00:05:51 terminalcommand
    Is it possible that you're working yourself to the bone to avoid thinking about your life.

    I used to work crazy hours in workdays, on weekends I felt sick and sad. I actually wished for the stress of working at a high tempo. The downside was that I knew deep inside that the constant stress was detrimental to my health.

    For years I've aimed for a work/life balance. But I am yet to achieve it. Either I work super hard, or I spend all my days procrastinating.

  4243. Scrum Anti-Patterns 2017-10-24 21:16:57 flavio81
    Good article with important observations, in particular the "Point Procrastination" part.

  4244. Ask HN: How would you maximize rep/upvotes? 2017-10-27 00:47:13 muzani
    I find that there's momentum for most of them. If someone liked your last post, they're more likely to like the next one. If their friends 'wow' react your post, you're more likely to get a higher ratio of 'wow'. If you (visibly) hit 20 upvotes, it's easy to get to 80.

    Facebook: Emotional content is extremely popular, so much so that many "influencers" choose to be continually angry or sarcastic. Second is things that are shocking or surprising.

    Instagram: Really beautiful pictures first. Use hashtags that get a lot of traffic; hashtags are like a highway, they're how people browse. Good stories matter too, and it's surprisingly a great place to blog as long as you take good photos. Being pretty will earn you a lot of followers but isn't necessary.

    Stack Overflow: Write in a format easy to copy paste or step by step instructions. Theoretical posts don't do well.

    HN: Productivity advice is very easy to farm, e.g. how to stop procrastinating. A lot of people are experienced; some Dilbert style criticism on bad work habits is easy rep. But jokes and hyperbole get downvoted. Don't write too much, around 200 words is ideal.

  4245. Catalan parliament declares independence from Spain 2017-10-27 23:37:53 dnautics
    The EU does have the power, they don't have the guts, because the governing institutions are set up to be run by spineless bureaucrats that 'know better than the citizenry'. The solution then is to procrastinate on doing anything difficult and hope it goes away like a bad dream, nobody's job is in danger anyways.

  4246. I cured my tech fatigue by ditching feeds 2017-10-29 16:31:18 Joeri
    I have information addiction myself. I’ve had websites I check compulsively ever since slashdot first became popular. When it becomes a real problem I take action. I’ve only found two things to work: complete cold turkey with a specific end date (personal challenge) or subsituting site checking with activities I enjoy more (reading books, playing games, ...). I’ve never been able to subsitute with something more productive that I enjoyed less, I just end up procrastinating in other ways.

    The remarkable thing about going cold turkey: you don’t miss out on anything important. Everything truly important will reach you another way. For me, checking news sites is not about getting useful information, it’s about rewarding my brain by feeding it what it has been trained to want. In my experience it took weeks to deprogram myself.

  4247. I cured my tech fatigue by ditching feeds 2017-10-29 22:04:59 nickjj
    I had this problem for a while. The good old social loop of death.

    A non-smartphone won't fix it.

    I think fixing this problem begins with you asking yourself why you're doing this. Are you procrastinating over doing something else? Are you passing time because you don't have anything else to do? Etc..

  4248. I cured my tech fatigue by ditching feeds 2017-10-29 22:09:41 nickjj
    I used to use StayFocusd too and wrote about it (along with other similar tools) at https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-overcome-procrastinati....

    I stopped using it about 3 months ago because eventually you'll naturally want to avoid these problematic sites. I still check the usual sites but now it's much more controlled (a few minutes here and there per day with a 0% urge to go back to checking constantly).

  4249. Reaching $10k monthly revenue with WakaTime, my SaaS side project 2017-11-01 03:06:00 yathern
    I think it's self-relevant advice. If your tendencies are to constantly read about launching your business - that may get in the way of actually going in and doing it.

    This advice isn't relevant to those who have the opposite problem - but for those who use learning as a procrastination device, it can be just the right advice to put you into the happy medium

  4250. Is There an Ideal Amount of Income Inequality? 2017-11-03 04:16:10 WalterBright
    Nobody has managed to automate janitorial services yet. There are a LOT of boring, unpleasant jobs that need doing. I doubt the economy can be sustained by only happy jobs. There are only so many astronomy, forest ranger, and talk show host jobs.

    I know, and have known, quite a lot of people who would be happy to do nothing productive and have someone else provide their needs.

    In a way, it's a bit like college. How many people learn something by auditing a course? Not many - it's the pressure of exams and grades that provides the motivation for most students. All you have to do is look at their study habits - procrastinate until the last moment and then cram.

  4251. Stack Overflow reducing headcount by 20% 2017-11-03 18:24:00 Matt3o12_
    This probably depends a lot on the industry but my mom works at a grocery store and the reason they give short notices (as short as allowed by law) is because of the work moral. In Germany, there is no such thing as sick days, you can take off as long as you need if you are sick and have a doctors notice (which is mostly free or very inexpensive because of public healthcare). Most of the time someone is laid off, this person will suddenly become sick for most of their remaining time. When they come to work, they often procrastinate a lot more and get little to no work done. This means, once they have been given notice, they barely work and the employer can do very little. They cannot get fired (because they already are) and have to keep paying them for that duration. The same also often happens when the employee gives notice.

    While the employer can take legal action and sue them, proving that someone is sick is rather difficult (and frowned upon by most judges). There are many cases where my mother's employer could have easily proven that (because witnesses same him partying or there are even pictures online where he partied on that day) but it is generally not worth it because a trail is more expensive then paying one month's pay and also not worth the time and overhead.

    Not everyone takes work very seriously, unfortunately, which makes the process suck for everybody. When my mother's boss has an opportunity to fire them eithout notice (because they are late or caught steeling), he generally does that, which is super unfair for the employees who would have worked until their very last.

  4252. Why Do We Still Commute? 2017-11-03 21:08:25 vog
    > it is easy to become a hermit. Easy to over-work. Hard to draw the line between your work time and your personal time

    Not just that, but there's also the other side: Easy to procrastinate, easy to give false reports which then leads to regular overwork in the days just before a hard deadline.

    I know these issues from remote workers I worked with, but also know this personally while working on my Diploma theses.

    While we are at it: Working on Diploma/Master thesis is in many ways very similar to remote work: One works mostly from home, maybe in the library but even there mostly alone, i.e. not in an office, meeting one's mentor at most once per week. I met with other students which were in the same situation - just to get into a group feeling. That worked quite well, even though we had no overlaps in our topics and hence not much to talk about.

    The situation is a bit different if you write your PhD thesis, as that usually means you have a job at the university during that time, and at least have an office and collegues.

  4253. Why Do We Still Commute? 2017-11-03 22:09:21 ZeroGravitas
    > Not just that, but there's also the other side: Easy to procrastinate, easy to give false reports which then leads to regular overwork in the days just before a hard deadline.

    That doesn't seem a problem unique to remote work. It's more about when tangible outputs are required from you.

  4254. Why Do We Still Commute? 2017-11-03 23:14:47 throwawaywfh
    >Easy to procrastinate, easy to give false reports which then leads to regular overwork in the days just before a hard deadline.

    This is so, so true for me. I used to work in a place which had an office, but you wouldn't be expected to be there most of the time, just come in at least once a week, maybe for meetings, etc.

    I used to procrastinate and report progress to my manager when there was much less. But since the work was deadline-based, I'd just grind through the weekend with little sleep and catch up with what I've reported. I've never missed a deadline, but I'm still feeling bad about doing it that way and misleading them.

    Just to be clear, this was a long time ago, when I was just starting my professional career, and didn't yet have stronger ethics.

    (Throwaway for obvious reasons, the employer I worked for at the time browse HN)

  4255. Why Do We Still Commute? 2017-11-03 23:38:59 wambotron
    > Easy to procrastinate, easy to give false reports which then leads to regular overwork in the days just before a hard deadline.

    This isn't a remote problem. I see this _all_ the time with people at work now and I don't work remotely.

    This is more of a personal issue -- some people do it consistently, others don't. I never had that problem working remotely, and I don't pretend to be somewhere else in my regular reports in the office either.

  4256. Why Do We Still Commute? 2017-11-04 02:09:12 stronglikedan
    Just my personal anecdote, but I have much more discipline in the office than I do at home. I get distracted by everything at home, and I procrastinate by doing things I couldn't do at work, like housework, watching tv, etc. I know myself enough to know that I cannot trust myself to work at home on a regular basis, and I'm more content with myself regarding my productivity at the office.

  4257. Show HN: Periodic Table of GitHub 2017-11-04 07:32:07 Zyst
    I basically exclusively do gods tangentially related to the thing I'm making.

    Some document virtualization thing became Enki, some anti procrastination became Aergia, and so on and so forth. I actually quite like that.

  4258. Ask HN: How do you manage multiple learning projects? 2017-11-05 23:06:09 jansho
    I actually prefer hardware because I find phone timers distracting (i.e. I start procrastinating on the Internet!)

  4259. Starcraft II goes free-to-play seven years after launch 2017-11-09 01:36:19 darethas
    > I'm not sure what it is

    Video games are perfect, especially for people who like to tinker and are curious, which to me has been every hacker ever. That's what it is. They literally are just really damn good at what they do.

    What online video games (and here I am making sure to distinguish between online, competitive type video games, versus offline because in my experience offline video games hardly ever come up in counseling, it's always your CODs, CSes, LoL and WoW's of the world) do psychologically is they provide a structure, a way to advance and progress -- with a tight feedback loop of your progress and a way to socialize with other people. Ultimately these 3 things lead to a huge sense of accomplishment and dopamine rush. Your attention is kept because you have these short spurts of quests, or "you just gotta kill 3 more mobs to get that next level and unlock your new spell tree" or you got to check your auction to get that gold to buy the new gear to do the new raid with your clan next week because you really don't want to let those guys down, etc.

    The problem is, outside that virtual reality, you see depression, lack of ability to focus at work, not getting work done on time, lack of interest in tasks considered "boring". The way to success is to create these same structures in your life, but for the goals you want to accomplish. Much easier said than done, but at a high level, that's what it is all about. We escape to our virtual reality to get our virtual high and virtual feeling of belonging and virtual progress because we lack any or all of these areas in our real lives and it pains us too much to be able to face that disappointment. And for some of us, that mountain of unfinished tasks, or incomplete projects because of our thousands of hours racked up on Steam seems insurmountable, so that even when we do have free time and no games, we procrastinate -- "it's too much, I'll never get it done anyways" (Procrastination -- especially habitual procrastination is almost always a defense mechanism, and not a moral/character flaw such as "I am just lazy")

    Now why we escape to the video games? Any number of factors, be it depression, ADHD, or simply never having a good role model or someone to teach you structure and discipline in your life (the latter is usually the case), but that's besides the point. The point is to recognize it, realize you will never be happy unless you achieve what you want from your life. (Why every time I have a couple hours free, I can't work on my side project as intently as I play 3 ranked matches in League of Legends?)

    I could probably fill up a book with information I learned about it, but everyone is unique. I want to help, if this resonates true in your life -- reach out to me. If you just want someone to email back and forth or talk to, it's my user name at google's mail service.

  4260. Ask HN: What are some common traps that smart people fall into? 2017-11-10 08:37:00 widyowid
    A corrolary of it: procrastination.

    It's a double-edged sword, really; on one side, taking a step back and putting off the project currently undertaken can give one a clearer perspective of the subject at hand, providing a fresh take on it, in some way(s) previously not even crossed one's mind.

    On the other side, all too often it paves the path to development hell--be it due to the neverending quest for holy grail/unicorn of your project (if you're leaning to being a perfectionist), or eating lotus by indulging on various diversions to entertain your boredom (if you're more of a slacker like me). Or, god forbid, both.

  4261. You’re working in the wrong place if you’re working in an open office 2017-11-10 10:50:14 dzhiurgis
    How do you get distracted in the open office?

    Someone talking loud or having their phone ringer on? That's just shitty office manners, plus you can grab ANC headphones when you really wanna focus. Which also gives a good signal to not disturb to others.

    The only distraction I used to get is colleagues asking for help which always felt super nice to do.

    I'm 3 weeks working from home and yes, it's great not having to slouch to the office every morning with the associated food/coffee/shower/dress-up/transport routine. But I do kinda miss people a bit and procrastination is thru the roof.

  4262. Ask HN: What are some common traps that smart people fall into? 2017-11-10 13:08:01 shubhamjain
    Procrastinating on an assigned task because you think you can do things faster than everyone else. It's a trap that I fell into often. Nearing the shipping date, I found myself scrambling to finish the task wishing I had started earlier. The learning: Even if you're faster at doing things, underestimating unknown unknowns is going to be detrimental in the end. It's better to start sooner. There's a good article that covers this hazard[1]

    [1]: http://bookofhook.blogspot.in/2013/03/smart-guy-productivity...

  4263. Ask HN: What are some common traps that smart people fall into? 2017-11-10 22:09:44 bjourne
    Distraction and procrastination. I'm not sure I'm smart enough to qualify for your "smart people" designation, but those are two ailments that are affecting me. :) Perhaps being smart is being not easily distracted, then I'm very dumb.

  4264. Tell HN: Some thoughts on ten years on Hacker News 2017-11-11 20:42:39 IsaacL
    Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think this is a good point to end my Hacker News usage for good. Some thoughts:

    1. I've just come off a call with a university friend who is now a manager at a big startup out in China, working on a really ambitious side project, and building tons of relationships out in the Asian startup world. I used to hang out with tons of people like that, then I had some bad life experiences, and disconnected from many good parts of my life. At the same time I got sucked back into HN procrastination.

    2. Even times when I'm not producing or meeting interesting people, I have a stack of interesting stuff to read. Sebastian Marshall, who I mentioned above, has this amazing "Strategic Review" series, of which I've only read a fraction. There is never a single second of my day when HN is the most valuable thing I could be doing.

    3. For the last 2 years I've had a second account under a pseudonym where I could be more outspoken about my political beliefs. (Hopefully at least a few people followed links I've posted from this account, or that other account, and learned something). Aside from the timesink aspect, the reason I'm leaving HN now is because it's become way too much of a political echo chamber.

    I can cope with a place that's dominated by liberal/progressives, but not when they take a haughty, dismissive tone towards anyone who disagrees with them. (E.g: commenter takes a controversial stance, people who reply jump to the worst possible interpretation of their words).

    To be clear I'm not remotely any kind of alt-rightist, Trumpkin, Milo fanboy or anything like that. I have tons of idiosyncratic opinions based on years of living abroad and reading every thinker I could get my hands on. People like me usually find their way into fringe communities of similar people -- and then slowly see those communities colonised and turn conformist, and leave to find somewhere else. It's a constant search to stay ahead of the world.

    4. HN comment threads are usually noise, but one super interesting thing to do is read the comment history of an interesting poster. lionhearted I mentioned above, https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bane is another good guy to "follow". As was https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=michaelochurch, though he went a bit nuts for a few years. Deep in my comment history I'm in a thread with Aaron Schwartz (on Austrian economics!), which illustrates the unusual paths that cross on this site.

    Aside from that, I'm done here.

  4265. A Beginner´s Guide to Getting Things Done 2017-11-13 22:13:36 PeOe
    It is in fact discussed in the book. GTD is great for procrastination if used wrongly, because only adding stuff to the lists isn´t going to complete the tasks. Also, it is important to note that GTD isn´t a fool proof system. Without constantly reviewing the tasks and checking whether tasks should be added to another list, the inbox piles up and then the system doesn´t make sense anymore.

  4266. Vitamin D and cancer prevention 2017-11-14 04:58:31 bproven
    True - you should just schedule a blood test. In most US states you can do it yourself without a physician via online lab ordering companies. You will pay out of pocket (or you can use health savings). I usually do this b/c its easier for stuff like this if I am curious about blood levels and procrastinate too much on setting up doctor appts ;)

    EDIT: Wanted to mention that a Vit D test is usually around 30-50 bucks, so not too expensive

  4267. Hired – Technical Interview Score 2017-11-14 05:46:51 throw401
    The company I work for has turned into an Agile church. My productivity dropped with more than 50%. Most of my colleagues have left already, now I'm stuck with Agile masters, coaches and all the misery they come up with.

    I know I need to look for a new job, but I hate the hiring process sooooo much that I keep procrastinating.

    I'm a senior full-stack, have written loads of production software over 20 years of experience. Who the hack from refdash is going to assess me with some stupid algorithm question? Can he build shit himself? If so, he knows this whole process is irrelevant.

    Sometimes I really want to quit this business, it has destroyed a lot of fun and passion for coding already..

  4268. A Beginner´s Guide to Getting Things Done 2017-11-14 07:28:29 gdubs
    You can also follow a structured procrastination approach to dishes:

    Identify the dish you dread washing; the dirty pot with baked on grime.

    Wash the all other dishes in an effort to avoid the disgusting pot.

    Throw out the pot.

  4269. Arduino Death Clock 2017-11-14 10:05:16 asciimo
    Countdown the the busiest day of a procrastinator's life.

  4270. Backdoor with root access found from OnePlus phones 2017-11-15 01:49:18 jesse_m
    I just started messing with LineageOS on my Moto G4. Make sure you make a backup of the stock image so you can flash it back if something goes wrong with your cell network settings. I didn't and now I only have 3G and have been procrastinating flashing the stock everything and starting over.

  4271. Trade school, not 4-year college, is a better bet to solve the US income gap 2017-11-15 06:33:28 roel_v
    There's a lot of research on this; I read a lot about it procrastinating in the university library when I was wrapping up my law degree, so that was 5 or 6 years ago. I don't remember details. Probably if you start on google scholar and make your way from there, you'll find a lot of studies.

  4272. Firefox’s faster, slicker, slimmer Quantum edition now out 2017-11-16 03:42:23 smhenderson
    Thank you, I will give it a go. Have been procrastinating for a while on taking care of this so thanks for the nudge!

    edit: Figured I'd give it a try. Really easy to set up and after figuring out how to white list /dev/snd in Firefox it works great. Thanks again!

  4273. New Orleans man locked up nearly 8 years awaiting trial, then case gets tossed 2017-11-16 09:52:01 Elv13
    I think we have to be careful given the article only looks at one side. While in this case it took an absurd turn and is a clear case of "lock this dude behind bars: we don't like him", it is not always that simple.

    I would give as an example the patent trolls. They abuse of the court and fill motions after motions (or dismiss early) for the sole purpose of making their case expansive to defend against. A knowledgeable inmate or greedy public defendant could use the same tactics and delay the case only for the deadline to pass. If it can turn a life sentence into a 24 months one, then procrastination and delays are the quickest way out of jail.

    That being said, for recurrent inmates, the failure of the system is definitely in the rehab process. In some US states, it seems like the legal system exists only to sustain itself, its elected officials and the industries (lawyers, penitentiary, investigators, forensic) that runs it. This case is apparently a blatant example of bureaucracy indifference. If the fact were shown in their face, they would blame the weather or the defendant own motions to have his rights taken into account. I am not a socialist, far from it. However when it comes to absurdities such as this, it is a clear sign that a proper social net is necessary to avoid a slippery slopes where the incarcerated population will grow and grow and grow. So do the expanses associated with it. Better solve the problem instead of the consequences.

  4274. Bootstrapping My Side Project to $6k/Month 2017-11-17 00:13:26 jacobush
    You mean gamifying the app or the development of the app? I'm down for the latter... super procrastinating here...

  4275. Microsoft Has Manually Patched Their Equation Editor Executable 2017-11-17 22:34:17 pjc50
    Oh, undoubtedly it was noticed, but an enterprise software company has a tremendous capacity to procrastinate on fixing things.

  4276. Apple Begins High Sierra Automatic Rollout 2017-11-19 06:03:37 mistercow
    A tip if you do upgrade, especially from an older macOS and you're using Apple's Mail app: back up your filters. I procrastinated and ended up upgrading from Yosemite (presumably a less well thought out upgrade for obvious reasons), and Mail helpfully deleted all of my filters. Fun times.

  4277. Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong? 2017-11-19 22:49:39 brudgers
    The number one thing a person needs to start freelancing is a customer/client (one with a retainer check is preferred). That's, for better or worse, Upwork and Fiverr for the fifteen minute web solution. It's the rollodex (o.k. contact list) for the traditional solution.

    The reason people build websites as the first step to becoming a freelancer is because building a website is easier than finding potential clients/customers and closing deals. It feels like productive work and procrastinates against the unpleasant hard reality.

    Getting a website in fifteen minutes does not provide sufficient procrastination and so it doesn't meet an important goal of a newbie freelancer's website.

    Good luck.

  4278. Ask HN: What is the purpose of life in your point of view? 2017-11-20 13:15:55 muzani
    I explore God's world, extracting meaning from God's creations.

    A painter doesn't try to imitate the colors, lighting, subject. A food painter would try to capture the senses - taste, moisture, saltiness, spiciness, temperature. A painter of a scene would try to extract emotions; the fear and chaos of a battle, the sexual tension in a romance.

    I choose to observe things in the world and extract what they're really about. I don't simply build features and observe analytics. I understand the pains of a user, the emotions, the process they work through it, their frustrations and joys.

    I continually try to fix problems, and fix it a little better day after day.

    Sometimes I choose myself as the subject for extracting meaning.

    I wonder why my own body and mind is so flawed and what can be done to make it better. How to heal faster, to run better, what triggers emotions like fear and procrastination. I pick one thing I'm bad at and see what makes me improve on it. Or observe why I do sins even when I know I shouldn't.

    I pick these flaws up, experiment and improve, or see what doesn't work. I also experiment with different philosophies and ideals, plant them as a New Year's Resolution, and see how that works out over a year.

    There's a good deal of enjoyment when you successfully extract meaning from something and get better and better at it each year.

    So, recursively, the purpose of my life is to get better at finding the purpose of my life.

  4279. Firefox Private Browsing vs. Chrome Incognito: Which Is Faster? 2017-11-21 00:36:48 down
    I switched today to firefox and it really feels faster, but also I remembered how some things annoys me on Chrome, for example you can't modify new tab to remove everything on Chrome, so in my case, it makes me to click around more and procrastinate, as I see the sites there, also I never liked the Chrome dev tools, I know the general opinion is that are better, but felt to complicated for me and somehow slow, to busy.

  4280. Ask HN: How to reboot my academic career, at 41? 2017-11-21 00:57:24 JabavuAdams
    More info:

    I've bounced back and forth between working for others, and working for myself. I've been largely unsuccessful at running businesses as really I tend to act as though it's a sabbatical to try various projects rather than focusing on one thing. I tend to go down research rabbit-holes, and like to take things at a leisurely pace. These "entrepreneurial" spasms do tend to help me find the next thing and jump on it, so I've typically kept in demand.

    The lack of focus has been a problem at jobs, so I typically work for 18 months to 2 years, delivering golden eggs, before it catches up with me. After having adverse reactions to ADHD meds in 2003, I stopped them, and have just tried to soldier on. That said, I can and have shipped products that millions of people have downloaded, as part of a team. I just have to work myself up into a crazy ship-mindset, but this has taken its toll on my health and relationships.

    In 2015 I had a stroke, but have fully recovered. In 2016 I got separated after 16 years of marriage, and sold my (our) house. I have two kids who are with me half the time. Since then, I've largely been living off savings. I've got one more year of runway if I continue at my current (luxurious) burn rate. Maybe two if I can get costs down, but empirically I don't seem to be willing to.

    Also in 2016, I was teaching C#, Game AI, and Game Physics at a couple of community colleges. The workload was insane, and I was struggling with extreme procrastination. In the end I ditched both jobs in a fairly spectacular way. Was suicidal, but managed to find my way out of that through essentially doing self-CBT.

    This spring, I worked up the nerve to go back to working for someone else. It seemed like a really great kids' game company. I lasted 4 months, and didn't make it through the 6 month probation. That said, it might have just been miscommunication. The other senior devs were shocked.

    I spent this summer getting back into competitive tennis, with great results for my physical and mental health. I've thought about re-envisioning myself as a serious tennis player who happens to code, rather than a programmer who happens to play tennis. With my current flexible work-schedule, I'm able to train three times a week. My over-arching goal here is to qualify for a professional event (ITF Futures) before my body is totally destroyed.

    I'm on a new generation of ADD meds which have essentially eliminated my former extreme procrastination. They haven't diminished my creativity, and they also haven't changed my desire to work on various things, rather than one. I find that I can deeply focus on a topic for about 2.5 days, then I want to do something else. So, I have a round-robin of things that I work on.

    Here's what I'm working on:

    1) Tennis VR / Coaching game for the Vive. I can self-publish on Steam. I'm focusing on ball-racket physics interaction. Simple tasks like bouncing a ball on the racket are already fun.

    2) Slowly working on an automated trading system. Using this to learn about data cleaning and handling, ML, reinforcement-learning, etc. Fantasy: magic money machine that makes 100-200k per year so I don't have to be a square peg in a round hole working for someone else.

    3) Understanding Hinton's Capsules. I'm a games / graphics guy, so this is a natural overlap as an inverse-rendering style problem.

  4281. Let's Encrypt now holds 35% of the market 2017-11-21 22:55:45 Fnoord
    You must've seen automated subscriptions which you did not want to renew?

    My comment was more a general statement to combat a type of procrastination (a deadline which must be met slightly before its date), specifically with the mechanic of both automated and manual subscriptions. Calendar reminders work wonderful with _both_.

    I can also think of various scenarios where you don't want certificates to be renewed. Or well, maybe you don't but the users would. Like for example when your server no longer works, or got confiscated. A low timeout aids in lowering the amount of those certificates.

  4282. GTD in 15 Minutes – A Pragmatic Guide to Getting Things Done 2017-11-21 23:56:39 kendallpark
    I started with this: https://trello.com/b/2f37iYzy/sample-gtd-board

    Then I made some alterations to fit my lifestyle.

    For one, there's a giant "Homework" list with all of my assignments for the semester and due dates. This helps me make sure that on any given day, I know whether an assignment is coming up. I sync this Trello list with my Google calendar, which sends me an email reminder the day before something is due.

    I have a "Now" list that keeps track of my current task and my next few immediate tasks (so like, "fix this bug," "do flashcards," and "call Doc to make apt.") Sometimes I couple this with Pomello (http://www.pomelloapp.com/) which helps prevent me avoid going down various rabbit holes when working on a specific task.

    There's also a "Dragons" list which is where I put important big tasks that I've been procrastinating.

    I removed the project lists. My GTD board is strictly a sophisticated to-do list. Projects get their own separate trello boards.

    EDIT: here's a skeleton example of what my GTD board looks like: https://trello.com/b/Y5wBPXLH/kendalls-gtd

  4283. Resistance to Being Productive 2017-11-23 01:15:46 larrik
    I was hoping for something more scientific or at least psychological, but alas.

    I would say these reasons don't line up with my observances at all.

    For instance, one of mine is "this project is so big, I don't know where to start". Once I find a piece that seems like something I can get done quickly and ease me in, things tend to go a lot easier.

    Another is "I have so many (different) things to do that I don't want to do any". Presumably this is not so different than the earlier one, and it's hard to get started without an obvious plan of attack that having only one or more tasks ahead of you brings with it.

    Lastly, as a lifelong procrastinator, I've noticed that waiting until the last minute to do something you need to do OFTEN results in never having to do it at all. You end up doing only things that really needed to get done.

    In the end, I don't really worry about it, or I hunt for tiny tasks to get my momentum going.

    As for the article's "I'm not sure how doing that work will take me to the next step" I guess? Maybe? But "I'm not sure what I would do after I finish that work (what the next step is)" I don't believe has every been a factor a single time in my life.

  4284. Resistance to Being Productive 2017-11-23 01:48:04 marcosdumay
    If I may explain a joke, if you are being yelled at then you are not fired yet, so you must procrastinate a bit more until you can not do anything at all.

  4285. Resistance to Being Productive 2017-11-23 01:51:46 pipio21
    In my experience as engineer(personal responsibility), manager(group responsibility) and entrepreneur(company responsibility), the main reason for procrastinating is always fear and anxiety.

    Tim ferris simplifies it well: https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_ferriss_why_you_should_define_...

    The adventure to master your personal fears, and the fears of your groups, your family, your coworkers never ends.

  4286. Resistance to Being Productive 2017-11-23 02:00:49 agumonkey
    > Lastly, as a lifelong procrastinator, I've noticed that waiting until the last minute to do something you need to do OFTEN results in never having to do it at all. You end up doing only things that really needed to get done.

    From impostor syndrom to proper fake it until you make it impostor :p

    About the main point, it's true that most procrastination is often feeling overwhelmed intellectually by a system.

    Depending on context and age, I used to drive head first but now it takes a lot more to do so. I try to test approaches (minimally viable x,...) so I can get even minute amount of things done and iterate but that's not very efficient so far.

  4287. Resistance to Being Productive 2017-11-23 02:12:05 watwut
    "it's true that most procrastination is often feeling overwhelmed intellectually by a system"

    That is definitely not true for me. And it definitely does not explain why procrastinate with small boring tasks nor why challenging interesting tasks are less procrastinated about.

  4288. Resistance to Being Productive 2017-11-23 03:01:29 Exo_Tartarus
    I notice that when I begin to procrastinate, I actually am thinking about the task intensely. So intensely that I believe I overwhelm myself and subconsciously decide to put off working on the task.

    When I silence my mind prior to starting work on a task I find I'm more easily able to actually start.

  4289. Resistance to Being Productive 2017-11-23 03:37:07 eeZah7Ux
    > waiting until the last minute to do something you need to do OFTEN results in never having to do it at all

    True, but that can be done as part of careful planning. It does not justify procrastination. (I wish it could)

  4290. Resistance to Being Productive 2017-11-23 03:38:53 larrik
    I can't imagine doing careful planning and also doing a lot of procrastinating.

  4291. Resistance to Being Productive 2017-11-23 03:39:34 mikedilger
    I am similar. If I think of something to do now, then I have no hesitation. But if my 'past self' thought of it and 'demanded' that my present self do it, then my rebellious nature takes over. I really think procrastination is mainly just rebelling against your past self, as if he/she was someone else.

    If I write something down, then I stop thinking about it. Usually I forget about the list as well, and oftentimes writing things down makes it LESS likely to get done. BUT by no longer thinking about it and nagging myself, I can hopefully discover the task again afresh and get it done that way.

    Happy self-hacking.

  4292. Resistance to Being Productive 2017-11-23 03:47:48 megaman22
    Careful planning is a hell of a variety of procrastination. Do enough careful planning, and really figure out what it will take to get things done, and more often than not the powers that be won't think they can pull it off with the resources available, and you then won't have to dive in and try.

  4293. Resistance to Being Productive 2017-11-23 04:39:57 itamarst
    The author is confusing productivity with doing work. If you overcome all these things and work all day, non-stop... you may be still be unproductive because you're doing things inefficiently, or doing unnecessary work.

    The key to productivity is achieving the same results with less work, which basically means learning how to avoid unnecessary effort. The unachievable ideal of maximum productivity would finishing everything immediately and with no effort.

    (https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/10/04/technical-skills-pro... has a list of ways you can be unproductive even while being not tired, fully focused, undistracted, and not procrastinating.)

  4294. Resistance to Being Productive 2017-11-23 05:16:55 Jach
    I'm convincing myself that a lot of cases of procrastination, especially at work, are just from bad management. There's a lot of bad self-management too, but for those of us in organizations with explicit management, I think there's a lot of productivity gains that could be had by having more competent management... Software really needs someone who gets Deming's management ideas but who can fully integrate them with the unique differences in software development... For "this project is so big, I don't know where to start": if you admitted that to some managers, they'd think "oh this person is incompetent" instead of "how can I help them start?" (to which there are many answers)

  4295. Introducing Scrivener 3 2017-11-23 06:09:29 selud
    I only used Scrivener for my master thesis a few years ago but keep recommending it to everyone who is about to write a longer text. It's a great tool and helped me a lot to overcome writing procrastination. Very happy to see it's actively developed.

  4296. Resistance to Being Productive 2017-11-23 06:25:16 bshimmin
    I can relate to your list a lot more than the one in the original article (though his last point about just plain being tired does ring very true). Addressing this one specifically:

    For instance, one of mine is "this project is so big, I don't know where to start". Once I find a piece that seems like something I can get done quickly and ease me in, things tend to go a lot easier.

    It's really hard to start a big task, and there are all kinds of good reasons to break it down into smaller ones, beating procrastination being just one. I tend to tackle it in this sort of way:

    1. Break the task down into lots of smaller tasks.

    2. Make sure the tasks have varying degrees of difficulty, with at least a few utterly trivial ones (like the actual meta-task of creating the tasks, and then sticking them onto a Trello board, for instance), some fairly easy ones that will still feel like you've actually done something substantive, and a few genuinely difficult ones.

    3. The difficult tasks will, inevitably, be difficult, but if you've already accomplished 10 out of the 13 tasks, you will psychologically feel a lot better, because you'll be able to think, "I've only got three things to go!" even though you know that the three remaining things are much harder, and will in all likelihood take more time than the easy tasks you've already done.

    4. Because you've structured this neatly in such a way that you've already wiped out the easy tasks, you'll be able to focus better on the remaining difficult tasks.

  4297. Resistance to Being Productive 2017-11-23 07:44:17 Mz
    My reasons:

    1) I just seriously don't have the energy because of my medical condition. I suspect this broadly applies to many people: They don't have the energy for some reason, then they or others call them lazy or a procrastinator, things I was called my whole life until I finally got the right diagnosis.

    2) Trying to accomplish stuff has been so much drama in the past that I want to try to find a path forward that doesn't essentially explode in my face. Having things explode in my face always felt like 2 steps forward, 27 steps back. It wasn't productive. It was counterproductive.

    3) Having figured out some of the things I want to do and how to (mostly) avoid terrible explosions, I still have only the most slender concept of how to make that actually fly. I am working on fleshing out those plans. Sorting that out strikes me as the difference between the Wright Brothers launching their first test flight and hurling myself off a cliff willy nilly like a lemming.

  4298. Resistance to Being Productive 2017-11-23 07:51:21 curioussavage
    My wife read some great advice recently. The five minute rule. If you are inclined to procrastinate just do five minutes of work and then take a break.

    I have found getting started to be the hardest part. Once I have a project started my brain starts working on it and it’s much easier to go back to it

  4299. Resistance to Being Productive 2017-11-23 10:14:13 jmatthews
    Not always. For a true procrastinator you end up doing stuff you both don't want to do and don't need to do. Think, "least positive possible" Pure self sabotage.

    Wait but why has an incredible read on the subject.

    https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrasti...

  4300. Resistance to Being Productive 2017-11-23 11:53:55 gukov
    >it usually comes down to three reasons why I don’t feel like doing the work I should clearly be doing

    I've spent a lot of time thinking about this and eventually came to a conclusion: it comes down to one thing. Simply, your brain doesn't feel like doing something because that something can't compete with a source of easily attainable dopamine. Brain candy. It comes in different forms: actual candy (simple carbs), visual candy (facebook, instagram), intellectual candy (HN). Turn off that source or at least make it bland and black and white (eg. you can make your phone's screen B&W) and your brain will find actual work exciting (ie. dopamine-inducing) again.

    PS. Reading and watching videos about beating procrastination is a form of candy, too. Stop it.

  4301. In search of the perfect writing font 2017-11-25 20:53:51 jstewartmobile
    It's nice to know I'm not the only one running on OCD-fueled procrastination.

  4302. Drinking 3-4 Cups of Coffee Is “More Likely to Benefit Health Than to Harm It” 2017-11-26 13:55:16 muzani
    Its effects vary. My programming productivity drops when I'm on caffeine because I get anxious. It makes me procrastinate a lot more because I get intimidated by the work I need to do.

  4303. Ask HN: High functioning alcoholism – anyone? 2017-11-26 18:15:25 dm319
    There's a lot of chat on this thread about what quantity constitutes alcoholism. Certainly there is a recommended level above which it is likely to cause lasting harm, but another aspect is the psychological addiction, which can be screened for with the CAGE questionnaire:

      1. Have you ever felt you needed to Cut down on your drinking?
  2. Have people Annoyed you by criticizing your drinking?
  3. Have you ever felt Guilty about drinking?
  4. Have you ever felt you needed a drink first thing in the morning (Eye-opener) to steady your nerves or to get rid of a hangover?
    Two 'yes' responses suggest it's worth considering whether you have alcoholism.

    I think the fact that OP noticed he has a physical detriment due to his alcohol intake is strongly suggestive that he is drinking too much. Whether he has a 'problem' is whether he's willing to admit to himself that this level of alcohol is causing overall harm and reduce his intake.

    I have an addiction to procrastination for similar reasons and to similar detriment.

  4304. Ask HN: How do you use checklists? 2017-11-29 02:21:51 feifan
    My entire productivity system is a checklist in a pocket-sized notebook. When I get to work, I write down the things I need to do, have been asked to do, and want to do (in that order) — most days it's 3–5 things. Each item is a specific task that I know how to do.

    This system, if you can even call it that, works for me for two reasons:

    1) It gets the thoughts out of my head, so I don't have a constant "background noise" reminding me of something I have to do.

    2) It separates the planning from the doing. This keys off the fact that many people feel good about getting organized, even if we tend to procrastinate on doing actual work. Separating planning from doing turns scary tasks into a short, clear bullet point.

    For me (working mainly as a software engineer), the hardest part about any task is scoping and defining it. There are no hard tasks, only vague ones.

  4305. I'm in withdrawal from giving up YouTube. What websites do you check daily? 2017-12-01 12:21:12 muzani
    I actually have a "whitelist" in advance of things that I'm allowed to procrastinate on. HN is on the whitelist, as well as Indie Hackers and Twitter (my Twitter is more a chore than entertainment).

    Other things were calming games like Transport Giant, Stardew Valley, Recettear. Some TV series too, mostly cartoons like Futurama and Adventure Time. Don't do Rick & Morty, too addictive.

    That way, even when I'm wasting time, I feel somewhat satisfied with the entertainment I get. A lot of entertainment doesn't actually raise your "fun" bar, YouTube being one of them.

  4306. Ask HN: Time Management Tricks and Tips 2017-12-02 20:32:01 nickjj
    It's just a matter of sitting down and doing the work. There are no tricks, but there are a couple of things you can do to help you build better habits initially.

    I wrote a couple of posts about this at https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/learn-how-to-schedule-your-ti... and https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-overcome-procrastinati....

  4307. 10 Hours to Launch – DomainWatchBot on Telegram 2017-12-03 17:22:59 spieglio
    I have been making side projects for the past 15 years. The problem: I never went public about them. In 2017 I vowed to myself that I will change that. I did a great job in procrastinating on this for the past 11 month. But now I kicked myself over the edge and just went for it.

    I made @DomainWatchBot (on Telegram) in less than 10 hours. And now I am here to tell my story.

    I hope you try the bot and please send me some feedback.

  4308. Ask HN: Time Management Tricks and Tips 2017-12-04 01:18:06 xlii
    I'd like to point out, that you shouldn't link energy with productivity but instead of how compatible person is with the workflow.

    I can have a lot of energy, but be totally unproductive. Good example are students, who (usually) don't have as much obligations as work force people and procrastinate a lot. There's is joke they're going to do everything except studying - mostly because anxiety of studying for exams creates somewhat mental barrier that in turns into perception that studying takes much more energy than it actually will.

    On the other hand - one can have almost no energy and still be productive (have you ever worked so hard, that you fallen asleep 10 minutes after you'd finished?).

    Obviously, battery analogy is not 100% true, because humans don't really have a full/empty condition. You can borrow your energy almost ad infinitum to the moment that you're going to experience burnout and heavy depression. And even then people can still get some energy in crisis situations. As always when talking about people's psyche there are a lot of conditions and baggage to discuss, yet, on basic level battery analogy usually works fine.

    You need to be aware of your energy and need to take care of yourself. Both physically and mentally.

  4309. Show HN: Go Freaking Do It – Smart contract for reaching your goals 2017-12-04 23:13:18 netsec_burn
    Hahhahaha my procrastination could have finally paid off!

  4310. Fewer toys at once may help toddlers to focus better and play more creatively 2017-12-05 04:44:08 istorical
    To give a more detailed answer, as someone who attended a Montessori school from preschool through 8th grade that was embedded in a public school and had class sizes of about ~30, the biggest differences from my student perspective compared to the traditional high school I attended afterwards:

    1. Individual autonomy of the student in time management. To give an example, in 1st through 5th grade I wrote up a new contract at the beginning of the week with my teacher with a list of goals to accomplish by the end of the week, and then maybe half the day was pre-scheduled lessons from the teacher (some whole-class, some mini group, some individual), and then you could choose when you'd work on each lesson/goal at any given time. If you didn't want to do your math lesson until 3pm you didn't have to. You could do reading first then math later. Or vice versa. So in a sense you're learning time management and planning at a much earlier age and you're given freedom to make mistakes there, learn the perils of procrastination (or fail to learn them and develop bad habits from an early age which I saw to be quite common among my peers), and you feel like you're in less of a prison (after having autonomy up until 9th grade when I left Montessori you have no idea how much highschool felt like prison).

    In middle school (6th through 8th) they took that a step further, and you might be given a list of objectives that needed to be done in a number of weeks or even in a quarter, and it was up to you to spend the 8 hours a day effectively to accomplish them by the end. It was therefore quite common for students to slack and just chat with each other for large portions of time only to crunch at the end. You could theoretically have hardly any homework if you just worked all day at school or you could slack for weeks on weeks then work all night very night and weekends for a few weeks at the end.

    2. Student autonomy of location and freedom of movement. You were not forced to sit at a desk all day, you could move around the large daycare-like classroom, sit on the floor with students over there, or work at a table over here, or use an abacus over there. In elementary there was an emphasis on hands on learning. Learning the letters by having the teacher guide you to trace them in sand. Learning multiplication and division using physical beads and blocks to give you an understanding of multiplication with a geometric, spatial analogy. So you might hae a lesson scheduled to play 'the banker's game' where the teacher would take you over to some blocks and have you add, subtract, multiply, or do division using beads (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysIvxeErRp0)

    There was less of that physical grounding in later elementary and practically none in middle school but you were free to move around and be wherever you wanted to be in the classroom, with whichever students you wanted to be with, or be alone. And to a certain extent you were allowed to waste time or socialize as well.

    3. At times, freedom to determine the medium through which you would present or demonstrate your knowledge, and freedom to choose topics or subjects to study to a greater extent and at a much earlier age than is common in normal school. Montessori seems to place more emphasis on student-curiosity as the mechanism for choosing project subjects, medium of presentation (it's quite common for you to be able to choose to "learn" and then present some social studies subject through an essay, or a powerpoint, or a poster board, or a speech, or maybe even through a play.

    4. Emphasis on student government and Socractic processes. My middle school program had us collectively run a community meeting for the class for about 20-60 minutes each day, the moderation/facilitation of the meeting rotated each week to a new group of 3-5 students, you had a portion of the meeting for acknowledgements (acknowledging someone else's accomplishment in the class), problem solving (raising issues or problems affecting the class community), which led into proposals (suggesting a proposal of a rule change, an action to be taken, etc. to solve the "problem" - example - purchase lockboxes with student funds to store scissors since people kept stealing/losing them -, then argument and debate, then proposal of any amendments or tabling the discussion, then a voting section to vote for, against, or abstain for those proposals. It was kind of a parliamentary system which was a little more complicated than that but that's the basic idea. And we had a lot of Socratic discussions as well, usually at the end of a meeting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_questioning). Of and we had to write a class constitution via a constitutional convention and then our meetings followed that constitution.

    5. Overall experimental learning methods. An example would be that in our 7th-8th combined classroom, all of the freedom meant that one quarter our class was being extremely lazy and not doing work so we were missing deadlines. The teachers decided to take the students who had missed deadlines and named them the 'structured' group and put them in one room where speaking was no longer allowed without raising your hand. And the students who didn't have any missed deadlines were allowed to be in the other room and still chit chat, freely speak with each other, and be mostly autonomous. Once you got caught up again and didn't have any past due projects, you could leave the 'structured' no talking room and rejoin the rest of the class. This motivated a lot of students who'd been slacking to get caught up. Of course, there were some who were stuck in the quiet room for weeks.

    The funniest part is that as barbaric and prison-like that 'silent' room seemed at the time to us, it turned out that normal highschool turned out to be almost exactly like that 'torture' room. Go figure.

    6. Last, inequality of educational outcome. Many, many of my peers were exemplary students and the freedom allowed them to pursue their passions, become excellent students who were well beyond the normal curriculum in a specific subject that they were passionate about, and were excellent writers, speakers, collaborators, and had great time management skills. But other students took the freedom to chit chat and not work, hippy grading system, and other freedoms and just didn't do anything or wasted time. Many students in particular at my school district got a very poor grounding in math. So your mileage my vary.

  4311. The compelling case for working less 2017-12-05 14:45:54 manmal
    I don’t think that there are many people who can code in a concentrated manner for more than, say, 6 hours per day. There are days when I manage 8 hours of actual coding, but those are not my favorite ones - I only do those under immense deadline pressure, and with all the interruptions it means sitting at a screen for 10-12 hours. Such days leave me exhausted for 2-3 days after. Not sure why, but the brain is a muscle after all, and it can get sore.

    I got sidetracked.. what I mean is that you need HN, Facebook etc to prevent you from using too much of that precious brain power. Maybe this is different for other areas of work, but IMO it should make not much of a difference whether you are forced to stay at work for 35 or 45 hours - you just will procrastinate more.

    Update: Added “more than”.

  4312. Ask HN: What would you do if your income was taken care of? 2017-12-05 22:16:59 irremediable
    Probably academic research (similar to what I do now), but in more of a moonshot attempt. A bit more mathematically involved than what I currently do.

    More open source contributions.

    More larpwriting and fiction writing. To some extent this one's always sunk by procrastination, though. :P

    Visit my family more. I should do this anyway, but I'm on a lowish income and it's expensive to visit them.

    Oh, more political involvement! All the current meetings of my local party's group are scheduled immediately after work. Free time would really help with that.

  4313. Show HN: Discover, Listen and Discuss Classical Music 2017-12-06 22:53:48 MrJagil
    Hey, just a quick note,

    I'd personally enjoy a big fat action button on the landing page that just says "Play" (just like the "i'm feeling lucky" button on the "TV" page). I know you have higher ambitions with the site (social, etc), but, anecdotally, i'm studying for exams right now and don't really have the motivation to parse all that text and creating a new user, but you could've easily had me listening for an hour if the content was easily, immediately accessible. good luck!

    EDIT: Who am I kidding, I'm procrastinating so I might as well procrastinate right: It would be nice if the linked videos used youtubes timecode function, to skip intros. It was a bit jarring to hear the presenter in this video, for instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=69&v=IInG5nY_wrU

  4314. A Classic Extension Reborn: Tree Style Tab 2017-12-08 07:19:43 loopbit
    I used both and it was even better...

    When I'm working on a specific problem I tend to open a lot of tabs, so my workflow was to create a new group, open all the tabs I needed while I worked (sometimes I'd open the same link in several tabs because it was easier than trying to find where it was) and, at the end, move whatever tabs I wanted to keep (for reference or future use) and closed the whole group.

    That and good names for groups made easy to find anything even with hundreds of tabs. If something else came up and I had to drop everything I could open the groups view, select the appropriate group and have an almost-instant context switch. Then I could go right back to whatever I was doing and pick it up with the same ease.

    With Tree Tabs but without Groups I can do something similar by using the root of each subtree as a group. However, it's not as nice:

    - You can't change the title of the tab, all you can do is use a website whose title describes as best as possible the contents of the subtree, which makes groups like 'email' and 'Hacker news' easy to recognize, but complex tasks almost impossible (not to speak of two similar but separate tasks)

    - Even if I close all the subtrees and only leave open the one I'm working on, the titles are still there, always visible. I find that it makes it more difficult for me to concentrate (and increases the chances of procrastination)

    I miss Tab Groups.

  4315. Ask HN: How to get a small team off the ground remotely? 2017-12-10 13:06:46 DoreenMichele
    You need a cloud based means to communicate and also a cloud based means to start working on the project. There are various tools for doing that and you might go through a few before you find a good fit.

    For collaborating remotely, I use a lot of email, shared google docs, private blogspot blogs where I can invite other authors and even Twitter. Of course, Slack, Trello, Github and other tools are popular in the development community. If possible, use something familiar. Trying to learn a new tool can be a project in its own right. If it isn't critical to the success of the project, don't do it. It just becomes a means to procrastinate.

    If you have nothing, start with a design doc. If there are no roles assigned yet, take the initiative. Set up a file, start a Google group or a Slack channel, list goals and start hashing out who needs to do what.

    You need a central repository. It does not have to be fancy. As your project grows, layers of organization can be added as the need for such becomes clear.

    Just start. No more excuses. Expect the first attempt to be ugly, bad and stupid. Do it anyway.

    Best.

  4316. Project Euler 2017-12-12 03:15:44 omaranto
    In grad school (for math) I used to procrastinate by doing Project Euler problems. I've got that bad habit under control since then (for example, logging in just now, the site told me I haven't done a problem in 56 days!), and am currently at 322 (https://projecteuler.net/profile/oantolin.png).

    Don't get sucked in!

  4317. Ask HN: How do you stay focused while programming/working? 2017-12-12 09:06:14 jeffshek
    Disclaimer - I wrote this https://betterself.io to help me out here. It's helped me get much better, but certainly isn't perfect. It's open-sourced at https://github.com/jeffshek/betterself/.

    Someone posted this quote a while back, and it stuck with me. "Think of your mind every morning as a clean desk, and every time you get distracted via social, game, etc, you put something on it. It then gets progressively harder to do work with a messier desk. The best way is to just always have a clean desk."

    I logged habits and supplements for over a year. Things that were effective were having a lot of strong routines that pull you in the right direction.

    So things that helped were

    X) Have some type of metric you are measuring to. For me it was RescueTime and WakaTime. How productive was I for this week compared to last?

    1A) Have your phone on DnD or Airplane Mode.

    1) Start the day off with SelfControl app. Add the timer to lock out all disractions until X PM every day.

    2) Use a cold shower to wake up

    3) Meditate

    4) Eat the same foods that won't make you groggy / crap. This sounds masochastic in some way, but it's much easier than it sounds once you get used to it. For instance, the same oatmeal for breakfast is a great way to set a routine.

    5) Track what supplements and food you were taking that improved productivity.

    6) Inversely, see what supplements or diets you might be taking that does the opposite.

    7) Set up a sleep routine. Melatonin at 3mg is a sweet spot. Getting six hours of sleep every night is the perfect amount for me. Everyone varies. The point is don't take "one size fits all advice" for something so crucial to your life. Less than 5 and I was easily distracted. More than 7 and I was groggy. There's a lot of information about how to sleep better. The point is to find a way to maximize sleep quality ... six hours in a city is going to be very different from six hours of sleep in a quiet area.

    8) I've tried a lot of supplements. The most effective ones on productivity were ones that helped me with anxiety (so the opposite of caffeine). I eliminated a lot that didn't do anything.

    9) Have a track / music that you listen to that starts you in a groove. For instance, I have a EDM Mixtape that I've probably listened to over a thousand times this year. You'll find that a lot of high throughout writers do something similar. The music helps build a habit of "okay, it's time to do work now"

    10) Find the right setting / environment that makes you productive. Face a wall. Accept the fact if you can't work from home, then don't.

    11) Go for walks when you're bored. Admit to yourself when you're not being productive and you're just spinning your wheels.

    12) Exercise. Missing gym workouts (even though it was like 1-2 hours) was a sharp drop in total productivity.

    13) Pomodoros. Start with 25 minutes and keep on going up (I average hour long Pomodoros now). When you get distracted in a Pomodoro, have a note card called "Distractions" and write what you want to to do there. That way your mind can stop obsessing about "New Avengers Trailer" if it knows it's going to get there after the break.

    When you first start with Pomodoros, have a notebook of how many Pomodoros you did. Make it a goal to do just five pomodoros a day. You'll be impressed how hard that is initially.

    14) No lying to yourself. Everytime I've said "this time is different for a YouTube video about anything mildy interesting", I've regretted it.

    15) Plan for a social night at least once a week. You do need some rest. Self flagellation about not having earned it is almost a recipe of more anxiety and procrastination. (I'm not great at following this yet)

    16) Have a deadline to finish something.

    To give some backdrop, this has made me really productive throughout the last year without burning out. I've worked 60+ hours before at startups and just BURNED out, whereas now I can definitely push that easily without hitting that same wall. I integrated all these habits one by one when I was certain through quantitive evidence it was working.

    Can't say much about helping social life though. This definitely takes a hit when you try to maximize productivity and flow at the expense of social life.

  4318. Ask HN: How do you stay focused while programming/working? 2017-12-13 03:09:14 chatmasta
    SelfControl.app is still my favorite Mac app ever. Add a list of sites to block, set a timer, go. I have a huge blacklist. I enable a 24 hour every night. This way I don’t even have a chance to start procrastinating the next morning.

    The crazy thing is how many times you’ll try to go to one of your addicting sites even though it’s blocked. SelfControl acts as a great circuit breaker in this case, and can also show how bad the addiction is.

    If I want to read HN, I have to do it on my phone. If I’m looking at my phone, I know I’m screwing around, so it doesn’t last long.

  4319. Ask HN: How to deal with recurring layoffs affecting your career? 2017-12-13 03:36:04 liquidcool
    It's hard to say what to improve without more details, but contract work should be high paying because of the uncertainty. Could be issues with your resume and/or interviewing skills. For the latter, you could try interviewing.io. Almost everyone underestimates the amount of practice required to get good, and they procrastinate until it's too late (just like with networking). Also sounds like you're a generalist, which will work against you.

    I have a career course that should give you a ton of ideas to help, see my profile for details. If it's taking you that long to find a job, there are some fundamental issues with your strategy and tactics.

  4320. France to ban mobile phones in primary, junior and middle schools 2017-12-13 16:47:42 rejschaap
    Books are distraction machines on a different level. When I become immersed in books I tend to deprive myself of sleep, neglect my daily chores and procrastinate my work. I do feel much better about periods where I read a lot, otherwise I tend to incessantly grab my phone to check blogs, news sites and stock/crypto prices.

  4321. Ask HN: How do you stay focused while programming/working? 2017-12-14 03:47:46 chatmasta
    It’s pretty personal by its nature. Basically every site I enjoy. Social networks, blogs, news aggregators, etc. One exception is that YouTube is allowed, since I never procrastinate by watching YouTube videos (thankfully it seems I’ve been spared from that particular vice).

  4322. Ask HN: How do you stay focused while programming/working? 2017-12-14 04:07:19 GFischer
    I wish that's all it took, but there are some severe procrastinators for which that's not enough.

    For others, yes, some people you have to remind to eat :)

  4323. Improving my productivity using Pomodoro: takeaways after 2 years of practice 2017-12-19 09:05:39 flor1s
    I have a much simpler technique: Always have a non-empty drink on your desk. It makes you take breaks to get a new drink and to go to the restroom. During these breaks you can procrastinate.

    It keeps you hydrated (drink water, tea [caffeine free in the afternoon] and coffee) and makes sure you don't sit at your desk for too long periods at a time.

  4324. Improving my productivity using Pomodoro: takeaways after 2 years of practice 2017-12-19 12:08:30 everdev
    I do this as well and it's fantastic. Also, a standing desk helps as I rarely want to stand up and procrastinate. It's too easy for me to feel lazy sitting in a chair.

  4325. Improving my productivity using Pomodoro: takeaways after 2 years of practice 2017-12-19 16:11:38 TeMPOraL
    Ouch. Pomodoros do make you honest.

    When I first started experimenting with it, I though to myself: my work day is 8 hours, so I should expect ~15-16 pomodoros; say 14 if I take a lunch break. Between stress, interruptions and procrastination, reality turned out to be more like 5-8.

    These days I assume that a good, practical goal to aim for (at work) is as many pomodoros as you have working hours.

  4326. Improving my productivity using Pomodoro: takeaways after 2 years of practice 2017-12-19 16:44:19 tomxor
    > when you have finished a task, or got stuck -- you are breaking at precisely the point where it will be hardest to resume work.

    This might make sense from a procrastination point of view, but my point is that you should stop there to revise your strategy so that it will be _easier_ to resume. But with pomorado you just have to grind through because your 20mins isn't up yet... To me that seems inefficient.

    When I say stuck I don't mean a hard challenging or complex part, I mean you really are stuck and that's why you should stop, because you aren't making significant progress and it's inefficient. You don't necessarily need to give it deep thought like I suggested, sometimes simply having a break is enough to give you a fresh perspective once you go back.

    Anyway, it's all subjective, not only to the individual but probably also the task.

  4327. Improving my productivity using Pomodoro: takeaways after 2 years of practice 2017-12-19 17:11:07 kqr
    > This might make sense from a procrastination point of view, but my point is that you should stop there to revise your strategy so that it will be _easier_ to resume. But with pomorado you just have to grind through because your 20mins isn't up yet... To me that seems inefficient.

    I think you people use different definitions of "break". What you (tomxor) describe as "revise your strategy" is probably a task that the other person thinks should be done within the 20 pomodoro minutes, and then a break is not "stop your actual work to think about your work instead" but rather "play angry birds" or "have a water cooler chat".

    At least to me, if I get stuck but know that I have time left in my 20 minutes, I am more likely to switch to rethinking my strategy than if I feel like I have the option of taking a break right now.

  4328. Improving my productivity using Pomodoro: takeaways after 2 years of practice 2017-12-19 17:45:04 Kodix
    The largest benefit of Pomodoro for me is just starting things instead of procrastinating. It's a very "light" thought that I'll just spend a pomodoro on something, making it easy to get started. And once you get started, it almost always gets far easier to continue than to stop.

  4329. Improving my productivity using Pomodoro: takeaways after 2 years of practice 2017-12-19 20:49:26 xtracto
    I did Pomodoro for about 3 years while I was doing my PhD (UK type). It was a live saver for me as I came from a study system that had all the questions and answers given to you, so the requirement of sitting in my desk to 'do research' was completely alien to me. Before I adopted Pomodoro, I tended to procrastinate and distract a lot. Using Pomodoro I got to focus, and found a way to split what I was doing (reading papers, writing, thinking about my problem) in small bites.

    Nowadays I wouldn't think in using it, because my current work requires me to be interrupted plenty of times a day. Pomodoro is terrible if your activities include interacting with other people. But for me it really worked.

  4330. Ask HN: If you had less than a year to live what would you do? 2017-12-21 11:56:54 mattbgates
    Travel. There is nothing better than meeting new people and realizing everyone is just trying to work their way to a better life, day after day.

    I traveled across the United States, lived in other states -- worked in a liquor store in downtown Chicago, drove across California while sleeping in my car for the entire week, while sleeping just outside and near some celebrity houses -- and I've even lived in another country long enough to experience culture shock upon living there and returning back home. There are good people and there are bad people all around.

    The world can be dangerous if you aren't cautious and careful, but you can survive in most places around the world, in most countries. To talk to people, to learn about their own trials and tribulations, to hear and understand their philosophies, to know who they are, who they became, and even who they want to be, is just so interesting.

    Even Hacker News... startups, entrepreneurs, individuals, the bored and the procrastinators, males and females, everyone has their own story and their own life, and they are all just trying to make it, and make it a better life for themselves (and others, usually). I certainly don't want to say everyone is greedy, but most people just want to earn enough to be comfortable and not have to worry about money... and in a way, this connects us all, the desire for peace, the desire to do something, or even change the world.

    To experience the human condition, to be a soul living in a human body.. there's no guarantees of anything else other than what is now... so it only makes sense to spend the last year of your life, on the planet you call home, amongst the very species, humans, just understanding what life is all about to them... so that you might be able to understand your own life.

  4331. Multiplayer Tron in the terminal 2017-12-23 22:36:32 indescions_2017
    Congrats on launching, Zach! Wondering if massively mutltiplayer CLI games are the Next Big Thing for procrastinating programmers? Instead of something that requires 30 fps rendition, however, it may be prudent to start with an HQ Trivia style multiple choice live game show ;)

  4332. Multiplayer Tron in the terminal 2017-12-23 23:13:03 fnl
    The only way we ever got this kind of stuff to work, back in the late 80s, was connecting Atari STs with MIDI cables. But if you're not on a LAN, the lag will kill the UX - so, a great way to procrastinate in the office :-)

  4333. Ask HN: What's wrong with me? Ideal idea, my co-founders can't skip summer 2017-12-24 17:40:58 muzani
    It sounds like a motivation problem. Are they getting enough equity? Are the rewards big enough? Do they trust that it can be successful with the time they need to put into it?

    Something that is large and intimidating, but potentially life changing, is exactly what would make people procrastinate forever.

    I would say you should aim lower. Make a subset of the big idea. Hack it as fast as possible just to see if it would work rather than trying to build it right. Assume the MVP is there just to gather information and not the actual product.

    Once you get to the point of "I can finish this next week, no problem", it becomes a lot more motivating to do.

  4334. Big Tech Is Going After Health Care 2017-12-28 12:01:04 aviv
    Unfortunately water fasting is not effective in treating chronic procrastination.

  4335. Scrolling on the Amiga 2017-12-29 05:00:36 pan69
    Very interesting to read, but I can't seem to find a "year" when it was written. The Mental Procrastination has a publicised issue date of 1987, but I guess it was written before then?

    Both remind me a bit of Jordan Mechner's "The Making of Prince of Persia".

  4336. A Dark Room: From Sabbatical Year to $800k 2017-12-29 08:37:53 mikekchar
    I was very nearly 40 (40 is the age limit for the JET Programme, in which I participated, and I just barely squeaked through). I actually had to apply for the position a full year before selection, so it was something I thought about pretty thoroughly. (What follows is a bit of an autobiography -- sorry if it is boring, but I wonder if it might be helpful if you are going through some of the same things I did).

    Dev experience is hard for me to measure :-) I worked at the university where I went to school. I also love to work and hate to study (err... "study" meaning attending classes or doing assigned homework -- for some reason I hate that and love independent study). So basically, I worked full time through school and squeaked through academically with a so-so mark ;-) Somewhat related, I even started a company at school with a few friends to write a game, but that got canned when the "business guy" embezzled all the money (great lesson, BTW).

    Also, "sabbaticals" are not a stranger to me. In the late 90's I quit my job and spent 8 months writing free software. At that time I guess I had around 10 years of experience, depending on how you count. I had just suffered from working in a really messed up group and was questioning if I really wanted to be a programmer. Because I'm naturally frugal, I had saved up a fair amount of money by that point. My actual thought was, "I know I will need this money when I retire, but I think it will be better spent now." (In retrospect -- best thing I could have done).

    To be honest, it was a crazy time. I would wake up at 6:00 am, go have a shower, have an idea while I was showering and literally run to my computer. Then I would program until it got dark. This is when I realised that I loved being a programmer and that I would do it as long as my body/brain could handle it. (Funny, but true story -- when I moved out of my apartment an older woman said, "Oh, are you the nice young gentleman who used to program in his front window all day? It's a pity you are leaving." Only then did I truly reflect that half the time I was programming, I was naked, having neglected to get dressed in my excitement to get back to the computer!)

    At the same time I was doing this, I read a lot of daoist philosophy... Well... that's not really true. I spent a lot of time reading a little bit of daoist philosophy -- because it's incredibly dense (if you are interested, save time and just read translations with annotations by Richard Wilhelm -- He was German, but English translations of his translations exist. I wasted a lot of time reading extremely poor translations by people who didn't understand what they were translating). Later I wrote this: http://mikekchar.github.io/portfolio//UsefulAndBeneficial I still think it's the best thing I ever wrote (probably because I didn't really write it -- just pieced together other stories ;-) )

    Armed with a better understanding of myself, I got another job and was very successful. After about 5 years, that job disappeared (the company was bought out and our division, being a kind of experimental division, was disbanded). I took the opportunity to take another 8 months "off". This time, it was less of a reactionary, "I need to find myself" affair and more of a deliberate, "I'm not going to get a job right away because I want to invest this time doing self study". Again, I wrote a lot of free software, but actually I was experimenting mostly with techniques around legacy software (refactoring, planning, prioritisation, etc).

    I actually put all of my work on a business card sized CD-ROM and would occasionally hand it out to people who were interested in what I was doing. This actually landed my next job in a tiny start up. The founder had looked through my planning and prioritisation work and thought, "This is what we need!"

    I really enjoyed working there, but the angel investor who bankrolled the company had similar qualities to the person who embezzled all the money in my game company. His interference cost the start up pretty badly and I saw the writing on the wall. After a few years I moved to another start up, but this time with an awesome management/investor team. I stayed there for a few years as well.

    I was quite successful at this point. I had a good reputation in Ottawa, where I had mostly worked. I had a much bigger house than I needed. I had a good job, working with people that I liked. I had developed a way of working that was both successful and fulfilling for me. But... I've never been one to enjoy success, unfortunately. I always procrastinate because I hate finishing things. To accomplish something is to have it taken away from me -- I love to work on interesting problems.

    So I moved to Japan. My initial idea was to go for 1 year to try to learn Japanese and to improve my mentoring skills. I had virtually no interest in Japan, and only picked it because: The JET Programme seemed like a comfortable way to do this kind of thing (and it is -- highly recommend it if you qualify: http://jetprogramme.org/en/), and also because I had randomly been practicing karate at the time.

    After 3 months in Japan, I sold my house in Canada and incredibly reluctantly allowed my friend, who had been looking after my dogs, to adopt them (still sad about that, but also think it was the correct thing to do).

    I think the most interesting discovery for me was: I don't have to be a professional programmer to be a programmer. In RMS's Free Software Manifesto, he spends considerable space devoted to the concept that not everybody needs to be a professional programmer. In the past I always read that section with considerable scepticism. But, at least for me, he was absolutely correct.

    I loved teaching -- especially in a Japanese high school. I loved being with the students: chatting with them, helping them, joking with them, listening to them. It was at that point that I realised that jobs all have good and bad points and for a person who likes working (like me) there are probably hundreds of jobs that I will enjoy. Even though I love programming, I can do that whenever I want -- and on my own terms! That is the wisdom in the Free Software Manifesto. Whether or not you agree with the concept of software freedom -- as a programmer, you have a choice and you are free to take that choice. Do not overlook this!

    I'd love to spout on more about that, but I'm sure I'm near the limit of the message size (not to mention your patience). I think Japan is still the best place to go to teach English comfortably. The other major place you can go is South Korea. I would say, try to find organisations that can place you in the school system (either public or private) because some of the "language schools" can be fly by night affairs. But it really depends on your tolerance for crappy situations -- some people are pretty good at rolling with the punches.

    Also, even without leaving whichever country you are in, consider the idea of moving to the poorest, cheapest place that still has internet, renting an apartment for a year and doing whatever regular job you can find. You can probably do it for no more than $15K even if you don't get a job. When coming back to the industry, though, it helps a lot to be able to show what you've been doing during your sabbatical, so make sure to program every day :-)

    Hope that helps!

  4337. Adderall Risks: Much More Than You Wanted to Know 2017-12-30 16:01:45 kanishkdudeja
    I felt extremely sad on taking Adderall and other similar stimulant medications like Ritalin.

    Maybe the sadness effect would have gotten less with continuing the medicine, but overall, I didn't feel like taking drugs since they cause a lot of other side effects like insomnia.

    Now I've been able to control my ADHD successfully. Atleast upto the point that it has stopped affecting my life and career so much.

    a) 0 sugar in diet. Not even fruits. b) Try to sleep for atleast 8-9 hours a day. c) Drink lots of water throughout the day d) Exercise and no junk food. e) Have got an accountable job. Leading a software team so I know that procrastination will hurt me in the long run, so forced to do stuff on time.

  4338. IKEA Effect 2017-12-30 22:02:57 jordache
    really? fall in love with our ikea creations?

    More like procrastinating with the pieces sitting inside the ikea box until I really need to put the thing together.

  4339. Adderall Risks: Much More Than You Wanted to Know 2017-12-31 01:17:34 CydeWeys
    How does a persistent in-your-face reminder that does not go away until completed fail? I suppose severe procrastination or complete lack of willpower would do it, but are these not different from ADHD?

  4340. Adderall Risks: Much More Than You Wanted to Know 2017-12-31 12:43:14 karmajunkie
    Its in your face.

    For people with ADHD, its a distraction that's willfully ignored while you're trying to complete one of the other hundred things on your to-do list that are also screaming for attention, most of them in more-urgent-but-less-important ways that this attempt to schedule an appointment with yet another provider who's likely going to make you prove once again that your life is falling apart by jumping through your life story and maybe trying some alternative that makes you ill, cranky, and introduces some sexual dysfunction that gives you one more thing to worry about alongside the thoughts of whatdoigetdonethisweekpleasejustletmecrossoffonethingtoday that you wake up to each morning.

    > severe procrastination or complete lack of willpower

    This sounds an awful lot like the attribution of a moral failing to people that suffer from an issue with executive function as it pertains to attention. This might be why people keep telling you that you are clearly articulating an inability to empathize. Imagine a mindset in which your fundamental assumptions, which seem self-evident to you, do not apply. If it seems difficult to understand why anybody would want to live that way, congratulations, you've got something in common! Nobody else wants to live that way either—the difference is that we don't have much of a choice, which is why we all have such strong opinions about this topic.

  4341. Ask HN: What are your New Years resolutions? 2017-12-31 15:18:39 quantummkv
    1. Start shipping my projects. 2. Cut down on binge watching and reading. 3. Finally start writing the blog i have procrastinating about for a year.

  4342. Good books for deep hacks 2017-12-31 17:19:41 PaulRobinson
    This is more reading material than some Master's programmes.

    Here's a shorter alternative:

    Choose a few languages, play with them for a few months, get to the point where you can write some idiomatic code. Focus on SOLID code and what that means idiomatically in those languages. Learn strengths and weaknesses of each. It's never enough to just learn one language, I think, in the same way no good musician should only ever learn one genre. Do you really want to be like the woman in the bar in Blues Brothers ("We do both types of music, Country and Western")?

    Learn how to debug and profile. Ideally, learn how to write automated performance tests (along with unit and integration tests) that run on every build so you can keep track of what's going on for those critical pieces. Don't aim for 100% test coverage, aim for enough coverage to help you catch yourself from regressing working code.

    Learn just enough git to create a repo, create branches, push and merge, and all that. Anything more complex? Google it when you need to like the rest of us.

    Now go build something. Want to do something with chat? Sure, go read up on IRC and XMPP and Signal and Wire and all that. Want to do something with email? Sure, go read the RFCs and scramble around that area. Interested in UX? Go and read guidelines for your favourite app store and do that, even if you never plan to submit there: it's good advice.

    The idea of reading 110+ books first in the hope you'll then start your epic hack sounds to me like epic procrastination.

    Here is one of the most iconic pages from punk history: https://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2...

    Code is punk. Go start a band.

  4343. Mistakes to avoid when asking for a raise 2018-01-04 02:01:08 sergers
    My company dangled the carrot. The job became so mundane that I wrote my own tools to do alot of repetitive tasks.

    I understood my value, as I was doing 80% of the team's work first year.

    2nd year, I procrastinated, put in 50% effort, still outperformed my team mates.

    There were "senior" members that I quadrupled output.

    I am probably overqualified for my role.

    I asked for raise, as I'm undervalued of what I can do. I was a lil cocky, but true, that I coasted and still outperformed everyone.

    I gave them 3 months to show they value me, as I had offers from other teams and a bunch of people were leaving to other local companies.

    I said all the thanks, kudos, awards, and even titles are meaningless. I want to get paid, that's all that matters. The more I get paid, the more I am willing to do.

    Took 3.5 months, they gave me a raise and a promotion doing slightly different things so not so borinh

  4344. Mistakes to avoid when asking for a raise 2018-01-04 05:35:00 w0rd-driven
    > 2nd year, I procrastinated, put in 50% effort, still outperformed my team mates.

    This echoes my response when I feel undervalued. The first year I give at least 100% to assess my impact compared to my peers. If I'm leaps and bounds ahead I dial it back _significantly_ until I just barely exceed the expectations set for other people. If they can be there for x years working at such a slow pace, I don't need to make them look considerably worse, especially if my compensation below market rate. Just for reference, so far I've yet to make market rate for a base salary. Things like working from home on Fridays are a perk that does have a monetary and mental value but perks rarely put food on the table by themselves.

    In an ideal situation, companies would be able to spot your max performance, watch it decline and immediately work with you to rectify it. Maybe you picked up a new meth habit but chances are if you're like us, you're merely adjusting your output to match their perceived monetary input (however truthful that may be).

    This is not to say that I don't work with my peers to try to enhance their productivity levels. I don't feel I'm a unicorn by any means, I'm just really good at being really lazy and awkwardly enough using proper tooling means I can be both lazy and extremely productive at the same time.

  4345. Why Am I So Lazy? 2018-01-07 14:43:01 sudosteph
    Everyone procrastinates sometimes, the difference with ADHD is the frequency and severity. So if this person procrastinates every day of her life, and it consistently impacts her functioning and relationships, it becomes out of the norm.

    ADHD is actually decently prevalent, but often missed in girls who are not disruptive in class. Often they can get by with a strong support structure (parents and partners) but struggle with the independence of adulthood, which OP described. The risks of untreated ADHD can be far more destructive than many people realize (car crashes, depression, financial insecurity) so it's at least worth evaluating for in cases like this.

  4346. Why Am I So Lazy? 2018-01-07 19:57:15 cc81
    Laziness is a thing (at least we describe something with the word) but for a lot of people in that situation the laziness is not a good strategy for preserving energy. They will procrastinate to a point where the total amount of work is much more than just doing something immediately.

    For example instead of doing the dishes immediately they will wait until they pile up with dried food stuck to them making the total effort much bigger.

  4347. Why Am I So Lazy? 2018-01-08 00:56:19 always_good
    So playing video games all night to procrastinate some homework and then stressing about the procrastination is just preservation of energy?

    Did you use an animal example because every human example sounds ridiculous alongside your premise?

  4348. Why Am I So Lazy? 2018-01-08 01:22:43 oceanghost
    My wife is very similar to the person who wrote this article. She will not do anything she can procrastinate. Nothing. I personally think its some sort of insidious depression. It's destroyed our lives together, and I'm on the verge of asking for a divorce for the... 3rd time, except this time, I'm going to just file.

    It is absolutely impossible to have the energy for both people in a relationship. My health is suffering from the stress. Things are so bad that I have to make sure she eats.

    Nobody but me knows this side of her, she projects an image of a healthy, successful person.

    edit: A marriage is a zero-sum game. Any chore she doesn't do, I am forced to. I've gradually had to give up everything that makes me happy to fund this depression of hers. I used to be a serious lifter, I was well into writing two novels, I did electronics projects, had an active night life, went to concerts. Now, I'm just a robot that does chores.

  4349. Why Am I So Lazy? 2018-01-08 04:19:27 invalidOrTaken
    >What does it mean to be "lazy"?

    A few months ago my little brother was taking an introductory CS class. I warned him not to procrastinate his assignments, because you can't hurry programming. Nine women can't make a baby in one month, etc.

    I think "laziness" is similar: it's an emergent phenomenon to be debugged, not a single "thing" to be attacked with more-of something.

  4350. The growing body of evidence that digital distraction is damaging our minds 2018-01-09 16:36:43 manmal
    Exactly. And once the fear of consequences of missing a deadline kicks in, we gain a purpose - avoidance of the negative consequences. So we procrastinate until it’s almost too late.

  4351. The growing body of evidence that digital distraction is damaging our minds 2018-01-10 02:54:41 bello
    The article even takes that a notch further: for things that really matter to you, once you find your true calling, you wouldn't even procrastinate in the first place. You get immersed in omnivorous curiosity around it, you get lost. There's no social media/tv/external factors that would distract you from it.

  4352. Mothers who regret having children are speaking out 2018-01-14 14:11:06 lhorie
    Yep, the lack of free time helps me procrastinate less.

  4353. CES Was Full of Useless Robots and Machines That Don’t Work 2018-01-15 17:52:02 craftandhustle
    I'll admit #2 is an annoyance for me... but I'll reluctantly bite.

    However, I would have a hard time giving up #1 to a machine. I do a great deal of my creative thinking, scheduling, et al during my time hand-washing dishes. I liken it to creative thinking during a shower, I can't imagine it being replaced by a 'bot. I realize YMMV but we all find solace in varying small corners. For me, it's the dishes, for others' it might be a long drive or vacuuming, etc.

    I'm a huge proponent of automation, and the advancements that tech will provide in the future, however as an artist I still need the time to procrastinate (ie: THINK). I don't know that I could do this in the solace of a vacuum. I pay $10/mo to listen to white noise on Spotify while I write treatments for various commercial projects.

  4354. Tips for moving into management [audio] 2018-01-16 00:18:28 Spooky23
    High Output Management by Andy Grove. Read that book and the “First Break All the Rules” book mentions ones elsewhere. Most of the rest is duplicative or crap.

    Also, just be you. People see potential in you and how you work. Don’t surrender your soul to management books — management is like organization, there’s lots of “management porn” that makes it easy to procrastinate through reading. Most of the guidance you see is ego-driven and conflicting.

    The indirect thing you should consider working on that was hard for me and many other tech people is networking and relationship building. I’m at a director level position now, and my ability to pick up the phone and have someone do something is an increasingly important part of my job. Making that happen is time and work.

  4355. The worst distractions are the ones we love 2018-01-17 08:20:36 hashberry
    My problem is that my procrastination is an addiction. There is a voice in my head telling me of all the productive things I need to do, and I enjoy rebelling against that voice and doing my own thing.

    And then there is the nature of working for others, in that it requires a "sacrifice of ego." I shut down everything and become a work horse. I work for hours on end, because this is what I'm supposed to do for a living. I can't question if I really want to be doing this because that would cause me to procrastinate. Instead I become my work. Sometimes I enjoy what I do, but I am specialized in specific technologies so I'm doing a variation of the same tasks over and over. That's the life of this "modern worker."

  4356. How to Study: A Brief Guide 2018-01-23 03:29:30 kylepdm
    A lot of this is absolutely great advice. I struggled a lot in my first couple years of university having to get adjusted to a much more difficult learning environment that expects much more of you than what HS required.

    The biggest change for me was when I started to take notes by hand, and re-take them, as a form of studying. Also focusing on understanding the fundamentals of a class vs trying to ace practice material. I went from a mid 70s GPA to 90s.

    But I think a lot of where students struggle is just the acquired discipline necessary to succeed. Studying isn't very fun or enjoyable - at most it can be nice to focus and have goals, but most people have tons of anxiety leading into it and procrastinate a bunch. At the end of the day, there aren't any study hacks or anything, it's just that you have to put the time into it, and you have to essentially "learn how to learn".

    This was very apparent in my upper year CS classes where I saw a lot of students struggle to do well in exams for what wasn't terribly difficult material. I realized a lot of students just weren't willing to sit down and study the necessary amount of time. I thank my time in microbiology courses where I had to learn to study every night to memorize tons of different concepts and be able to apply them all to each other. I think students in life sciences tend to know how to study more simply because their courses have a lot more concepts and fundamentals than most CS courses.

    If you are in college/university and reading this you have to realize you just have to put the time in. That amount of time differs from person to person. I did really well in my CS program, but I put tons of time into it.

  4357. Grumpy Cat wins payout in copyright lawsuit 2018-01-25 11:00:54 peterburkimsher
    The cold reality of copyright law is having a chilling effect, causing me to not share content for fear of being sued.

    Case in point: bilingual songs.

    all of the italic items are illegal

    I go to a prayer room in Taiwan, and the musicians there have translated many famous Christian songs into Chinese. I got their lyrics as PDFs and converted those to TXT so I can use it with my http://pingtype.github.io translator app.

    They stream their 2-hour sets on YouTube and Facebook. I downloaded those and cut out the MP3s. I want to combine the audio with the lyrics to make lyrics videos to put on YouTube (I already made some, actually, and a few more that I didn't upload).

    I got the lyrics from someone in another prayer room in another city, followed by a message saying basically "Oh no! I shouldn't have sent it to you! It's copyright and we don't have the license to share those songs so don't ever share this to anybody!" The reason is that the original English author didn't authorise the translation, so what they're doing is breaking copyright and they're afraid that if they become famous, they'll get caught.

    I've procrastinated uploading more lyrics to Pingtype because of these issues. Meanwhile I use my personal copy in church, and it's great to sing along with everyone else and learn Chinese while doing so.

    I tried contacting CCLI to get a license from the original authors of the songs, but they don't operate in Taiwan. I'm seriously considering just posting my painstakingly-clipped MP3s and the lyrics files on some pirate sites and letting the Internet do what it does best.

  4358. Ask HN: I just got fired 2018-01-29 16:13:35 roksprok
    A few thoughts:

    Unless you were fired for misconduct, its usually better to say you were laid off. Its worth figuring out what information the company will give out. If you didn't leave on good terms, have a friend call and ask for employment verification. If it was a legitimate company based in the US, its likely they'll give dates of employment and nothing else.

    Get some thoughts down in writing, especially what went wrong/what you could have done better. Its pretty common to be unhappy at a job and wanting to leave, so its good to figure out how to do that without making it too obvious.

    Don't be shy about reaching out to people who still work at the company you left. It always feels more awkward to you than it really is.

    By far the best thing you can do to minimize damage is get another job as soon as possible. It's really easy to get in a rut after a setback and get discouraged, procrastinate, then before you know it a few months have gone by and you have a 'gap' on your resume to explain.

    It's tough, but remember that this exact situation happens to way more people than it seems. Its just someone nobody brings up so it seems rare. You'll get through it.

  4359. How Rust Is Tilde’s Competitive Advantage [pdf] 2018-02-07 07:19:56 jahaja
    I've come to realize that the main thing that is making me procrastinate giving Rust a proper go is entirely superficial at this point. Basically it looks like a "clever" programmers dream language - which is usually not my cup of tea. I'm also worried that larger projects ("real-world" projects, so not projects like Servo) will inevitably become an illegible mess when clever programmers makes the most of a clever language.

    That said, I plan to push through this admittedly superficial barrier in the near future and hopefully calm this concern.

  4360. Being a perfectionist is an obstacle and how to beat it 2018-02-09 05:44:15 spraak
    The book "The Now Habit" offers the perspective that many people who procrastinate suffer from perfectionism. That is, they are so concerned with achieving an idealized result that they are unable to even begin, lest they fail.

  4361. AMP for email is a terrible idea 2018-02-14 22:48:57 lakechfoma
    "Were people complaining that clicking “yes” on an RSVP email took them to the invitation site? Were they asking to have a video chat window open inside the email with the link? No. No one cares."

    I don't want this new feature and am glad I moved away from gmail, but I think the author is mistaken if they think people don't want this. Some people don't want to leave their gmail app to click one box on a now slowly loading web page full of content/ads they don't care about. I procrastinate on some mail because I don't immediately feel like dealing with the context switch. Then the mail gets buried by others and I forget. I'm ok with that mode of operation and I can also see a lot of people not being ok with and being delighted by AMP in gmail.

  4362. Meth, the Forgotten Killer, Is Back 2018-02-15 11:39:12 qwerty456127
    I just really hope the information I share can help somebody to save their health and set them free. And I am very grateful to you for the kind words of appreciation - that's a kind of dopamine and serotonin boost those poor people we are talking about don't receive often if ever!

    Let me also give credits: portions of this information (e.g about need in big doses of vitamins A&E, about supplementing dopa/tyrosine while on meth being a bad idea (though good during the abstinence, together with tryptophan) and that you really must drink a huge lot of water on meth, e.g. 1-2 full glasses every time you pee - this will actually save your kidneys, not overload them) come from Quora and Reddit, others from Adam at PsychedSubstance on YouTube (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlMxTpONKT0 - every advice from this video on MDMA applies to meth too), others from Wikipedia (e.g. about magnesium and emoxypine), some from my own reasoning and experimentation and the whole journey to understanding addictions has began with this extremely true video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao8L-0nSYzg I have also tried everything on myself (many years ago, I have only met the person who given me the substance once while dead drunk at a club, can't remember his face, I don't have his number and I don't know where to get meth at all, believe it or not this is true) as well as just meth without the supplements so I could compare and confirm everything (that's not nearly as credible as a good double-blind placebo-controlled test could be but I personally have no doubts, especially in piracetam which is not FDA-approved unfortunately yet extremely effective and safe in big doses as my experience suggests). I am not a doctor, however, and can be wrong in some parts yet I believe no of my advises can harm more than just taking meth without following them (unless the patient happens to be allergic to a particular supplement or something like that).

    BTW, regarding the "invite him to spend a meth-free weekend at your house" part - be really careful doing this with people you don't know well, some real junkies (I haven't met any but have heard scary rumors, these were more about crack an heroine addicts, not meth, but people are different and some can be more madness-prone than others) can happen to be really dangerous, especially when they go crazy on the drug/withdrawal-induced paranoia. Make sure to keep your wife and children away, knives, guns, jewelry and windows well-locked and have a beefy buddy by your side for just a case - "better safe than sorry".

    And an addition about magnesium: don't use mg lactate with meth, I don't know the details but I've heard they don't fit together, prefer a chelate, oxide or citrate.

    Another might-be-important thing I've forgotten to mention is supplementing pro&pre-biotics: meth-induced diarrhea can harm intestinal ecology seriously and a recent study I've read about in New Scientist says the major portion of all body serotonin (which is crucial for emotional well-being and also affected by meth) is produced in the intestines, not in the brain.

    PS: I'm not on meth writing this much :-) Just too much coffee, "the stairs effect", urge to procrastinate and enthusiasm to help people by sharing understanding :-)

  4363. Ask HN: What has HN given you? 2018-02-19 18:10:53 bewe42
    Access to an incredibly thoughtful bunch of minds which I doubt I could have had otherwise. Many new ideas and helpful advice. However, it also is also my number one excuse to procrastinate.

  4364. Ask HN: Is it 'normal' to struggle so hard with work? 2018-02-19 18:35:01 jib
    Rands is one of my favorite writers on development.

    http://randsinrepose.com/archives/a-hard-thing-is-done-by-fi... this article is pretty good when it comes to forgiving yourself for procrastination in terms of starting something.

    In terms of finishing, for me that is a question of self-image. I am someone who completes things. I build my reputation on delivering things on time and with attention to detail throughout the project. Others know they can rely on me to do that, so they will not try to micromanage me or look over my shoulder, because they can rely on me delivering the way I always do. That image is important to me, so I will go to great lengths to keep it.

    People think I am good at attention to detail (even though I have no natural propensity for it at all, outside an obsessive need to understand how things work) and they rely on me to be that person in the business environment, so I have an unwritten social contract to fulfill, and keeping that is important to me, even if the actual task I need to do to keep it is not very engaging.

    That's all there's to it. Start, and finish what you started. I don't tie any kind of rewards or punishment to the process. I'll procrastinate a bit before I start, but that is part of figuring out what the thing you're starting is, and I will finish (on or before time) because others are relying on me to finish.

  4365. Ask HN: Is it 'normal' to struggle so hard with work? 2018-02-19 18:35:12 toomanybeersies
    I suffer the same as you, but at a younger age.

    I have also been wondering if I suffer from ADHD too. Even at university I really struggled to sit there and do one thing for an extended period. I stopped going to lectures because I couldn't handle sitting in the lecture theater for an hour, I could never do homework either.

    The only work that I've ever really managed to focus on and stick at for hours is physical work, like construction work or hospitality.

    Like others have suggested, exercise does seem to mitigate my problem somewhat. I've found that going to the gym at lunch really helps. Don't just go solo to the gym though, or you'll just procrastinate at the gym, you need to join a group class.

  4366. Ask HN: Is it 'normal' to struggle so hard with work? 2018-02-19 19:09:20 superasn
    I think this can be a result of spreading yourself too thin. I was in a similar situation myself when I was trying to do too much by myself and had insane ambitions for myself.

    The question to ask yourself is Are you trying to accomplish the task of 5 people by yourself?

    Because if you are then any amount of work you do, you will never feel satisfied (because let's face it nobody can do the work of 5 people and ace it all.. you are bound to dislike some aspect of it, procrastinate and then blame yourself for not doing enough). So I advise you to first create a list of the expectations you have for yourself and then imagine assigning it to a friend. What would be your take on it.. Do you think he should be able to handle it easily or do you think you're asking too much from him?

    Lastly, you really need to get rid of this thinking "If I don't work for X hours, I'm a complete failure". This is classic "Labeling" or "All or nothing thinking" (things you can learn in CBT) and if you keep thinking like this it can cause depression (which also makes a person unmotivated).

  4367. Ask HN: Is it 'normal' to struggle so hard with work? 2018-02-20 00:28:57 sockaway
    I feel very similar. It has actually always been like that for me. I hardly ever did (=finished) any homework in school and university, but I was spending most of my free time sitting at my desk b/c I had to do homework.

    Now I'm perfectly aware I'm procrastinating while I'm doing so, but I just feel like I must [find out xy / read the current news about xy / read that interesting article I saw / review and close the hundreds of open browser tabs / have some social interaction w/ someone / finish unrelated task xy (e. g. housework) / eat sth / watch porn] at that very moment and couldn't even properly concentrate otherwise.

    As many others pointed out being overwhelmed by either huge or lots of tasks causes this quite often and splitting up tasks and prioritizing can help in those situations. Nevertheless this pattern sometimes even makes me procrastinate 2 minute tasks for days w/o doing anything useful during that time even if that one task (and/or others dependent on it) is/are the only one(s) I have to do (so to tackle it there neither is anything to split up nor to prioritize.

  4368. Ask HN: Is it 'normal' to struggle so hard with work? 2018-02-20 00:29:06 smilesnd
    I know how you feel. Some times I can be doing good, and be getting shit done. Then bam from right field something distracts me and wow where did those 2 hours go. Recently I been taking a more Buddhist style to the problem. Removing the unwanted distractions like uninstalling video games, staying away from youtube, and limiting my time on other unproductive distractions. Rewards and negative feedback only works if someone else is handing out the reward or punishment. That is why working for others causes people to work. If you want motivation you have to either find something other then money to push you, or every time you start to procrastinate you have to fight. Every morning I wake up look in the mirror and scream "FUCK IT" to remind myself life is short, time goes by fast, and I need to get shit done. Add positive habits in your life and you be surprise how much it helps. The other thing I say every day to myself is ESSR "Eat Shit Sleep Repeat" reminder I don't want to be one of those people that goes through life just surviving. Their is no simple way to gain motivation it is either something that comes naturally like people that love to workout vs people that have to drag themselves to the gym. Or you have to fight for it every day you have to go without reward, without joy, without pleasure, and get whatever you have to done. Best of luck.

  4369. Ask HN: Is it 'normal' to struggle so hard with work? 2018-02-20 02:58:32 dep_b
    My problem is worse: I can't motivate myself to play videogames anymore. "Oh no, more time spent with a computing device!".

    I procrastinate a lot but I notice taking a break will give fresh insights. I make my breaks useful, like getting groceries or running. The worst thing you can do is procrastinate behind your computer.

    For me going freelance was the motivator to become better. More pay, more influence on the product. I can take unpaid leave 1.5 - 2 months every winter and my customers are fine with it. Can't believe people put up with the miserable amount of holidays a lot of American countries give you if you have a day job.

  4370. Show HN: Mux Video, a simple API to powerful video streaming 2018-02-22 07:35:04 altano
    I'm building a web app that needs video streaming but ultimately serves to provide high-quality image extraction from the videos. I've procrastinated solving the video delivery part and so your service intrigues me. While we have your team on the line, I have some questions :):

    - Is this a crazy use of your service?

    - If I request the full-size thumbnail will it be a lossless image from the original video?

    - Your front-page says "With Mux Video request a single thumbnail with a simple request or an entire storyboard to use in your player to scrub preview images." but the docs don't mention anything about storyboards. Is it not done yet? Or is the implication here that I can just make several separate requests to the thumbnail API to build a storyboard scrubber?

    - One of your pages says "Note that there is a default limit of 30 thumbnails per asset. If you need more, contact Mux." but the thumbnail API doc doesn't mention this limit. Is that actually a limit?

    - The thumbnail API doc says the timecode param is a float. Does this mean that if I calculate the timecode based on the framerate I can get high-precision, frame-by-frame stepping in my video player? Any chance you'll offer a version of the thumbnail API that takes the frame instead to make frame-stepping easier to build?

    - Can I send you a hard-drive full of videos to ingest into your system?

    - Is a signed playback_policy the only way to secure the video from public viewing, and if so, when will this be implemented (doc currently says "signed: (coming soon) ...")

    - Your pricing seems extremely reasonable but I'll be looking to cut corners at least initially. If I require fewer output formats (e.g. I don't need to support mobile devices, only desktop browsers), can I get a cheaper storage rate? I'll ultimately have high storage needs (starting with 31,860 minutes of video and then eventually getting closer to 100-200K) but low streaming demand.

  4371. Adopting a more active lifestyle could benefit your personality decades from now 2018-02-24 04:48:58 ergothus
    This. I'm fully aware that I should improve my health for many reasons. But my every experience with physical activity tells me I will feel pain, discomfort, and personal embarrassment in large degrees. (Every experience I can actually recall. I know as a child I was perfectly happy running around - but that is not what it feels like now and I can't recall the feeling then. I know PE classes created negative associations, and those I CAN recall. In horrifying detail.

    Everyone that talks about the good feeling you get afterwards either has different physiology, feels pain to a lower degree, or just has a better willpower + long term view. Regardless, such advice just feels like a dodge or an attack. Meanwhile, while my brain KNOWS healthy is better, the consequences just don't FEEL real, so it is far easier to procrastinate. All of which makes activity MORE painful, MORE uncomfortable, and MORE embarrassing (because I'm more out of shape), so it's the opposite of a virtuous cycle.

    My issues today are a combination of time (in addition to disliking the activity, I'm disliking the opportunity cost), discomfort, fear, and boredom (if I have nothing to focus on all I end up focusing on is my discomfort. If I have something to focus on, I'll instinctively stop doing things that make it harder to focus, such as movement, which means I have to start focusing on the bad parts again). I know (again, from experience) that I can feel better with more exercise eventually - but it takes weeks at a minimum, involves a lot of discomfort, is easily lost, and has not yet been a strong feeling (though I've never had any activity I maintained for more than 3 months, and that rarely).

    All of which sounds like excuses...and are. But they are also real obstacles I need to find a work around for, because willpower and logic alone have clearly not sufficed.

  4372. Ask HN: What was your most productive (day|week|month|year) ever? 2018-03-01 21:00:03 froindt
    During college I had a semester with 5 engineering classes and was the president of an engineering club. I didn't realize when signing up for classes, but all 5 courses had engineering projects worth 25-60% and still had final exams. I had no choice but to suck it up.

    I started something I called "12 hours of productivity". It didn't matter what time I got started in the morning, but from then until 12 hours later I was being productive.

    * I wouldn't get on reddit, Facebook, or similar sites.

    * I could be doing class work, be in class, do club stuff, or study. I would eventually run out of club stuff. Even if I procrastinated with that, eventually I'd have to move on to school work.

    * a few short breaks were included

    My productivity soared, though I couldn't have done it for long term (years). It got me through the semester from hell though.

  4373. Ask HN: Why did you choose to have children? 2018-03-04 01:56:26 benjohnson
    We didn't 'choose' - but having a child was the best accident that ever happened to us.

    I had a miserable childhood, and having an awesome and joyous time with our three children has redeemed my hurt - it's part of my memory, but no longer important.

    Having kind, wise, and creative children has given me hope for the world that comes after me - and I'm grateful that have the responsibility to raise them.

    It's also helped cured many of my neurosis - I don't procrastinate, I set goals, I get up in the morning, I'm not a gloomy pessimist and I'm not at irrationally angry.

    And even though children are expensive - I'm richer because I have better character traits.

    My kids saved my life by taking my own greed for my own life away from me - I live for them and my wife. I never knew that existed.

  4374. Smart Guy Productivity Pitfalls (2013) 2018-03-07 01:46:34 JustSomeNobody
    So much irony here. Some other poor soul has to come along and procrastinate fixing your old code because you didn't want to and moved on to some other company.

  4375. Smart Guy Productivity Pitfalls (2013) 2018-03-07 09:07:01 teemo91
    I am the exact same! Also, if it is some mindless donkey work that is pulling out modules from certain places and refactoring it just so as to fit with a new pattern, I procrastinate, waste time on the internet and question the meaning of life. But if it's a challenging problem, or even writing code from scratch, I will bulldoze through it and finish stuff super quick.

  4376. Ask HN: What tools have most helped your day-to-day productivity? 2018-03-11 10:26:31 _tulpa
    I use Ike for Android (Eisenhower time management matrix). It's adapted for people who can't use 'Delegate' for less important tasks:

          Now | Soon
    -------------
    Maybe | Don't
    Everything else I've tried for task management left me kinda paralysed trying to figure out what to do first and procrastinating.

    The `Don't` quadrant is also a good place to record the things I do to procrastinate.

    Keeping it all on my phone and not syncing it to a device that I actually use for work also stops me idly peeking at other tasks and loosing focus on what I need to finish (at which point I just take a break instead)

    The app I use can have multiple matrices for work/home/whatever, but I tend to just usea single matrix and focus on managing all of my time.

  4377. Ask HN: Were we more productive 10, 15, or 20 years ago? 2018-03-12 05:35:23 tdeck
    But feeling productive and being productive are not necessarily the same thing. Sometimes I feel really productive at a task (e.g. writing a nested data arser in Bash) with a lot of unnecessary drudge work because I can comfortably plug away at it for a long period of time. But with the drudge work mitigated (e.g. using a real language with a parser framework) I'm left focusing on the hard problems, which causes me to become mentally drained more quickly, procrastinate more, and feel less productive overall.

  4378. Ask HN: What tools have most helped your day-to-day productivity? 2018-03-14 21:25:42 bewe42
    Sorry for a non-answer, but I noticed whenever I get excited trying out new tools and apps (I love productivity apps), what is really happening is that I just procrastinate. Tools can be useful but won't make you magically more productive.

    Having said that, what I find incredibly useful is Scapple as a form of "smart" paper.

  4379. You Don't Need Another Tool 2018-03-16 07:42:02 cjfont
    Sometimes you don't realize there's a problem until you try doing it a different way. If you always wait until there's a problem, you're likely to get stuck doing things the hard way. There's nothing wrong with taking the occasional moment to see what new tools are out there, if anything to simply be a bit more efficient. If you're looking for new tools all the time to procrastinate, or simply always hoping something will do the heavy lifting for you then that's another story.

  4380. Stock trade app Robinhood raising at $5B+, up 4X in a year 2018-03-16 22:08:10 southphillyman
    >That's better than the alternative of not investing at all because Vanguard is not user-friendly

    This is literally what happened to me. I lost out on 20%+ in gains because I procrastinated a year after reading about how much Betterment fees eat into your gains. In hindsight the amount of money I missed out on was WAY more than any fee Betterment would have hit me with.

  4381. Stock trade app Robinhood raising at $5B+, up 4X in a year 2018-03-16 22:23:32 dguo
    I totally share[1] your feelings on the lack of financial education. In defense of my friends, they already knew to fund their 401(k)s. The question was what to do with their free cash. And considering the risk of losing money, any amount of friction (like a bad UI) can make it easy to procrastinate.

    [1]: https://twitter.com/dannyguo/status/961684866285924354

  4382. To Change Habits, Try Replacement Instead 2018-03-28 22:22:30 agumonkey
    IMO that's another thing you learn with time. There's no sure path.. you oughta crack through. Which is a bit paradoxical since you actually lack willpower but it's the only way.

    It's like todolists.. I have thousands of them. Nothing happens. At times I just roll up my sleeves, in a very thin anger, and just go through chores and duties.

    Now that I internalized that notion I'm much more willing to do things rather than procrastinate and day dream about how I would/should/could.

    I'm not 100% proactive, far from that, but I know I'll be much happier if I do be (sic).

  4383. Poor Grades Tied to Class Times That Don’t Match Our Biological Clocks 2018-04-01 03:25:39 leshow
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but the study itself didn't look near this rigorous. It looks like they made 3 buckets and tried to correlate them with performance. How can you do that and they say "aha! look! circadian rhythms"?

    How do we know that the students who stayed up late aren't also the students that procrastinate and do all their work last minute, and thus recieve lower grades?

    That seems like just as reasonable a conclusion to draw.

  4384. Newer C++ features can create a lot of system yak shaving 2018-04-03 21:52:04 cfv
    Carlin Vieri, a googler, coined the term while at MIT.

    " 1) Any apparently useless activity which, by allowing you to overcome intermediate difficulties, allows you to solve a larger problem.

    2) A less useful activity done consciously or subconsciously to procrastinate about a larger but more useful task. "

  4385. Want to Be Happy? Think Like an Old Person (2017) 2018-04-07 06:48:18 agumonkey
    Most old people I know are either semi depressed, or not very happy (say slightly the middle point).

    I also very very very often look a children. I know it's probably near impossible to recapture a virgin mind and its fresh experience of everything. But there's a musicality, in a physics lingo, a superb low impedance to their behavior. They just flow. And it speaks to me. After long periods of getting stuck in loops of browse/todolist/procrastinate. I find the idea of catching my own desires, no matter what, and just get moving; often by starting the motion, energy and happiness make a blip on the radar.

  4386. Post-Mortem and Security Advisory: Data Exposure After travis-ci.com Outage 2018-04-09 22:18:09 solatic
    > I think when the circumstances actually show someone was grossly negligent, it's very hard to convincingly pretend that only processes are to blame.

    On the contrary - the entire reason why you transition from culture to process as you grow is because when you measure by results, there's no difference between unintentional negligence (leaving a production terminal open à la Travis), intentional negligence (let me bystep this annoying check, let me procrastinate on fixing the backups a la GitLab), and malice.

    If you get large enough, you will have grossly negligent people, by statistical inevitability. You can either accept this statistical inevitability and design your process for it or you can continue to believe that you (and everybody else) really actually do only ever hire the very best.

  4387. Hello: A new social network founded by Orkut's creator 2018-04-12 23:33:10 carussell
    > in practice it creates a barrier to adoption and makes the social network kinda useless

    The main thing is that you're trying to bootstrap new cultural norms. If there weren't so much inertia around free services, people would probably be fine paying a few bucks per month for certain classes of services.

    I've always thought it would be a great idea to fund message boards, communities, etc., by keeping track of users' individual resource usage and making that info visible to them.

    GitHub is free for most, for example, and others pay for some extra perks. But even then, the price structure comes off as pretty arbitrary.

    Since Patreon became a thing, I've seen some people set up funding goals that take the form of explaining that it takes, say, ~$85 per month to cover the costs of running servers, but that doesn't really accomplish what I'm talking about, since it's still too easy to treat it as a shared commons.

    A running sum is able to make the point unambiguously; it says something along the lines of, "because of the requests we had to handle to serve your use of the site, we are now on the hook for paying $2.74 so far this month". If you're a magnanimous admin, you can continue operating free services, but just "soft bill" people with a pay-what-you-want scheme (by which I mean guilt them). If you're actually trying to cover costs you do hard billing, but offer the first year free or something, which also removes one of the barriers of getting started—so long as we're operating on the assumption that we've already managed to establish it as a new cultural norm.

    Resource-proportionate billing also has the nice side benefit of getting people to be more conscious of wasting time on the site—breaking the cycle of idly refreshing the home page to procrastinate.

  4388. Tell HN: My best productivity hack 2018-04-17 05:57:44 isaiahg
    The single thing that has had the largest impact for me has been simply making a list of things I need to do the next day on the night before. In the morning, often the hardest thing to do is just to get going. Having a ready made list takes out a lot of the factors that lead me to procrastinate.

  4389. Russia Bans 1.8M Amazon and Google IPs in Attempt to Block Telegram 2018-04-17 22:05:49 MrDisposable
    Russian here. Good job Roskomnadzor. You just taught quite a few people to use VPN -- including me. And, as a side benefit, you created another image problem for Putin's regime (as if he needed any more of that).

    I already had Bitlocker on all my PCs, 2FA everywhere, moved from Gmail to Fastmail, and VPN was one of the last privacy-related things I procrastinated on. Now I have VPN on all my desktops and on my phone, turned on by default. And I also switched to 1.1.1.1 for DNS.

    Thank you government, I guess?

  4390. Tell HN: Rejected from Y Combinator? Don't be upset or quit 2018-04-19 01:07:36 spinlock
    I hate ycombinator comments like this. Now I need to go procrastinate by writing a tool where I can go through the YC application every quarter.

  4391. The Surprisingly Solid Mathematical Case of the Tin Foil Hat Gun Prepper 2018-04-24 04:33:08 wcunning
    I'd like to modify the statistical argument against the author's conclusion -- if we take his yearly probability of violent regime change in the US and take the yearly likelihood as i.i.d., then the probability that it will happen in the remainder of my statistically likely life is significantly reduced by it not having happened in the first 1/3rd. And every year that I procrastinate prepping, I'm more and more incentivized to skip it the next year. That's the math that the average person is unconsciously doing...

    To extrapolate to a rural/urban divide, the number of times I've lost power and the average length of that loss is massively lower in the city that I now live in vs. the country farmstead I grew up on, both within 100 miles of one another. Similarly, the number of times I've been unwilling to leave my house because of a major snow event or the like is much lower in the city than it was back home because the speed of road clearing is much much higher here. These sorts of infrastructure things build into the heuristic that produces "trust in the system" in a person, and the likelihood that you'll prep for a week without power or three days snowed in. Once you've prepped for that, prepping a little more is easier because you're already storing extra food and toilet paper, keeping a generator on hand to keep the well running since you're not on municipal water or sewer, etc... It all adds up to different populations feeling very differently about how sane/necessary this activity is.

  4392. Ask HN: Effective methods to fight depression? 2018-04-26 02:41:24 just_a_fella
    We nowadays seem to bound very common and natural feelings under the term 'depression' that it's now become very ambiguous to actually reflect about the core issue.

    Psychodynamic therapy look at the human mind has a very complex thing and take a holistic approach in order to help people gain insight about themselves (or, their-self's).

    In contrast to CBT or other therapeutic interventions that are mostly about un-learning maladaptive behaviors and thought patterns, mastering new 'techniques' or repeating affirmations, psychodynamic therapy tries to help people gain self-awareness about the things that we usually never see but are always there. It's developed upon the work of Freud on psychoanalysis, but further advancing his core-ideas and take a more modern and refined approach.

    Freud once said that the goal of therapy is to "transform neurotic misery into common unhappiness." What he meant by that is that there is a very basic truth that we all humans share - it's hard to be human. It involves a lot of suffering. Mostly what causes the suffering is hidden and we're unaware of it.

    I highly recommend the book "Why Do I Do That?" by Joseph Burgo. It's a psychodynamic-based self-help book. Reading it was probably one of the best things I've done in my life. It allowed me to gain insight about myself, increased my self-awareness about the things I do and why I do them, allowed me to look into what motivates me in life and what holds me back.

    One caveat: it's hard. I procrastinated on reading this book for months. It probably took me 8 months to read through all of it (and it's just about 200 pages, I think). But at the end I made myself read into it and really take in and follow the exercises, which I highly recommend to put yourself fully.

    The author is highly empathetic, I almost developed father-like affection toward him while reading it. He guides you through it, and make sure to tell you that you're all right and help you through all the hard stuff. He makes a point that you might get procrastinated reading it and invite you to become aware of it and still keep on. You also gain an incredibly valuable knowledge about human nature, our human needs, and what happens when they're not met. I also started to see other people, in general, much more beautifully, how we are all complex animals that long for love and affection, and how our past is remarkably influential and shaped our lives.

    All in all, whatever you do, I just want reassure you that you're alright.

  4393. Ask HN: What has been your most rewarding job or project and why? 2018-04-27 00:25:21 tabtab
    Try my back-yard: the sprinklers broke and we procrastinated fixing them.

  4394. Structured Procrastination (1995) 2018-04-28 18:07:20 gkya
    Thing is, it does. I am a very distractible person, but using a combination of Org mode's recurring tasks and clocking has helped me get many long-time tasks that I'd normally just procrastinate away done. And all those little bit of configuration and scripting has indeed made me if not more productive per se, more efficient in using Emacs and Org to be more productive at least, and that is no little thing at all.

  4395. Structured Procrastination (1995) 2018-04-29 20:16:59 cJ0th
    I'd say discipline is just one factor. Another one is that many of us do poor thinking. When a task isn't well defined we tend to not do it. "Buy milk" is clear, "implement backup script with rsync" is not. It may sound somewhat concrete but you have to ask yourself a bunch of question in order to have some clarity as to what that actually means. Often we then feel overwhelmed and procrastinate I'd say.

  4396. Ask HN: How true is it that most founders are taking drugs like Modafanil? 2018-04-30 09:48:49 throwawayaddy
    (Continued. HN is limiting my posts for whatever algo reason)

    My side-project procrastination was the main reason I decided to see a Psychiatrist. Before Adderall, I had about 8 different side-projects in various states of progress, with a couple hosted and launched, but I was doing nothing to market and grow them. Now, a couple of years later, I have successfully grown the 2 that were launched and were languishing, launched 3 more, killed 3 that were going nowhere. I am now very satisfied mentally with my situation, do not procrastinate, and am making about 1000$ per month across all the side-projects. These projects were more for learning and keeping up to date, so money is not a concern for me, completion is (/ was)

    Word of caution: I did as my doc about micro-dosing LSD. He gave me a very stern warning. According to him, LSD, even in micro-doses, "fries" the your serotonin production network in the brains and destroys neurons permanently. He strongly advised me to not try it even once.

    And for those looking for Adderall or LSD, I would advice you to consult a Psychiatrist, if you believe you have ADHD. For people that don't have ADHD, Adderall, Ritalin etc don't work, and they end up getting addicted on high doses and land on documentaries like "Take my Pill".

    LSD is only available on the "dark web" as far as I know, so you'll need to use TOR and Bitcoin. It's also shady and you have to purchase a "Tester Kit" (who knows if that tester kit is also legit?!). Don't do it.

  4397. Ask HN: How true is it that most founders are taking drugs like Modafanil? 2018-04-30 16:39:23 sshine
    I've tried modafinil once for an exam. It helped with concentration, but not focus, if that makes any sense; i.e. I procrastinated as much, but was super effective about it. I've tried mild amphetamines (Ritalin) as a freelancer, and I ended up practicing my handstand half of the time. There really is no drug that replaces emptying your mind of worries (seeing a shrink for the big things, and putting aside the small things), knowing what you want to do, and doing it.

  4398. Americans Are a Lonely Lot, and Young People Bear the Heaviest Burden 2018-05-02 06:15:40 notauser
    It is miserable having a young family.

    The first two years of having a child have been 70% crap, 20% sleep, 10% rewarding moments.

    There are a couple of up-sides:

    - The rewarding moments are pretty cool, and there are more all the time.

    - You don't appreciate free time until you have none. I no longer procrastinate and overall I think I get more things done than I did with unlimited free time.

  4399. Ask HN: How do you deal with disastrous levels of procrastination? 2018-05-02 10:28:06 _ah
    Sounds like classic Fear Of Failure to me. The longer you procrastinate, the more is riding on your "perfect" solution or performance, and the more daunting the project becomes. You need to realize that failure is allowed, and that it's forward movement that matters. Alwasy try, then learn from the outcome. If you learn you never truly "fail".

    To gain confidence, you need to power through by sheer force of will. A few tricks may help:

    1. Decompose your tasks. Then decompose them more. Keep breaking down tasks into absurdly small pieces until they seem less intimidating. Then force yourself to do them, one at a time. If you can't, break it down more. "I will create an empty database." "I will list the first table I need to create." "I will fill out 5 columns in that table." "If I miss a column it's ok and I'll fix it later." "I will get my build environment running, and displaying hello world." "I will log into the database." etc etc etc.

    2. Time limits. "I promise I will work on this thing for 1 hour, with no distractions, and then I am allowed to..."

  4400. Twitter urges users to change passwords after computer 'glitch' 2018-05-04 06:36:49 osteele
    How long have you done this, for how many sites, do you rotate passwords (when sites are breached, and/or on a schedule), and have you had to access sites in a mentally compromised state (distracted, sleep-deprived, post-concussion)?

    Every once in a while I hear someone explain their system for this (and I used to use a simpler scheme), and I can think of arguments about why it won't work for long, but I'd be happy to update my internal monolog from actual evidence.

    I've got about 1K passwords in 1Password. I generally rotate them when they're 1-3 years old, depending on the threat model, cost of compromise, and on what I'm using password review to procrastinate.

  4401. Hunter S. Thompson’s letter on living your life 2018-05-13 05:03:58 noobly
    I very much enjoyed the development of the answer by eliminating the less sensible ideas and methods, and the way that this caused an incremental telescoping toward what he wanted to say. In short, it mimicked the process of elimination, and a self help read featuring deductive logic was very refreshing.

    >But a man who procrastinates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.

    This hit close to home. Tough decisions are not easy to make, but waiting and thinking too long certainly has disadvantages. Often, ime, hindsight is the only entity that knows the correct choice. I was a floater early on and, at times, find myself wishing I had swam instead. Anyhow, I had never read this before, but it goes right up there with the Desiderata[0], imo.

    >0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderata

  4402. Show HN: Quoter – Save and manage your highlights 2018-05-17 17:36:54 mhasbini
    Hey HN,

    Often, I come across interesting quotes or tips that are worth saving.

    I’m lazy, so I needed a way to save them effortlessly – otherwise, I would forget or procrastinate.

    I also wanted a pop out every now and then to remind me of my highlights, so I don’t have to manually check the quotes.

    Then I hacked together a workflow that saves quotes using a shortcut and a cronjob that shows a random quote periodically (every 6 hours).

    I used this setup for almost two years and it worked perfectly (My saved highlights: http://mhasbini.com/highlights.html).

    Recently I decided to make the quotes accessible from the menu bar with the ability to easily change configurations and manage the quotes. I worked with a friend who had similar needs and so Quoter was born.

    It just works and doesn’t get in your way. It’s configurable and lightweight (~3 MB compressed and have small footprint).

    Hope you like it.

  4403. Is a Dumber Phone a Better Phone? 2018-05-18 04:33:06 FRex
    The Light Phone 2 features are very poor[0].

    Any dumb mobile phone from mid 2000s has those that are guaranteed in [1], they also don't run a modified Android but a bespoke locked down OS, cost less (Light Phone 2 is available for $300 as preorder on IndieGoGo and MSRP seems to be $400), have a physical keyboard, some games, colorful display, email, etc.

    There are even some not so bad smart phones that cost less than $200 or $300.

    I'd also expect things like calculator, GPS, unit and currency converters, weather, dictionary, directions, maps, etc. to definitely be in since they don't fight for attention and are pure utility tools that one only uses when absolutely needed, not to procrastinate.

    I also own an old 8 GB black Creative Zen Style 300 media player[2] from like 2010 or 2011 that is like 7x3x1 cm, cost me like 180-190 PLN (22% or 23% of that is VAT) or so at the time and it decimates Light Phone 2 with regards to almost all non-phone non-online features.

    I'd consider myself as audience for a featureful utilitarian dumb phone but not for something like Light Phone.

    I wish there was an ARM flip phone (I love these as long as the hinge is good and the plastic thick), with physical keyboard (I love them when they're good), dual SIM, 1 or 2 GB of RAM, few GB of storage, SD card, low res software rendered displays (main one and one on the back when flip phone is closed) that you could code yourself against almost bare metal in pure C, calling some built in APIs when you want to make a phone call, use data transfer, access storage, etc. to truly own and personalize every aspect of it.

    [0] - https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/light-phone-2-design#/

    [1] - https://c1.iggcdn.com/indiegogo-media-prod-cld/image/upload/...

    [2] - https://imgur.com/a/QdMdHxN

  4404. Why read old philosophy? 2018-05-19 01:13:55 always_good
    I procrastinated my core courses and took Philosophy my last semester of uni at 22.

    I'm so glad I took it that late. It was easily one of the best courses I ever took, of course with the professors to thank for that.

    What did I get out of it? It got me thinking about all sorts of concepts, especially concepts I never would've thought about on my own. How do you quantify that? Who knows? I still think about Callicles from the Gorgias and how he'd observe some modern social phenomena and such.

    But I think your posts are the sort of overfixation on "getting anything out if it" that the OP is talking about. It's a tempting question because it's usually unanswerable except in the obvious cases. But, for example, learning long division isn't helpful because you do it in the field (I haven't done it since school), rather it's helpful because you're exercising problem solving. Just like philosophy can exercise rationalism.

  4405. Computer History Museum Makes Eudora Email Client Source Code Available 2018-05-23 07:54:54 romwell
    It's an abuse of the standard.

    The email standard was built so that you can check your email with a client, and view the contents offline at your convenience, archive, back up, etc.

    Google's email proposal kills this functionality.

    When was the last time I used this, you may ask? On Saturday. I was in one of the slot canyons in Utah with zero signal, and, while taking a break, I wrote several emails in my Opera email client, in response to some messages I've procrastinated writing a response to.

    The trickery is that the sender might think they're sending a message over email to the recipient, whereas they are sending the message to Google's servers over an internal protocol, and are sending a link to the message to the recipient over email.

  4406. Why did I spend 1.5 months creating a Gameboy emulator? (2017) 2018-05-24 01:21:04 martin1975
    Do you often procrastinate at your regular job? Just curious. Got that vibe from you, trying to confirm a certain reality (a bit of mine too).

  4407. A Universal Law of Procrastination (2016) 2018-05-30 17:20:38 jonathanstrange
    I must be an atypical procrastinator then, because I only procrastinate activities that are less pleasant than others but have no deadline at all. If there is a deadline, I tend to do the work as early as possible, usually much earlier than my colleagues, so the pressure goes away and I can procrastinate about the activities whose time I self-manage again. I've found out over the years that the #1 reason for delaying self-managed tasks is that they are too big, appear like huge obstacles, which causes me to turn to the easy and fun creative parts of other tasks. Divide-and-conquer works fine to alleviate this problem, and I also use a bit of GTD when I'm stressed in order to increase the time available for slacking. Needless to say this only applies to activities that are slightly unpleasant, there are also aspects of my work that don't cause me to procrastinate at all.

    There seem to be different types of procrastinators, or at least two of them: those that procrastinate when they have to manage time themselves those that procrastinate when there are fixed deadlines. I've never understood the second type, to be honest. If you have a deadline, why not just do it quickly, so you're done with it?

  4408. A Universal Law of Procrastination (2016) 2018-05-30 18:50:13 dexen
    Worth refreshing this serious, if tongue-in-cheek paper:

    Scheduling Algorithms for Procrastinators: http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~bender/pub/JoS07-procrastinate.pdf

    ``We are writing this sentence two days before the deadline. Unfortunately that sentence (and this one) are among the first that we have written. How could we have delayed so much when we have known about this deadline for months? (...)''

  4409. A Universal Law of Procrastination (2016) 2018-05-30 19:39:43 1_player
    Hey, that's me!

    Let me share a tip that might work for you as well then: some times you will procrastinate heavily because you're have a hard problem with no solution in sight. You'll want to make some semblance of progress, but you just can't sit down and concretely work on it. It's by design! Your subconscious keeps working in the background, thinking outside the box until one day out of nowhere you get the solution right before your eyes.

    I'm not sure it's possible to think outside the box if you're not procrastinating, since you need other types of unrelated input for your brain to make a different type of association and reach a conclusion from another perspective.

    I'd like to read more about this phenomenon but has been one of my best tricks up my sleeve in my career. Recently I've been trying to write down a complex piece of code, the corner stone of my application critical to the whole business. I've spent weeks on that problem, tried and failed to design a working solution, spent hours reading papers during working time instead of writing anything, browsing HN mindlessly, until after 2 months, out of the blue at 4am looking at cat pics on reddit I found the answer. And I'm now enjoying this newfound wave of productivity until my next hard problem.

    EDIT: I think it's called the Eureka effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_effect

    EDIT 2: other things I found that help the Eureka effect:

    * taking a shower

    * walking

    * mindless consuming (watching a movie, browsing youtube or reddit)

    * reading a book

    * sleep deprivation

  4410. A Universal Law of Procrastination (2016) 2018-05-30 20:52:54 scandinavegan
    > I've never understood the second type, to be honest. If you have a deadline, why not just do it quickly, so you're done with it?

    I listened to this podcast recently, which was very good:

    https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/beat-procrastination...

    There are two psychologists being interviewed, and they talk about different reasons people procrastinate:

    * Fear of failure: If you think you will fail outright or, more probable, not meet your own standards of perfection, you put off working on this uncomfortable item. It's easier to flee to something else. If you don't even try, you can tell yourself the day before the deadline that you could've done it, had you just started earlier, and so on, tricking yourself into feeling more competent than you are.

    * Fear of success: If you're known as the person who gets things done, you'll be handed more difficult tasks. You might be promoted into a position of more responsibility, closer to where the decisions are made, which might not suit you. You might get people to supervise, which you're not interested in. You might make you're colleagues, or family, or friends jealous of your success, which is why you self sabotage your tasks and don't perform to your full potential. They talk about someone being the first from their family going to the university: if they succeed, they won't be able to get advice from their parents on how to finish a report, their brother might not think that problems in academia are real problems compared to being a construction worker, and so on.

    * Fear of loss of control: If your manager or spouse tells you to do something and you do it, you hand over control of your time to someone else. By procrastinating, you're saying "I decide when and if this gets done", which is a confidence boost. Not doing something is a way of asserting control in a passive aggressive way.

    * You may come from a family that over and over told you that you suck and is a failure, so why even try doing anything that's hard?

    * Or you were teased as a kid when you were successful in school or in sports, so you sabotage you're own work to avoid imagined further abuse.

    * Or you might have been praised as being super smart and competent, so as soon as something requires any effort, you avoid it to not look stupid or incompetent. Perhaps you don't know enough about the task you're supposed to do, or you don't know why you're supposed to do it, but instead of acknowledging that and asking for help, you put the task off.

    * Or you might be really bad at predict how long things will take. Perhaps you have an idealized view that a task shouldn't take a competent person more than 30 minutes, so when you're still not done after 3 hours, the task has suddenly become a huge burden and pushes other tasks into the future. Or you might have a weakness (writing clear emails, making phone calls looking for information, and so on) that you don't acknowledge to yourself, so that it gets you into trouble because you put off that email or phone call instead of approaching the problem in a different way that utilizes your strengths or by asking for help.

    They also talk about the difference between procrastinators who wait until the very last second and then work furiously (this is me), pulling all nighters (like last night) to finish doing stuff for work that they were supposed to do a long time ago. Since you don't have enough time to do a perfect job, you just have to deliver something, usually the first draft, but since that's accepted by your boss and colleagues, you keep doing it. Another type of procrastinator is the one who sees the deadline pass and still do nothing. These people might have bills that go unpaid for no real reason, and will pay unnecessary late fees on stuff. They might even put off filling out forms that will get them money back for taxes, and other beneficial stuff, even though it's hard from the outside to understand why someone would do that.

    So that are a bunch of reasons why someone might procrastinate even though a deadline is fixed. In the podcast they talk about the difference between procrastinating and putting things off, where the latter might be a good thing to do, but procrastination that ends up hurting you or making your life difficult is something to try to look into and fix. Interestingly enough, they talked about how no pomodoros or GTD systems can help you if you procrastinate for deep psychological reasons, because you'll just ignore the systems anyway. For me, these system only work for a day or two, never long term.

    In the podcast, they talk about facing your fear. When you say that tasks appear to big, or perhaps are too undefined, there's fear connected with facing the task since you don't know what is required of you and if you can do it. Divide and conquer sounds like a good approach, also giving yourself just 5 minutes to really think about the problem without making any judgments on your own capacity or worth. I usually avoid thinking about tasks because I'm afraid that I've already put it off for too long, so now it might be too late. I might have to involve other people to help me out, which I'd have to do close to the deadline, which is embarrassing because I would have to admit I've put it off when I should have been working on it. But spending 5 minutes to clarify the task and write some notes about what I already know and what kind of output I have to produce usually helps make the task feel a lot more manageable and less scary. Another option is to tell yourself you're going to work on finishing the task for 10 minutes, and then you stop and evaluate how you feel. If you've put something off, you expect to feel horrible, but usually you're instead invigorated by finally having started on the task and will keep on going.

    What has helped me is the idea of 3 MITs, Most Important Tasks, that you identify each morning. I write down three things I want to achieve that I think I can manage during that day, even if it's less than what I would like to finish. If I do them, I let myself procrastinate by reading Hacker News or Reddit with a lot better conscience, because I've usually delivered some tangible result to a colleague that day. This is also very nice when working from home, and I'm usually more productive from a task perspective when I work from home and can focus on my MITs without interruptions instead of being at the office with my colleagues.

  4411. A Universal Law of Procrastination (2016) 2018-05-31 01:30:40 1_player
    There's so much research about procrastination, and any everybody does it, in some form or another.

    Is procrastinating the norm and being driven the exception? Is something "wrong" with people that are more often than not doing everything on time? Maybe raised in a certain way, or exhibiting uncommon neural patterns.

    Doing research on why people procrastinate might be like researching why people aren't running as fast as Usain Bolt.

  4412. Want More Time? Get Rid of the Easiest Way to Spend It 2018-06-05 05:25:11 u90g4u8904
    I thought most of us recognize that HN is a waste of time. That's why theres a no-procrastinate feature.

    Most of the news I read here is unimportant, or doesn't affect me. Oh look, a framework. Oh wow, a company got funding.

    Occasionally there's a neat article about our industry which makes me stop and think. And then I go into the comment section to have a healthy debate about it. But who am I kidding? I don't know anyone here. And nothing I say will likely change any minds. And vice versa.

    At the end of the day, HN is mindless entertainment. Some days I'm restless and I can't just do nothing. But I need a break from work. So I spend 5 minutes on HN and go back to what I'm doing. Unless it's nice outside. Then I take a walk.

  4413. Why Children Aren't Behaving and What We Can Do About It 2018-06-06 01:06:42 aidenn0
    >> If a kid doesn't want to do it,

    > How can this even be an argument.

    I mentioned it because if my child wants to do their homework then all problems go away. The ultimate goal is that my child will want to do their homework; I'm obviously not going to monitor their homework once they are in college.

    >> and the person assigning it doesn't care if they do it

    > They do obviously since you have negative feedback from the teachers about undone homework.

    Let me tell you an analogous story from my work: Another engineer tells me they have an urgent problem they need solved. Every time they ask me about it they stress how urgent it is. However, when I ask for clarification or more information, it takes them several work days, and sometimes several reminders for them to get back to me. I ran into them a few weeks after the issue was resolved and asked them how it went. They respond that they haven't done any testing of it yet.

    Was the problem really urgent for them? After all, they did tell me many times how urgent it was.

    > Also as a parent shouldn't you care if they do it?

    I want my child to be successful. Doing homework is a very important part of that. However, as I said earlier the goal is that when they are older they will choose to do that. I do not believe that standing behind my child for 3 hours a night 5 days a week making sure they stay on-task is an effective way of achieving that goal (not to mention that with 4 children it would take up 6 hours each of my time and my wife's time).

    My parents were incredibly strict about homework. The day I left the house I stopped doing homework and I nearly flunked out of college. My wife's parents were far less strict about homework and she graduated college in 3 years.

    It seems to be working with my kids too. My oldest is a 5th grader and recently had a research paper due. She gathered her materials and then procrastinated. She was obviously embarrassed when she asked to stay up late to work on it, which to me is a sign that she understands it's her responsibility to get it done.

    >> I don't think it's okay to disrespect teachers

    > Then why can she be obnoxious in class, complain about it at home and still nothing happens?

    I never said nothing happens. In this specific case I had her collate worksheets for the teacher before school one morning. I find it absurd that I had to be the one to correct a behavior that had been going on in the classroom for 5 days.

    > Do you meet regularily with the teachers?

    In general 4 times a year (there's a quarter system here). For this specific case, I volunteered in the classroom for an hour a week, so I saw the teacher a lot (it's also how I know that she had zero control over the classroom). The teacher never informed me of my daughter's behavior, nor the threat of detention.

    > Or communicate with them about how you wished they would enforce punitions?

    Yes. Some listen, others ignore me (My wife has been told she's wrong, perhaps a bit of casual sexism there, but I never been contradicted, just ignored by the teachers that tell my wife she's wrong).

    > Or at the very least tell them how you learned about how your child is doing X (why do you even learn it from her, isn't there supposed to be feedback every trimester or such ?) which sucks, is unappropriate and which you've discussed with her, etc...

    Yes, I've done all these things (and it's quarters rather than trimesters where I live).

  4414. Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders 2018-06-06 05:50:28 htaunay
    This. Why on earth would an organization invest resources in a productivity tool which is by design optimized to make you procrastinate?

  4415. Ask HN: How do you stay focused when working on hard problems? 2018-06-11 10:24:57 Nomentatus
    Don't ever solve a hard problem - let your unconscious mind do that; it's far more capable. That's Bertie's advice.

    Bertrand Russell's method was to concentrate with great intensity on the importance of a problem, smack his head against it for some time, for days or perhaps months. Then to forget about it and let the answer pop into his head much later. The idea is to convince your unconscious mind of how critical it is to devote itself to finding a solution - to convince it of the emotional importance of solving it.

    "My own belief is that a conscious thought can be planted into the unconscious if a sufficient amount of vigour and intensity is put into it. Most of the unconscious consists of what were once highly emotional conscious thoughts, which have now become buried. It is possible to do this process of burying deliberately, and in this way the unconscious can be led to do a lot of useful work. I have found, for example, that if I have to write upon some rather difficult topic the best plan is to think about it with very great intensity - the greatest intensity of which I am capable - for a few hours or days, and at the end of that time give orders, so to speak, that the work is to proceed underground. After some months I return consciously to the topic and find that the work has been done. Before I had discovered this technique, I used to spend the intervening months worrying because I was making no progress; I arrived at the solution none the sooner for this worry, and the intervening months were wasted, whereas now I can devote them to other pursuits." - The Conquest of Happiness

    So yes, procrastinate - but only after thumping your noggin into the problem, hard. Don't worry about which first steps to take, you don't know them and probably won't 'till after you intuit the solution if it's a genuinely hard problem. Your frustration is the point; it's how you convince the unconscious to get to work. Idiotic research, cogitation, problem review are all useful activities for this purpose if you really mentally engage and create mental urgency.

    Then drop it like a stone. And wait.

    I've found this does work, across a wide range of problems. Sometimes I've had to go through the cycle, reloading the problem emotionally, as it were, a few times on problems that took decades to solve.

  4416. Habits of Highly Miserable People 2018-06-12 10:21:45 Karunamon
    The rest of the list notwithstanding, this one got me thinking:

    >Well-meaning friends and relatives will try to sabotage your efforts to be thankless. For example, while you’re in the middle of complaining about the project you procrastinated on at work to your spouse during an unhealthy dinner, he or she might try to remind you of how grateful you should be to have a job or food at all.

    Am I the only person who finds these sorts of pithy attempts to be colossally irritating?

    Feeling sad/depressed? Cheer up!

    Feeling overwhelmed? It's not so bad!

    Job annoying you? At least you have a job!

    Yes, thank you for the comment and completely shutting down my attempts at commiserating. Now am I not only still bothered by what I was originally bothered by, I'm annoyed at the interlocutor.

    Perhaps I'm only 1/14th miserable? :)

  4417. The Psychology of Dreaded Tasks 2018-06-12 17:09:17 pipio21
    I have been doing that for years form me and for others(managing people) so they do not procrastinate with the team like they will do if alone. I do that without telling them I am doing that.

    I will add some things I consider very important:

    Use paper, write things down. Dividing a big task means nothing if you have no external memory you could trust to free the brain short term memory but you could recover it later. Paper today is the cheapest and more advanced external memory there is.

    You could also use a tape recorder if you prefer audio memory.

    After creating small sub task(tactics) from your general strategic thinking, put a checklist square near it. When you finish the task, check it.

    Every hour of deep work, mark it on a calendar like a prisoner does with sticks. This provides visual feedback for your brain of your accomplishments, specially with hard tasks that takes months to complete.

    The word for managing to do dread task is "reframing" into something that is important and positive for you.

    Of course if you have money and power you could delegate most of the dreaded task, like googlers do with most of their domestic chores.

    There are more things but the important thing is that you need practice, practice and practice until you get it. And like in anything else you will learn it much much faster if you personally know someone who "gets it" and learn from this person directly.

    I have met some "naturals" of this processes in my life but I am not. I developed this skill over a long period of time, making me super productive compared to when I started.

  4418. Companies die when they run out of creative people (YouTube) 2018-06-17 05:18:26 andai
    It's pretty long (>6000 words), but here's a section that hit too close to home:

    Conscientiousness: Exceptionally Low

    You are exceptionally low in conscientiousness, which is the primary dimension of dutiful achievement in the Big Five personality trait scientific model. Conscientiousness is a measure of obligation, attention to detail, hard work, persistence, cleanliness, efficiency and adherence to rules, standards and processes. Conscientious people implement their plans and establish and maintain order.

    Your score puts you at the 0th percentile for conscientiousness. If you were one of 100 people in a room, you would be less conscientious than 99 of them and more conscientious than 0 of them.

    People exceptionally low in conscientiousness do not consider duty as a virtue or an obligation. Instead, they regard those who slog away diligently at their task as suckers, teacher’s pets and boot-lickers. They will not even work hard if directly and continually pushed by outside forces (supervisors, spouses, friends, parents). They can be exceptionally skilled at wasting time and slacking off and justifying it. They are almost certain to procrastinate (particularly if they are also above average in neuroticism). Even if they do commit to doing something, they will be late, or delayed, even when there is absolutely no reason for failing to deliver. They inevitably formulate and deliver excuses for their failure under such circumstances, blaming the situation for their problems with task focus and completion. They are not all decisive, neat, organized, future-oriented, or reliable, and they find themselves constantly and continually distracted.

  4419. Ask HN: How do you stay motivated? 2018-06-18 04:01:35 inertiatic
    I can occasionally procrastinate heavily.

    I will procrastinate when what I need to do is hard (requires too much effort), when it is too easy, or when there is too much uncertainty involved (worst out of the three).

    So personally instead of trying to combat the symptoms with techniques like forced breaks or powering through any urge to do something else, I try to address the causes by taking up appropriate tasks or breaking them down sufficiently.

  4420. People’s egos get bigger after meditation and yoga, says a new study 2018-06-21 01:12:06 redmaverick
    The reality, at-least for me is that it is a productivity tool. After meditation, I just do things I normally would procrastinate on like its not a big deal. Chores don't seem like chores etc.

  4421. Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination 2018-06-21 22:15:09 0xbxd
    Ok, so what actual science is this based on? Why should I give out personal stuff like "What are you avoiding right now" if it doesn't have an effect on the outcome when completing this form (because you're probably trying to figure out what people procrastinate most often...)?

    Anyways, not sure about this type of application. In general one should avoid medical apps or forms put together by a start up. It typically doesn't involve any science or actual medical advice, and with things that can also be caused by some serious medical issue (procrastination can be caused by depression) I don't really think this is the right way to go.

    If you actually did not just pull a content marketing thing, and this is based on actual science, then why not include some sources?

  4422. Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination 2018-06-21 22:26:19 droidist2
    WebMD? So the reason you procrastinate: you probably have a brain tumor?

  4423. Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination 2018-06-21 22:55:24 hh3k0
    And you do valuable things when you procrastinate?

  4424. Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination 2018-06-21 23:05:36 WhompingWindows
    Interesting comparison between smoking and procrastination. If we examine the neurology of both, we see a dopamine-centric reward system behind task completion, and probably a very small dopamine hit after procrastination. Similarly, nicotine has been shown to affect the very dopaminergic pathways involved in reward/pleasure systems. So, in a very real neurological way, the comparison is apt. I wonder if people who succesfully go cold-turkey off nicotine have some tendency to procrastinate or not? Or generally, do those who smoke have a tendency to procrastinate or not?

  4425. Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination 2018-06-21 23:24:56 1maginary
    It'd be cool see some stats for the results people get. I'm sure a lot of people are taking the quiz right now. Could we find what makes people procrastinate most often?

    Spoiler, I got 'lack of value' and for some reason I bet it's gonna be a winner, at least when it comes to the HN userbase

  4426. Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination 2018-06-21 23:34:10 notheguyouthink
    > Procrastination is the avoidance of activity due to a discomfort/fear/anxiety and subsequent inability to scale the discomfort wall that exists between you and the tasks' completion.

    Perhaps this is wrong, but I feel like another important (and possibly most common) source of procrastination is not avoidance, but rather simply getting more enjoyment (dopamine/etc) of other activities. Ie, I don't think I have to be avoiding work to procrastinate, I may simply get more dopamine from Reddit-ing and thus mentally prioritize it.

    Focusing on why your work or w/e you're procrastinating from is often the wrong approach in my opinion. The competition for tasks being avoided are typically pure entertainment, all dopamine and no effort. Tasks that are "meaningful" such as work, learning, etc often can't compete with entertainment for your brains drug dependencies.

    Instead of focusing on tactics to improve procrastinated tasks, I've found my life is better when I instead limit their competition. I've had serious Reddit problems in the past, where I become basically addicted to it, and so my brain keeps injecting Reddit it any time I'm compiling or w/e. If I instead break that habit through heavy limitation of the dopamine provider, I've found myself to be far more productive.

    Now methods to make tasks you want to do give you more dopamine are always welcome. I love micro-todos, and found them to be pretty effective at giving me a sense of accomplishment and, I imagine, dopamine. But micro-todos will never compete with pure entertainment, so I need to cut that. Or, at the very least, cut it from my default response of when I'm having spare brain cycles (like compiling) and jumping to fill it with entertainment dopamine.

  4427. Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination 2018-06-21 23:54:09 IncRnd
    > Procrastination is the avoidance of activity due to a discomfort/fear/anxiety and subsequent inability to scale the discomfort wall that exists between you and the tasks' completion.

    The cause isn't part of the definition. Procrastination is simply the delaying of something, whatever the reason for doing do. One can procrastinate due to wanting to do something else. It doesn't have to be from an aversion.

  4428. Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination 2018-06-22 00:09:08 have_faith
    Ditto. In my case it's just that the amount of work I would have to do to be happy with my own side projects causes me to procrastinate on starting them, as I don't have a perfect image in my head of an objectively successful outcome yet so I just delay.

  4429. Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination 2018-06-22 00:29:15 aclsid
    I know people hate to admit it and create these fancy terms for ages old behavior. Procrastinate is being lazy,as simple as that. Reading news and watching YouTube videos while you are getting paid to do work is being lazy with a capital L.

    So yeah, please stop coming up with excuses if you procrastinate as if it is some sort of disease, drop the distractions and just get to work.

  4430. Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination 2018-06-22 00:41:06 mdekkers
    Procrastination is the avoidance of activity due to a discomfort/fear/anxiety and subsequent inability to scale the discomfort wall that exists between you and the tasks' completion.

    Incorrect. The dictionary definition of procrastination is To put off doing something, especially out of habitual carelessness or laziness or To postpone or delay needlessly. Literally meaning, from Latin, putting off until tomorrow. I procrastinate way too much, but because I get bored, distracted and I'm lazy. None of which is a discomfort, fear or anxiety.

  4431. Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination 2018-06-22 00:49:16 DannyB2
    March is national procrastination week.

    So it is okay to procrastinate then, in observance of the event. But people don't always get around to observing it right at the beginning of March.

  4432. Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination 2018-06-22 00:54:01 vidarh
    I agree that it's too easy to just blame avoidance. For me there is a very viscerally different feeling when I'm avoiding something because I really don't want to do it, vs. when there are other things I want to do because they're entertaining.

    The difference is that if I genuinely have other things I want to do, I'll get enjoyment out of it, while if I'm trying to avoid something else I'll get to a point where I'll think "hold on; why am I doing this? I'm not enjoying this" and realise I'm doing it to avoid something else, and still feel the pull to do some nonsense activity while getting more and more miserable.

    One strategy I've used is to try to stop regularly and simply ask myself "am I actually enjoying this? why am I doing it?" - I give myself relatively wide latitude to continue "wasting" time if I'm actually enjoying what I'm doing, because sooner or later I'm "done", and if I was actually myself I often feel energised enough to get much more done afterwards.

    But the moment I'm not enjoying myself, I'll start probing into why I feel that way.

    Some of it certainly fits under "avoidance", but that's also a very broad category and not very useful without exploring the more specific reasons I'm avoiding things.

    Sometimes it's because it's too much to bite over, so I instead "procrastinate" by deciding to break down my todo list into smaller chunks. Often that will break the deadlock by identifying small-enough tasks that I'll be happy to get out of the way (I guess that fits into your "micro-todos").

    Sometimes it's just not a fun task, and I'm pushing it ahead of me because I know my self-imposed deadline is not real and is just waiting until I really have to do it. In which case I'll try to reorganise things and do something else instead and just accept my tendency to do things right before a deadline when I know how long it'll take.

    Sometimes I'm just too tired, in which case I either go rest or try to pick activities I can do while tired (benefit of working from home: if I'm mentally worn out, there's always housework to get out of the way which doesn't require much thinking).

    Sometimes I "trick" myself into it by setting a schedule of 30-60 minutes of different sets of tasks. So I'll commit to "only" doing 30 minutes of what I need to get done, then maybe an hour of something lower priority that I actually enjoy, then another hour of my urgent tasks. Sometimes I'll find when I've just tricked myself into starting, I'll keep going longer than scheduled, if so I'll let it happen, but if not I'll strictly adhere to the limit on the more enjoyable tasks and keep track of whether or not I start lagging behind my schedule.

    Sometimes the things I've decided logically I "should" be doing just don't emotionally feel like a good way to spend my time. E.g. I might have decided I "should" be planning some new project because I think it's important, but emotionally I might be drained and need downtime, and dragging my heels is a way of not having to acknowledge I have too much on my plate.

    For things like Reddit, I find a major factor is the inbox. If someone replies, and I read their reply chances are I'll compulsively reply. This is easier to avoid with HN. With Reddit, what helped immensely was when I recognised what I was doing, and every now and again go "ok, enough" and click the inbox and physically look away until I've gone back to the main page to get the unread messages safely out of the way without having them draw me in again. Making it less intensive by cutting off heated arguments that way makes it much easier for me to break away and do something else.

  4433. Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination 2018-06-22 02:34:29 grafelic
    I wish had the time to procrastinate more.

    Ironically, my job, which is the reason for my lack of procrastination time, I got directly as a result of the many hours I procrastinated during the last year of university.

    Sometimes procrastination pays of, you just don't know it whilst procrastinating, which makes it valid procrastination at the time.

  4434. Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination 2018-06-22 04:17:27 kaybe
    How did you procrastinate during your final university year?

  4435. Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination 2018-06-22 07:45:42 sasaf5
    You procrastinate because you are tired. Sleep, and entertain yourself with the presence of good people. Boom, procrastination gone.

  4436. Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination 2018-06-23 20:33:36 mendelsd
    I believe I procrastinate because life is so demanding and complex that I am constantly straining against the limits of my productivity for imposed work. It is due largely to a mismatch between my natural interests and society's demands. The question is what to do about that so I can be more effective.

    "Because baboons are rarely threatened by famine, plague or predators, they are good models for socialized disease, Sapolsky says: 'Baboon societies are ironically a lot like Westernized humans. We're ecologically privileged enough that we can invent social and psychological stress. Baboons in the Serengeti, who only work three hours a day to meet their caloric needs, are similarly privileged. They ulcerate because of social complexities.'" [1]

    Procrastination, it seems to me, ultimately falls in the category of "ulcerating because of social complexities".

    [1] https://news.stanford.edu/news/2001/february21/aaassapolsky-...

  4437. Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination 2018-06-23 22:33:09 lmagno
    "Nobody procrastinates doing what they enjoy." I'm guessing mental illnesses are out of the picture here then.

  4438. In Praise of Maintenance (2016) 2018-06-24 12:15:27 perl4ever
    The capacity and urge for maintenance is a discrete mental capacity which I sometimes experience, but not often enough. If there was a drug to induce it, I would want to take it.

    While it's true that sometimes I put my efforts into one thing and not another, I definitely think maintaining things generally is intertwined with mental health - in fact, the somewhat archaic term "mental hygiene" I've often thought suggests this. I generally experience an irrational need to procrastinate that is the opposite of a desire to do maintenance, and I don't see any positive side to it.

  4439. The independent researcher 2018-07-01 05:16:04 Al-Khwarizmi
    Academic here. I agree with you, and I think the majority of academics would. After all, most of us get into the field because we like research itself, not because we like writing. But the thing is that research is useless if you don't communicate it. A researcher that doesn't write is like a cook that throws their food directly to the bin, or a singer that only sings in the shower. It's legitimate that they do it for fun, but no one would consider them to be a cook and a singer, or take their work seriously.

    Anyway, if you had kept doing research after grad school and climbing the ranks of academia (I assume from the wording that you didn't) you would see that writing papers is far from the worst part... in grad school I often did research to procrastinate writing a paper, now I often write a paper to procrastinate writing a grant request or doing paperwork... :)

  4440. Marijuana addiction is real, and rising 2018-07-01 22:16:15 robdachshund
    How is weed harmful? Any mental and physical effects subside with cessation of use.

    My buddy just quit for a month. The only issues he had were having to deal with his terrible IBS without what had effectively become medicine for him.

    I smoke for similar reasons and for anti anxiety. It is FAR less harmful than brain melting benzos like xanax and Klonopin.

    Wanna talk about harm? When I was prescribed Klonopin, I essentially blacked out for a month of my life. I didn't "wake up" from that until I missed a dose and promptly tossed it in the trash.

    If you are so concerned with some nitpicky level of subjective "harm," maybe we should talk about all the harm prescription drugs can cause. When you have chronic illnesses and the medicine only makes you worse, self medication becomes an enticing prospect.

    What about kids with severe seizures, etc? We've seen some of the most conservative states allow cbd oil because it is the only thing that works.

    If you have an open mind, you should look into the endocannabinoid system that resides in every human being. We have a massive network of receptors that rely on cannabinoids to mediate chronic illnesses and reduce inflammation in our bodies.

    It is thought that we have this system and relationship with cannabinoids because humans have been cultivating and consuming marijuana for thousands of years. Weed and humans have developed alongside each other over time in a kind of symbiotic relationship. To simply pretend that weed is some sort of harmful narcotic is so far from the truth.

    Excess is the issue. A person who let's weed run their life is no different than someone that overeats or procrastinates constantly. If you have bad habits and no self control you can take anything to excess.

  4441. How private equity firms make money offering loans to cash-strapped Americans 2018-07-03 03:11:28 siruncledrew
    That's the thing though, people do run close to the edge. These loans arose from opportunity, and the opportunity arose from societal conditions and psychological compulsion. Just like people who procrastinate on their papers, there are people who put off paying bills, having a savings account, and doing timely repairs. These seem like different orders of magnitude in comparison, yet the kind of thinking behind it is not that different. Add having less money into the mix, and the life consequences of these decisions really take off.

    As for societal conditions, almost everyone needs loans for something at some point, but taking out a small-time loan at a high interest rate is almost always a terrible option. Usually when there is a terrible option on the table with other less-terrible options, people don't choose the terrible one unless they really have to (or have absolutely no clue what they are doing). A rich person buying a BMW isn't going to take out a 300% loan on the car because they have other options and it's a literal waste of money for them. However, a poor person who's 1998 Toyota Camry broke down and needs to get the most bare-minimum used car to keep their only job has to suck it up and pay the 300% loan because they have no other options. By the time it's all said and done, the poor person paid a lot more relative to the cost of the item they bought even though the total amount may be less.

  4442. The impact of the ‘open’ workspace on human collaboration 2018-07-04 03:51:36 inertiatic
    Thanks for the tips, I'll keep this going although it's very off-topic, hopefully this will get downvoted into hiding so it doesn't pollute the thread too much.

    I've been fit before getting a desk job and caffeine doesn't do much for me, so these are out.

    Sleep impacts my ability to be productive I have noticed, so I am indeed getting as much and as good quality sleep as I can while having a baby.

    My current rituals are, have something I enjoy for breakfast, ideally while in front of the computer doing something work related. I feel like ego depletion is a real thing for me, and I am more likely to be able to focus if I baby myself in some ways. I take very (too) frequent breaks and walk around, get coffee etc. without judging myself for slacking, and the positive attitude helps me feel good enough to really buckle down and get work done when I feel I really need to.

    I try to stop working for the day at a point where picking back up should be straight forward.

    I also started getting to work earlier in the day, before most people, so I get alone time in the morning. This works out great for me despite not being much of a morning person.

    Seeing as I need to use music to drown out noise, I choose agreeable classical music, nothing avant-garde or noisy, when I really need to get things done. I try to avoid music that I enjoy too much, as I tend to get sucked into it and find myself hand-picking "just 1 more" song. Or when music gets tiresome but noise is still present, something like brain.fm helps me eek out just some more attention.

    Finally, although it's a bit of a cheat, some autonomy in what you work on helps me immensely. I am way more likely to procrastinate if I have to do something too hard (for my current skillset, even if technically accessible) or too uninteresting. So I leave these tasks for someone else and try to pick up things that I am more likely to keep working on.

    All in all, at work I can manage myself fine due to the added structure and the routine around it. I have a lot more trouble getting things done outside of it.

  4443. Living with a best-selling Indian phone for 10 days 2018-07-14 17:45:38 joshvm
    I've been using a Nokia 216 for a month while my smartphone gets repaired. It has 4G and Bluetooth, but not WiFi (why?). It has a lousy camera, but the LED torch is good. It has threaded texts (this is not common, apparently) and the battery lasts forever even using data. There is no GPS nor, tragically, Snake.

    You get Opera Mini installed which is... an experience. There is no cache (and probably hardly any RAM either), so if you close the browser your entire session gets deleted. History somewhat works. Every now and then you get an ad injected - the ad never seems to change. My phone is trying to make me buy a German Honor A10. I live in the UK.

    Javascript, of course, is not supported. If you want to interact with an element it refreshes the entire page and re-renders it to reflect the update.

    It makes it painfully obvious which websites are really optimised for mobile, which ones just have a setting for small screens, and which don't bother at all. Simple sites work well - HN comments is good, most news websites (e.g. BBC) work, Wikipedia is fine. People are astounded when I can fact-check in the pub. Browsing Google images is also surprisingly good. Pages with custom fonts often don't load at all. Forms are hit and miss.

    Data usage is really light. I have a 100MB bundle and I barely put a dent in it.

    It's, on the whole, usable. I can look up things, check the weather and procrastinate.

    What is really missing is maps. Google Maps does not work at all. The interface doesn't work - if you get a list of possible destinations, often you can't click on the one you actually want. There don't seem to be any usable ultra-low bandwidth navigation websites. Bing doesn't even try, and not much luck with Bing either.

    If I had access to slack, 2-factor authentication (without using texts) and semi-decent mapping, I'd be tempted not to go back to a smartphone.

  4444. Cognitive Distortions of People Who Get Stuff Done (2012) [pdf] 2018-07-15 05:43:22 ggm
    Yes, I think there are at least five. So this is a list of at least five, but not the five I think.

    Several of them feel like variations of the same theme: I know I'm right, so I can disregard evidence|opinion|counter-argument because .. an axiom of the system is I know I'm right.

    If I had a sixth, it would be the tendency to latch onto a mantra. "think different" doesn't really mean very much, but boy, successful people who get stuff done like to say it.

    (I'm not a person who gets stuff done btw. the mantra my get-stuff-done colleagues say which feels apposite is: "do the shit work first" which kind of makes sense: they don't procrastinate about things they'd rather not do)

    Another one: seventh might be they believe implicitly they are the smartest person in the room

  4445. Cognitive Distortions of People Who Get Stuff Done (2012) [pdf] 2018-07-15 21:03:36 SZJX
    > Several of them feel like variations of the same theme: I know I'm right, so I can disregard evidence|opinion|counter-argument because .. an axiom of the system is I know I'm right.

    This if taken to the extreme is just narcissism and can wreck havoc. My father very frequently just gets possessed with insisting how only his interpretation or memory of the events is correct and ignores all sorts of even the most basic evidence, to the extent of absolutely distorting the reality. Not hard to imagine what sort of chaos and pain it has created in the family. Maybe sometimes this helps in running a business but if one takes it to personal interactions it can be simply ruining.

    Also I do believe that the best leaders aren't the ones who insist on being a jerk but are instead those who can objectively evaluate evidence, genuinely listen to others and immediately acknowledge their own folly when their previous beliefs are wrong. Such traits can only be a plus, while distortive stubbornness is only negative and is a trait found in many depressed people as well.

    > (I'm not a person who gets stuff done btw. the mantra my get-stuff-done colleagues say which feels apposite is: "do the shit work first" which kind of makes sense: they don't procrastinate about things they'd rather not do)

    Sound advice.

    > Another one: seventh might be they believe implicitly they are the smartest person in the room

    How is this very different from the "personal exceptionalism" thing? Aren't they exactly the same? (The only difference might be that the original author insisted upon "macro-exceptionalism" but I doubt people can easily draw such a line in their self perception).

  4446. ‘Find Your Passion’ Is Awful Advice 2018-07-17 01:19:27 amorphous
    Always the same vastly simplified discussion.

    Obviously, having a deep interest in your work, something you may feel "passionate" about is a good thing.

    Obviously, the opposite, hating your work or what it represents is not good for you.

    Obviously, every work, no matter what, has boring parts.

    Obviously, if you like chocolate cake and eat it every day you gonna hate it.

    Obviously, waiting to find your "passion" is not gonna help you. It is just an excuse to procrastinate or avoid work.

    So the truth is somewhere in the middle. Obviously.

  4447. The Effect of Sleep on Happiness 2018-07-19 00:57:49 vesak
    Well, I have theories. One, it breaks habits. You may have teached yourself over the years to procrastinate during the day, but not during the night.

    Two, you know it's painful enough that you'd rather not waste the time doing something stupid and worthless.

    Three, it lowers your mental state enough that you'll just drudge on like a robot.

  4448. Work less, get more: New Zealand firm's four-day week an 'unmitigated success' 2018-07-20 05:08:28 observer12
    Not everyone would be off the same days. In one position I worked we did 12 hour shifts that included a paid lunch. The schedule was 3 days work 4 days off, then 4 days work 3 days off. In a two week period you actually worked 84 hours instead of the normal 80 hours in two week. The difference though was we accomplished a lot in the 3 or 4 days of work because there wasn't enough time in the week to procrastinate too much. Keep in mind this was a 24/7 team environment and it was organized so that your alternates (people on opposite schedule) would take over anything you didn't finish and vice versa.

  4449. Ask HN: How do you organize/track your personal goals? 2018-07-22 21:46:55 nferracin
    I also use a trello board. I have one column for each year, plus a wishlist column with short/mid/long term goals and a separate column just for travels that I want to do. Once a task is completed I mark it with the green label. If I just don't care anymore about something or I "fail" the task, then I mark it in red.

    I find this setup quite helpful for:

    - breaking down huge goals (such as learning a new language)

    - having short/mid/long term goals all available at a glance

    - giving priority to stuff I'd otherwise keep procrastinating (I tend to procrastinate for weeks or months doing several things until I put everything in one checklist at the top of the current year column and power through them all in a short time)

    - giving myself some perspective and appreciate all the things achieved in the past months/years. Things that were once just dreams or seemed very hard to achieve are now the normal day-to-day life and it's way too easy to undervalue them.

    I use the board in a positive way, in the sense that I don't see deleting tasks or failing to achieve something as some kind of failure. I only celebrate the green "done" labels.

    EDIT: formatting

  4450. Ask HN: As a CTO, what is your most frustrating problem with technical debt? 2018-07-24 22:29:47 notender
    With technical debt, each new feature now costs $nx where n is the multiplier for the accrued technical debt. A feature that you need in 2 months to support a market shift now needs 4 months to complete due to technical debt.

    The issue with this oversimplified formula is that you cant accurately determine which debt affects which features. For some features it could be zero, and others it could be 100.

    However, I do agree that all teams should be carrying an amount of technical debt to be healthy. It shows a certain quality of decision making to balance it well.

    All too often though it becomes an excuse to procrastinate and that might as well be gambling.

  4451. Page Lifecycle API 2018-07-26 05:21:10 hnaccy
    I procrastinate bookmarking them and the order and position of the tabs serves as a sort of record of my thought process and actions when I was looking at them.

    I navigate them using the tab hotkeys, container tab menu, and fast scrolling while watching for favicon clusters.

  4452. Facebook stock drops more than 20% after revenue forecast misses 2018-07-26 08:51:24 mancerayder
    But surely they're not the only villains. It began with pop-up ads in the old days, evolving to that interstitial nightmare. Mobile notifications of almost anything, combined with a snaring in of people's attention using human weaknesses: need for attention and validation, frailty with regards to gossip, need to find a way to procrastinate during difficult times (work) and much more that I'm missing. It's time for some serious scholarship in the psychological arena in this direction.

  4453. Unit testing anti-patterns: Structural Inspection 2018-08-06 11:56:13 sudhirj
    Yes that’s exactly what it is. If you business is selling a game that works, ogres not eating other ogres is a requirement for your game to be considered bug free and sell well. (YMMV, depending on who your audience is ogre cannibal feat might also be fun).

    This is as opposed to testing that that the eat method on the ogre only accepts an instance of the Human class. If you do that you’ll have a brittle system on your hands, and when your ogres decide to eat horses (business decision) you’ll have to change a lot of tests and will instead procrastinate by writing a blog post about why TDD sucks.

  4454. Ask: How do you apply “programmer’s” efficiency in everyday life things? 2018-08-06 18:26:40 tchaffee
    Your advice would be just as good as the advice I gave. Because it contains the most important part of my advice:

    "Try timing a few things and see for yourself."

    The point is that some things in life deserve to be looked at for efficiency improvements, and some things should just get done. Understanding the difference between the two takes some observation. And by observing people who are organized and efficient as opposed to people who are disorganized and procrastinate in the framework of goal oriented vs. task oriented I think it will become quickly obvious to the OP where the difference is.

    Making that shift from task oriented to goal oriented hugely improved my own life. I was very focused on collecting long lists of tasks and then trying to optimize them. While I was determining the optimal route for collecting building supplies, dropping off the laundry, doing my grocery shopping, optimizing the cooking process, etc., my friends had already built the pool deck and were on the way to the supermarket... YMMV.

    > why this opinion isn't worth a lot without strong evidence

    Do you really need strong evidence for something that you can quickly and easily try yourself at home? If I suggest an improvement to your bike riding technique you want a scholarly study or you'll just give it a go?

  4455. A Dutch first: Ingenious BMW theft attempt 2018-08-10 05:24:33 Nasrudith
    I wonder why they bothered with the smash - broken glass would make people take their car to a dealer. Just the "failed jimmying" might have gone if not unnoticed as a police issue procrastinated in fixing. Maybe they were just frustrated auto thieves.

  4456. U.S. Attorney Moves to Dismiss Murder-For-Hire Charges Against Ross Ulbricht 2018-08-15 02:43:15 mchannon
    They're not as separate as many seem to think.

    The reason lawyers tend to ignore the speedy trial act is a practical one. They object, the judge dismisses the charges without prejudice, and the prosecution refiles the charges (or substantially similar ones). Speedy trial clock reset to zero. Everybody except the defendant shares a laugh.

    In many cases (including mine), the prosecutor will of their own accord and with no apparent prompting, supersede their indictment with minimal changes, achieving much the same result. It's like hitting the snooze button on a case you want to procrastinate (or sweat/squeeze the defendant into a plea agreement).

    This works great until the case is dismissed without prejudice and then the prosecution tries to refile past the statute of limitations. Whoops. Check, and mate. The only practical power of the speedy trial act.

  4457. U.S. Attorney Moves to Dismiss Murder-For-Hire Charges Against Ross Ulbricht 2018-08-15 02:51:54 gamblor956
    I was a former public defender, guy.

    If a judge dismisses charges, then the defendant goes free. Defendants are okay with that. Sure, it gives prosecutors time to file more charges (so long as the SOL hasn't expired), but they only get that one free bite. The second time they file, judges will only dismiss charges on prosecutor motion with prejudice.

    In many cases (including mine), the prosecutor will of their own accord and with no apparent prompting, supersede their indictment with minimal changes, achieving much the same result. It's like hitting the snooze button on a case you want to procrastinate (or sweat/squeeze the defendant into a plea agreement).

    It sounds like you have a bad lawyer, but you're also not understanding what's going on. The original charges must still be brought to trial within 70 days of the original indictment...unless you (through your lawyer) waived that right. The superseding indictment only extends that window by 70 days...for the new charges. And judges generally only approve superseding indictments once. After that, the prosecutors must show cause as to why they couldn't get things right the first time.

    This works great until the case is dismissed without prejudice and then the prosecution tries to refile past the statute of limitations. Whoops. Check, and mate. The only practical power of the speedy trial act.

    What you just described was the SOL expiring. It had nothing to do with the speedy trial act.

  4458. The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do 2018-08-16 23:52:14 vlasev
    This can be modeled fairly easy. Let's say we want to do X. In our estimation, it would take some amount of work E divided into effort P over time t (so E = Pt), to borrow language from physics. We estimate this quantity and set out to work on the task. We expect that we'll get there at a rate of dE/dt = P, but we don't. In reality, we most often tend to achieve less per unit of time. I'd say it's when the effort required is more than P that we are most vulnerable to quitting on a task.

    But what if we've put no effort into the task yet? Well, I think procrastination of this sort is modeled well by our experience (Victor Hugo was an experienced author by that point). If in the past we've done some tasks and they've taken significantly longer time and energy than we initially thought, even if we don't consciously remember, our bodies will in some sense. I think what's happening is that there is a payoff based on the difference between effort P and required effort P' to finish in the same time. When P - P' > 0, we feel superb. When P - P' < 0, we feel like quitting.

    You'd think one's perception would be improved after writing a dozen books, but maybe that's part of the reason a person starts writing another book after the first. A little bit of forgetfulness. But the brain doesn't forget. So, internally, it knows. So we have procrastination.

    ---

    Example 1: Losing 20 lbs. How hard should it be?! A good goal to aim for if you do everything right and want to have a sustainable weight loss is 1 lb/wk. But realistically, it ends up being closer to 0.5 lb/wk for most. Would you spend something like 6 months to a year losing 20 lbs? What if there were more pounds to be lost? Now, if you go into this optimistically and not know this, you might lose a few pounds quickly and feel good, but then utterly quit when the real hard times come. (This mirrors any project that is easy to start but hard to complete, like html parsing)

    ---

    Example 2: You intuitively know that a phone call to your phone company can help you save some money on your phone bill, but whether consciously or not, you somehow remember that it will take you 1-2 hours and a lot of emotional energy. You put this phone call off until it causes you enough emotional pain on the daily that putting it off by another day is as bad as the phone call itself. (This is an example of not even starting a project due to the perceived pain)

    This highlights another thing. You can accumulate a lot of pain procrastinating on this call, but it's only the day to day pain that seems to matter in this strange internal calculation, because past pain is discounted a lot.

    ---

    Example 3: (A bit tongue in cheek but...) Sleep. Let's say you've had some difficulty falling asleep over the last week. You perceive it as something that takes half an hour of "effort" to fall asleep. Naturally, you procrastinate until that effort is low enough, but this usually leads to too little sleep in the end.

    ---

    Is there actionable advice from this? Yes. The more real-life knowledge you have of yourself, your projects (both successful and dropped), the more realistic your estimates can be. If you then bump up your estimates based on how off you were about them in the past, maybe then you'll get a glimpse on how much real work it'll take. Would you still start that project?

    Maybe you'll end up starting fewer projects but dropping fewer before the finish line.

  4459. The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do 2018-08-17 00:35:11 m3mpp
    We procrastinate because most of the jobs we do are completely mindless, repetitive and boring, and we have to spend so much time doing them. Good luck finding a method to fight that... Unless you're rich and the owner of your own time, in this case you don't need any "motivational" tool.

    Edit: lobotomy is another solution of course, using pills or any kind of drugs that massively reduce the amount of neurons in the brain.

  4460. The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do 2018-08-17 02:14:44 whack
    I have a pet theory than the reason people procrastinate, is because they don't concretely identify their future selves, as being the "same person" as their present self. Rather, they view their future self as an abstract person, more akin to a friend, than self. This level of relatedness varies with time as well. People identify very strongly with their future self from tomorrow, perhaps akin to their best friend. But they identify their future self from years/decades later, more akin to a distant cousin.

    From this perspective, procrastination becomes analogous to selfishness. A very "altruistic" person would prioritize their future self to the same extent that they would prioritize their present desires. Perhaps even more so. Whereas a more "self centered" person sees their future self as a stranger whose desires are inconsequential to their present selves.

    What would be really interesting to consider, is the correlation between "future altruism" and traditional altruism. One can imagine these two being completely uncorrelated, the same way a racist person can be completely uncaring towards other races whilst still being altruistic within their own race. But if there is indeed a stronger correlation, that would be a very interesting finding.

  4461. The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do 2018-08-17 04:21:44 taurath
    Correlation of that would seem to be that those who are best at dealing with discomfort are the best at doing tasks - I've found that I'm most productive that its less about being able to overcome discomfort, and more about not having the discomfort in the first place. Fear of failure, of not meeting expectations, etc can be put upon one by ones self and also the community. How do they train soldiers to be "doers" at first? They first break down the ego, and then establish fear and punishment based on NOT doing as ordered, so that it is always the path of least resistance and (internal) discomfort to do what is ordered. If you procrastinate up to the point that you have to pull an all nighter to get something done, thats because your fear of not doing the thing is finally present and overwhelming the discomfort to doing the thing.

    Finally, "whipping" or punishing ones self into being uncomfortable in order to do the thing primarily just does damage, and builds resistance to even thinking about the subject. Decrease the discomfort in doing the task (by breaking it down, and visualizing what success will reward you with), increase the discomfort for not doing the task (by putting off immediate rewards and gratification until the task is done), and you can ride down the hill instead of pushing upwards.

  4462. The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do 2018-08-17 06:57:22 TheSpiceIsLife
    Massive offtop, sorry about it. I've been noticing this a lot lately.

    I have a pet theory than the reason people procrastinate, is because they don't concretely identify their future selves, as being the "same person" as their present self.

    What is the purpose of the two commas in this sentence?

  4463. The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do 2018-08-17 18:12:07 Vektorweg
    I wouldn't have read the article, if I wouldn't procrastinate right now.

  4464. Show HN: I made wits.io where writers can earn money with book summaries 2018-08-17 21:55:22 muzani
    Yeah, I think there should be a few books in a "free tier" section. Maybe very popular books like the 4 Hour Workweek or Lean Startup.

    Then leave the rare content for membership tier. There is a 7 day trial, but it's a huge turn off as I'd just procrastinate and never look at it properly.

    Blinkist would put their low quality books in the free tier, which was also a turn off.

  4465. More Americans report near-constant cannabis use 2018-08-21 04:09:53 prolikewh0a
    >I smoke about everyday, but I don't have any problem pursuing my goals, producing creative works, or excelling in my career.

    Same, no issues. I have no issues with responsibility. I procrastinate more, but I don't feel like I'm missing or harming anything.

  4466. How to Hire Your First Engineer 2018-08-22 09:10:21 lmilcin
    Well, this is simple. You want somebody invested and passionate about the project.

    Have you ever noticed, you can move mountains if you are genuinely interested in something? That it is difficult to focus and too easy to procrastinate if you don't want to do something or find something boring?

    Corporations are good at solving large problems because they can throw funds and money at the problems. They can absorb the damage caused by people who are barely productive.

    When you are startup you can't do that. But the advantage you have is that you are looking for one person at this point in time and you can be picky and wait until you find the one. Bad hire at this point in time can frequently spell disaster for your budding enterprise.

    I don't want to say that it is totally impossible to find somebody who might not be interested about your idea but will still do good job. But it is unlikely and then remember, you are not only looking for your first engineer but also your first manager, possibly CTO, etc.

    Look at stories of successful startups -- in most cases first hires seem to have been critical and mostly seem to be passionate people who then established themselves close to the top of new organization.

  4467. Just Read the Book Already 2018-08-25 02:46:03 SZJX
    I think the so-called effect of the digital age is totally overblown. It's easy to write headlines about it and make everybody panic, but I don't think people in ancient times were that much of avid readers either. In fact the general literacy and the average time spent on reading by the population definitely increased massively, if anything. The ancient populace didn't have computers or TV to occupy themselves with, but they had plenty of other games and entertainment activities all the same. Bear in mind that reading and writing was never natural to human beings until very, very recently.

    Also, it's true that reading whole books is one way to get information. But plenty of great writers/readers have used reading methods where they distill the essence of the work or actively search out portions to put their emphasis on, and it worked out great for them. I was guilty of reading plenty of newsletters too seriously or reading through whole articles from the beginning to the end, even though reading on might produce very little additional information whatsoever. Now I have learned to better focus my energy: sometimes I skim the headlines, sometimes I skim the first and last paragraphs of an article, and I've already got 70% of what they have to say. Of course one might say that reading books can be something different to reading lower-quality news articles, but in the end time is really limited and "actual work" is something that gets done with your own hands, your own exploration and experience, not by reading and talking. This holds especially true for engineering work. One can't conceivably read whole reference manuals end to end without having actually built something serious with the tools being discussed. That's just pure procrastination, not real learning. Of course there are really well written or foundational books that deserve to be read cover to cover, accompanied with practices, and if one is reading for leisure on their spare time it's also totally fine to enjoy every line of a fiction. But I guess in terms of "getting things done", emphasizing "complete reading" instead of "getting the essence and doing" can be a bit misleading.

    tl;dr: I think if there's anything worth emphasizing in this age of information explosion, that is "just get real shit done already" instead of "just read the book and lose yourself/procrastinate potentially endlessly". This is something that has cost me very dearly and I'll ensure in the future to avoid this trap as best as I can.

  4468. What happens when we work non-stop 2018-08-25 18:21:47 watwut
    There are many professional developers who don't have side projects they would attend to regularly. Majority dont and those who do don't work on them every day.

    Those I have seen to work on side projects almost every day acted similarly to people who worked long hours - eithet got burned after a while or their hourly productivity at work went down (they chatted and socialized more at work, we're more talkative during meetings, procrastinated and wasted time with play tasks instead of doing real task).

  4469. Ask HN: What do you struggle with? 2018-08-30 04:34:31 C1ph3rL0ck
    Here's some reading I did that helped me:

    Zen Mind Beginners Mind - I'm not religious in the slightest but I knew a part of my problem was that I wasn't really being self aware. I had friend that was into meditation and swore it helped him be more self aware. So I picked up this book and read it along side using the Headspace app to get into meditation. I use it as a moment of calm and clarity, to regain my thoughts, and refocus. Especially when I feel procrastination kicking in. It helped me calm down and identify why I was procrastinating and often come up with a plan to deal with whatever was making me want to procrastinate. I found I was often thinking or focusing or stressing about something else instead of focusing on me and my wants.

    https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590308492/ref=oh_aui_deta...

    The Now Habit - This was a book a friend of mine recommended to me. They said it helped them breakout of the rut they felt they were stuck in. It definitely helped me a bit. At the very least it helped me identify the things I wanted to do and do them. While also enjoying myself with the "Guilt Free Play" he talks about being important.

    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001QNVP7M/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

    7 Habits of Highly Successful People: This book was another friend recommendation, that helped me focus on and deal with my own internal issues that was encouraging my procrastination. I was able to start identifying them and working on them.

    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01069X4H0/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

    It took me about 6 months of diligent work to get myself out of my procrastinating funk and get myself to a place where I was starting to be happy with what I did. I still occasionally break these books out and go over them, I still meditate to help me keep focused, etc. There isn't some quick fix to deal with it, but I believe you can learn to manage and deal with your procrastination like I have.

  4470. Ask HN: What do you struggle with? 2018-08-30 04:58:07 cimmanom
    Making big life changes. I just don't know where to start, and even after breaking them down into tiny tasks, I procrastinate on them... probably because I'm a little bit scared. Or a lot scared.

    The current project is moving overseas. The next step is to find a recruiter in the country I'm looking to move to, since I'll need a job offer and visa sponsorship, and it's really difficult to job search internationally. But it's so difficult even to identify reputable recruiters locally, where you have a network and can ask for recommendations from people you know. How do you find someone to trust in a totally new location?

    So I've been putting that off for (checks calendar) 6 months now.

  4471. Bye bye BetterSlack 2018-08-31 02:54:54 throwawaymath
    > But if some party starts threatening someone with 'That's not what "Slack" means! We're the authoritative source on the meaning of "Slack"', a hacker should resists.

    Okay but they didn't do that. Slack is concerned about someone using their name in relation to third party, unaffiliated software which is obviously related to their own software. Slack the messaging company doesn't care about the use of Slack outside of that niche.

    If you wrote a browser extension called "BetterSlack" that emulated Slackware in your browser, Slack wouldn't care. If you wrote a browser extension called "DontSlackOff!" that automatically restricted the time you could procrastinate on Hacker News or reddit, Slack wouldn't care.

    Slack cares about its brand, not being the canonical authority on an English word use of that word in products. The idea that Slack cares about uses of the word that don't have anything to do with its own software seems like a willful misinterpretation of the point. This is a pretty mundane legality and has nothing to do with hacker culture or "resisting" anything.

  4472. Procrastination is more about managing emotions than time: study 2018-09-01 05:24:39 Someone1234
    Doesn't this article itself kind of undercut the study by showing that the brain can be altered through behaviors? What I am asking is, is the amygdala larger in procrastinators causing them to procrastinate, or did it grow BECAUSE they procrastinated? A leads to B, or A & B go together.

    As an aside, I'd love to procrastinate significantly. It doesn't make me happy anymore. I've read the books, read the articles, tried the Pomodoro Technique, nothing. I don't think I have ADHD, since I can concentrate fine, just never on what I am meant to be concentrating on.

  4473. Procrastination is more about managing emotions than time: study 2018-09-01 08:29:37 elorant
    What helps me from procrastinating is writing excruciating detailed notes on tasks breaking them down to the smallest detail. Then all I have to do is sit down and start coding. It helps me a lot because my mind stays focused on the task at hand without the need to start analyzing things which most times means I lose focus. Furthermore, nothing seems daunting when you compartmentalize it, which I guess is the reason most of us procrastinate in the first place.

    The one thing that really does the trick though is to get something out there and start having paying customers. Then you know that if you procrastinate you'll lose them and that the best motive to do the work that anyone can find.

  4474. Procrastination is more about managing emotions than time: study 2018-09-01 13:12:07 bertr4nd
    Where I struggle most with procrastination is when making talks or writing academic papers. I rarely or never procrastinate on coding. I think the key difference is emotional: if I’m writing something for a computer it just had to work. If I’m writing something for a human it has to be judged interesting or worthwhile according to some nebulous criteria that exists in the minds of the readers.

  4475. Procrastination is more about managing emotions than time: study 2018-09-01 18:43:58 jokoon
    I have been asked to write the "skeleton" of the new version of a large software with angular. I don't like web development.

    I have started reading the angular tutorial, and you're right that it's emotionally very disturbing. There are many files, some sophisticated design pattern I have no understanding of their existence and utility.

    On top of that I don't really understand the mission I have been given.

    So I'm doing vague work, with a technology which I don't like and don't really understand the philosophy.

    Suffice it to say that I have all the good circumstances to procrastinate. Most troubling thing for me is that I have been in this situation for about 2 months now, I have quickly talked about procrastinating to HR some time ago, and yet nobody is really bugging me. I guess I should try to tell my superior to give me a more concrete work to do, or at least give me precise constraints.

    What's even weirder is that I feel bad for being in this position, somehow it makes me vulnerable and sensitive, like I could be judged for slacking, but on the other hand, I'm not being reprimanded or told about it.

  4476. Procrastination is more about managing emotions than time: study 2018-09-01 19:02:25 PeterStuer
    Purely anecdotal, but observed over a long period and with many different colleagues:

    (1)I see a direct correlation between how much people care about the outcome of something, and procrastination.

    People that treat their work as just something they do 9-5 then switch off, are detached from the outcome for the project or the client never procrastinate. People that care do. I think this goes in the direction of the article.

    (2) People that are stronger at analysis,able to grasp complex systems and the effects of changes, are much more likely to suffer from procrastination than those that are less apt at this. This is often confused with perfectionism. In my experience procrastinators are not looking for perfection, but are looking for a course of action that will have a reduced negative outcome. This would be in line with the general 'loss-aversion' [1] bias from psychology.

    Tangent: Procrastination is often presented as a symptom of depression, but my personal feeling is that the causation is reversed. Procrastination is a symptom looking for but not finding good solutions. As such it is a lot more likely to be encountered in engaged, intelligent people. Depression can be a consequence of the stress built up overtime by that process. So you are not procrastinating because you are depressed, procrastination is a precursor to depression

    [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/science-choice/20180...

  4477. Procrastination is more about managing emotions than time: study 2018-09-01 19:09:04 TeMPOraL
    > People that treat their work as just something they do 9-5 then switch off, are detached from the outcome for the project or the client never procrastinate.

    Yeah, I noticed that too, and always was surprised about it. I've never seen a detached 9-5er procrastinate. In the field of programming, the only procrastinators I know are those who show some actual interest in the field beyond getting their paycheck.

    > Procrastination is often presented as a symptom of depression, but my personal feeling is that the causation is reversed. Depression can be a consequence of the stress built up overtime by that process.

    That... resonates. It seems that it's usually prolonged procrastination that destroys me emotionally, not bad emotional state causing me to procrastinate.

  4478. Procrastination is more about managing emotions than time: study 2018-09-01 19:45:32 matwood
    This is exactly why I procrastinate - I needed the perfect solution in my head. But then my work procrastination would spread into other areas in my life. The fix is/was to do all things immediately. Anytime I find my procrastinating I immediately do said thing. Don't want to write bills, stop right now and do the bills. Don't want to go to the gym, go right now. Don't want to work on that project, go start working on that project. It's certainly not easy, but does get easier.

    There's also a somewhat hidden emotional/mental toll with procrastination. When I procrastinate it weighs on me and causes stress. I'm reminded of this quote from Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar:

    Between the acting of a dreadful thing

    And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma or a hideous dream.

    The genius and the mortal instruments

    Are then in council, and the state of man,

    Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection.

    https://www.sparknotes.com/nofear/shakespeare/juliuscaesar/p...

  4479. Clayton Christensen: Half of U.S. colleges will be bankrupt in 10 to 15 years 2018-09-05 04:49:00 manifestsilence
    As someone who went to three different colleges to end up with one unused degree, I have pretty mixed feelings on the worth-it factor. Financially, I don't think it really opened the door through which I now make money, and I think this is increasingly true, that the debt from college is a barrier to entrepreneurship more than the knowledge opens doors.

    In terms of development and fulfillment, it's harder to say. But I don't think the social time I got was quality social time. Instead of just being around a bunch of 18-22 year olds, I think I would have gotten a lot more out of traveling the world and meeting people from diverse backgrounds and of diverse ages. College culture just modeled how to be stressed, procrastinate and abuse alcohol.

    That being said, what I did study there (music), I would have had a very hard time pursuing to the degree I did without that environment, so depending on what one studies it may be worth it. All in all, I'm leery of the college experience and how heavily it is sold as a cure-all for a person's future. Kind of a sneaky debt-engine if you ask me.

  4480. How to Procrastinate Productively 2018-09-06 08:48:30 oyebenny
    So basically, it's okay to procrastinate as long as what you're procrastinating with is a good habit.

  4481. How to Procrastinate Productively 2018-09-06 10:29:48 siruncledrew
    I’m not a morning person so I have a hard time envisioning myself getting to work before 7am to procrastinate for a total of 1.5hrs. Does this guy leave work earlier in the day? I would probably become less productive at work if I was there 7am-5pm and leisurely took my time. I like to have time at home to relax and think (procrastinate) too.

  4482. Suffering-oriented programming (2012) 2018-09-06 10:39:34 mikekchar
    Possibly a way to say YAGNI which is easier to relate to. Don't build stuff unless you are suffering, and hence understand the problem domain. Do the "easiest thing that could possibly work" and then don't change it unless you see a problem with it. Even if there are better ways to do it, if you aren't experiencing a problem, then there is no point in changing it. Don't fix problems you don't have :-)

    On the other hand, this requires a considerable amount of discipline. It is easy to procrastinate. You think, "Oh we are suffering here, but it's only one small thing, so it's not too bad. Plus we're super busy adding these other 100 features". Then there are 2 small problems. Then there are 10. Then 100. Pretty soon, the amount of time necessary to fix the problems you need fixed exceeds the amount of time that you can spend without losing business. So you prioritise the worst issues and work around the others... The workarounds cause more issues and because it's a network effect, the software starts to degrade in a non-linear way. After a while, you are spending entire days reading code just to make sure that a few line change won't break something.

    It's not a panacea. You still need a lot of experience... and for want of a better term, good taste.

  4483. How to Procrastinate Productively 2018-09-06 11:02:47 tootahe45
    Do stuff that for the most part, you don't find boring enough to procrastinate.

  4484. How to Procrastinate Productively 2018-09-06 12:37:15 shubhamjain
    At some point, you have to stop fiddling and finish what you started. Even if you procrastinate productively, spending ten minutes on a musical instrument, then another ten on reading an article, and then delving somewhere else is marginally better than binging on Youtube and Netflix. The constant context switching prevents you from going deep. All you gain is superficial knowledge.

    This, in my opinion, the bad "good procrastination." Something I am trying to escape from. Doing so many things without focus ended up imbibing a habit of rarely finishing anything. I agree with the author that it's useful to let your attention wander away from day-to-day stuff, but it's equally important to realize that there's a limit to how many things you can productively do in parallel.

  4485. How to Procrastinate Productively 2018-09-06 13:05:04 TeMPOraL
    It's not the boredom that's always a reason for procrastination.

    For me, it sometimes is. If I can sketch a convincing implementation in my head and it's not something I have strong personal desire to see in the real world, the implementation suddenly becomes one big chore. I have enough experience in programming to be confident I can code up anything I plan with enough details in my head, and find little reward in just proving myself right.

    But the other thing is, I procrastinate on things I have to do, just because I have to do them. I.e. take anything, attach any form of obligation to it, and you've just turned up my procrastination up to 11. I don't know why that happens, but I've been like this for as long as I can remember, and my entire career in this industry is mostly about figuring out tricks around this problem.

  4486. How to Procrastinate Productively 2018-09-06 13:14:39 TeMPOraL
    > Re-frame procrastination as a natural desire for variety and curiosity in your life. If you give this natural curiosity regular outlets throughout your days and weeks, it won’t need to blow up into major procrastination.

    That's a good point I haven't seen expressed in that way before, though I realize now I've been using this as one of anti-procrastination tricks. If I'm procrastinating because I really want to some particular other thing, doing that thing usually makes me quickly want to go back to the original task.

    But I do also have a lot of open-ended curiosity that's a problem. During university times, I often joked I owe half of my knowledge of the world to binge-reading Wikipedia at nights in high-school. These days, I try to rein it in a bit, otherwise I could spend the whole day following different trails of knowledge, without ever feeling a desire to come back to the task at hand.

    > By cultivating hobbies and interests that are at least indirectly supportive of your primary work, anytime you choose to procrastinate you’ll be engaging in productive procrastination.

    Yeah, right :). I use that excuse a lot. But the truth is, I've been stuck at the last 40 pages of Polya's book for the past 2 weeks, not because I didn't have any opportunity to procrastinate, but because it's somehow much easier to open a HN article or comment on one (as I'm doing right now), than it is to read a few pages of a book, or do a tiniest contribution to any of 20 open side-projects I have...

  4487. How to Procrastinate Productively 2018-09-06 16:46:24 kapep
    [...] what procrastination looks like for most people:

    - Think about working.

    - Immediately feel the urge to procrastinate.

    - Start beating themselves up with a bunch of negative self-talk for wanting to procrastinate (I’m such a procrastinator, why can’t you just stay focused?)

    - Feel badly, including a bunch of negative emotions like shame and disappointment, on top of the already-strong urge to procrastinate.

    - Procrastinate on something emotionally numbing.

    Is that really how it works for most people? I (and I always assumed that's how it is for most people) often just rationalize procrastination ("My tasks are not that important/interesting, I'll do them later", "Reading just one more article is fine, then back to work") without any negative thoughts at that time. Sometimes I do some research and suddenly realize I ended up on StackOverflow or HN and think "wait a minute, that's not work any more". But that's ok if I get all work done.

    I think that is the usual way of procrastination. What the article claims how most people procrastinate (negative thoughts, getting no work done) sounds like more extreme but rarer cases.

  4488. How to Procrastinate Productively 2018-09-06 17:03:11 rejschaap
    American sitcoms average 22 minutes. You could binge-procrastinate The Office. ;)

  4489. How to Procrastinate Productively 2018-09-06 18:16:01 matwood
    Or make your procrastination time really worthwhile. I force myself to do chores or other work when I'm procrastinating about a particular task. This also means I'll have more time later.

    It's also important long term to train yourself to not procrastinate. The trick I use is to immediately work on something when I recognize procrastination. For me, it was always getting started that was hard. When I fail at this, I do the chores above.

    Another trick is getting up early. Did I get up at 5am to read HN, or did I get up at 5am to workout and get some solid work time on my side project?

  4490. How to Procrastinate Productively 2018-09-06 19:33:17 TheGrumpyBrit
    I have a list called "Low-energy tasks" which I use whenever I'm feeling burned out and can't focus on actual work. Simple things like "Organise my mailbox" or "Review documentation" that aren't taxing, but still count as work. I'll probably still procrastinate a lot on those days, but at least I can say I got something done.

  4491. How to Procrastinate Productively 2018-09-06 20:21:27 that_jojo
    Ironically, I clearly have something going on in that spectrum and I'm amazed it hasn't affected my career yet... but I've as of yet completely procrastinated on getting myself checked out for it.

  4492. How to Procrastinate Productively 2018-09-06 23:45:13 dmitripopov
    Procrastination arises from different sources in different people. For example, advises in this article won't work if you procrastinate because you are completely burned out. Or you are overwhelmed by anxiety. Or some health problems prevent you from staying focused. The devil is in the detail.

  4493. How to Procrastinate Productively 2018-09-07 08:12:25 qwerty456127
    How to procrastinate recursively?

  4494. Programming sucks, I quit 2018-09-09 07:28:56 ozmaverick72
    Everyday I daydream about escaping the daily grind. I know the problem is really me and how I respond to stress. Basically whenever I work an issue I feel inadequate. I think someone else would have found a solution quicker or a better solution. I procrastinate and then rush to get something done and then beat myself up. I don't cope well with all the corporate b.s and religious wars over agile etc. Does anyone have any tips on coping with the stress of daily life as a developer ?

  4495. Ask HN: Why did your startup fail and what did you learn? 2018-09-18 13:50:13 andersthue
    I got stuck.

    The more important a project is to me, the more stuck I get.

    When I am stuck I do not do sales, I do not talk to mentors, I feel sorry for myself, i procrastinate.

  4496. How to fail as a new engineering manager 2018-09-18 19:47:45 me551ah
    That's a nice insight, I'll be sure to check with the dev next time it happens to see if it's actually helping or not.

    I personally do it in crunch situations for the following reasons: 1. Since there are more eyes on the code being written, mistakes made are an intersection of what either the driver or navigator would make. 2. It makes the developer less likely to procrastinate. I only use this as a last resort though and timebox it to an hour.

  4497. A new book about Nietzsche: tethering philosophy to the mess of daily experience 2018-09-19 03:26:35 mockingbirdy
    tl;dr - Nietzsche was the result of his times when it comes to women.

    I believe many people here have differentiated opinions. There wouldn't be a ban because you e.g. quote the bible, although it has some really misogynistic lines, especially if you want to challenge opinions in an intellectually challenging way. Many people are open for discussions - I mean, 80% of HN's value stems from being a platform where you can procrastinate easily.

    http://nietzsche.holtof.com/reader/friedrich-nietzsche/beyon...

  4498. Let Teenagers Sleep In 2018-09-23 19:20:20 lordnacho
    This teenager sleep cycle thing is a bit of a revelation to me. I thought I just had bad habits, but when I was that age, I'd play games most of the evening, maybe do one or two bits of homework at 10om, and then possibly stay up to 1am with some essay that I'd procrastinate on for ages. I'd wake up at something like 7am and sleep on the train until I got into school, and then sleep after getting home at about 4pm for an hour or two.

    It would have been a lot more comfortable getting in for maybe 10am and leaving at 5pm. I remember sometimes you'd have a special day in the week where there were no classes in the morning, meaning you started late. And then maybe an extra lesson or activity in the evening. But similar length of day, shifted, felt much better.

    Having worked for longer than I went to school for now, I think the school calendar needs an overhaul. There's no reason to take a huge holiday in the summer. In fact, why have any holiday at all? Just have school on all the time, and let people take holidays whenever they want, like at work. You won't forget things as easily taking week or two week holidays as against 8 week ones. Also it means parents won't have their holidays dictated by the school.

    Within the day, I also wonder about the frequency of context switches. You might be taking 6 classes a day: PE, French, Math, English, History, Physics.

    Now image you are coding, and you do this: Troubleshoot the rendering issue on the website, install a lock free ring on your trading system, write a SIMD function in CUDA, fix your cmake file dependencies, add unit tests to your CI script, and set up Kubernetes.

    Would you do those things one at a time, or in little pieces where you have to pick up where you left off arbitrarily?

    It seems you should have large blocks, maybe just morning and afternoon, rather than dozens of little classes each week.

    But then possibly as a teenager concentration is an issue, I don't know. I certainly think it's better to focus on one thing at a time, quite a long time, before changing contexts.

  4499. How to Get Things Done When You Don't Feel Like It 2018-10-10 11:33:02 jhabdas
    We always make the best decisions we can with the information we have at the time. The more time you have to make a decision the more information you will acquire to make it. Procrastinate and use it to build and balance a healthy anxiety before you start your work. Sharpen that axe until you really need to start cutting and the task will seem significantly easier with the right informational tools to perform it.

  4500. How to Get Things Done When You Don't Feel Like It 2018-10-10 13:41:10 TeMPOraL
    I feel sources of procrastination need to be discussed somewhat separately. I know a fear like yours is frequently reported to be one. But myself, I don't have such fear for the tasks I procrastinate the most on. Hell, I'm usually overconfident about doing them (that's why I agreed to do them in the first place). For me it's closer to "news value", but it really boils down to sudden anxiety attacks and desperate need to do something else, anything else whenever I face a task I actually should be doing.

    So, different people, different flavours of procrastination.

  4501. How to Get Things Done When You Don't Feel Like It 2018-10-10 16:18:45 mscasts
    My best tip is to get more sleep. It is way easier to complete stuff and do stuff you don't want to with a well rested mind.

    When I am sleep deprived, I procrastinate a lot. When I get about 8 hours I don't.

  4502. How to Get Things Done When You Don't Feel Like It 2018-10-10 16:25:53 tobyhinloopen
    How to procrastinate: Read an article about procrastination

  4503. How to Get Things Done When You Don't Feel Like It 2018-10-10 20:45:11 manmal
    I'm by far no expert on this, just listened to a lot of podcasts and read articles. So, grain of salt etc...

    AFAIK the only way to be sure is to either go to a sleep lab, or get an accurate tracker like the Oura ring, which reportedly has a 80-90% accuracy compared to sleep lab data. With that data you can see the distribution of your various sleep phases, and the people in the lab or the app will tell you how much of each phase you'd ideally have.

    But, why not just experiment a bit? Sleep 7/8/8.5h for a couple of days in a row, and keep track of how you feel and how much you procrastinate. E.g. for Mac, the Timing app is great at tracking how much time you spend in each app - one could use the amount of "productive" apps (text editor, IDE, graphical editor...) as a measure of productivity.

  4504. How to Get Things Done When You Don't Feel Like It 2018-10-10 20:51:15 manmal
    My suspicion is that the circadian rhythm plays a big role in productivity (and well-being in general). It's not enough to just sleep, it's also important to reset your body's clock when the sun rises. Spending the night in a club in artificial lighting might not be made up for by sleeping in for 10 hours.

    AFAIK almost everybody procrastinates (more or less), but not so many people are suffering from depression.

  4505. How to Get Things Done When You Don't Feel Like It 2018-10-10 23:48:17 poiu345
    Some jobs/tasks are just depressing so its valid comment. Put another way if the job was fun would people procrastinate?

  4506. How to Get Things Done When You Don't Feel Like It 2018-10-11 02:37:59 PankajGhosh
    In the case, where answer is No to both the questions, I have come to terms with being comfortable with procrastinating on that task. If I cannot convince myself of value added vs effort required today vs in future, it is okay to delay the task.

    Also, choosing not to do a task now and procrastinate can be a powerful and useful tactic.

  4507. How to Get Things Done When You Don't Feel Like It 2018-10-11 13:24:45 JohannesH
    I often find that when I'm tired I'm much more effective and less prone to procrastinate. I've always wondered how to achieve this effect while not messing with my sleep.

  4508. F5Bot: Email Keyword Alerts from Reddit, Hacker News, or Lobsters 2018-10-12 03:06:03 TeMPOraL
    > it's much more interesting than I thought even just to see the frequency, time, and interactions of users on HN via Telegram updates.

    Uhm, so now you're aware just how hard I procrastinate :<.

    > For example, I've found that some users seem to be active at the same times, and (as a result?) get into discussions with each other regularly.

    That's very true. I also wonder if this isn't partly responsible for differing perspectives HNers sometimes have about HN. I sometimes see people claiming that HN is full of things I've never really seen here. Maybe it's just timezone difference? Maybe HN does look different at +12h offset?

    > there's a bit too much 'noise' for many keywords

    That's true, but I think just making the user responsible for picking right keywords would give 80% of the value.

    Aggregated keyword matches is something I've never seen done in the context of HN/Reddit, but I feel it's worth testing. Maybe I'll finish up my dashboard, free time allowing.

    > but I'd be happy to let you know if I've got it in some kind of shape that I'd be comfortable sharing :)

    Please do. Don't worry about adding new features first; from what you describe it's quite useful already.

  4509. Ask HN: 40+ Career Advice? 2018-10-14 11:03:23 mikekchar
    I'm 50 and work remotely from rural Japan. I work with a good team and I genuinely like the people I work with. I'll try to respond to each of the points you make in relation to my job:

    - I work from home. My wife volunteers most days so I have the place to myself most of the time. However I work in Japan and my colleagues are in the UK, so this means I often work nights. In our small apartment, it's hard to separate myself from what my wife is doing. I try my best to do work where I need to concentrate during the day and then collaborate with people during the evening. It's hard to juggle, though.

    - These days lots of companies are doing office work with work at home a few days a week. We do that, but because the company is growing fast, we ran out of desks. This means that people mostly work at home and hot swap when then are in the office. The hot swapping is actually a real sore point with people as they like to have their own space at work, but you can imagine that it's hard for the company to justify having a floor 3/4 empty most of the time. Still, before I moved back to Japan, I did the WFH one or two days a week and IMHO, if you are close to your office this is really ideal -- lots of opportunity to collaborate and lots of opportunity to put your head down. In that kind of environment, personally I'm happy to have open office, hot swap setup. I differ from many people ;-)

    - Meetings are a function of company culture. Some companies value them, some do not. I once worked in a company and my manager asked me what I'd like from him (NB: managers, please do this!) I said, I don't ever want to go to a meeting. Can you go to all my meetings and send me a quick email with the result? He said, No problem! (Best manager ever) When you are shopping for jobs, make sure to ask about what kinds of meetings people have and why they have them. I like companies where meetings are for disseminating information to large groups of people. I dislike companies where meetings are for collaboratively coming up with a solution. Other people like the opposite. Know what you want and find a compatible group to work with.

    - Incompetent managers. Sorry, no panacea for this one. Most managers are terrible (sorry, but it's truly how I feel). It's a massively hard job, people are not trained for it and often people get into management because they want to bully people into doing what they say. I want a manager who feels their job is to remove obstacles from me so that I can concentrate on work (see point above). 90% of the time I don't get managers like that. It's hard for me to complain too much because I don't want to be a manager, even though I am very opinionated about what managers should do. Again, pre-screen your prospective employers. Specifically ask your potential manager what they think a manager should be doing. I've never met a manager who would lie about that.

    - Colleagues: Let me preface this by saying again, I like my current colleagues. As I get older, though, it gets pretty difficult. I'm the oldest person in the IT department at my company. I'm double the age of most of the people (we have a lot of junior people). I remember talking to a colleague about Tenerife because we had both vacationed there. It's an amazing place, but my colleague said that they didn't see any of it because they spent an entire week in night clubs. All of the other people listening to our conversation murmured with great appreciation. The industry is growing rapidly so as you get older you often become a minority. Even though you were there first, it's you that is the "foreigner" in the group (me, especially, LOL). You have to adapt to that culture rather than expecting people to adapt to your culture. For me, that's extremely difficult. Having said that, I have worked in a small startup where nobody was under the age of 35 (and we even had a guy in his 60's) -- I was the baby in that group! There are some founders who want only experienced people and are willing to pay extra money up front to get it. Reach out through your contacts because probably you can find them.

    Now, I really like working the way I work (and the day after tomorrow I'm actually going to the UK to meet and greet with the team, which I'm super excited about!) However there are tons of downsides.

    - Working remotely for a non-remote team means that there is a definite power differential. People who see each other in person regularly naturally have a better rapport. As a remote person, you're always a bit of an outsider. It's easy for people to forget about including you in discussions (especially if you are in a different time zone!) There are sometimes bad actors in companies too and if someone decides to intentionally lock you out of decisions, there is practically nothing you can do about it. You are at the mercy of others. I spend a lot of my energy trying to keep my relationships working well at work -- tons more than I would need to if I worked in the office. That's why 3 days in 2 days WFH is such a nice setup (and really, I think all companies should do something similar for programmers).

    Working remotely and solo is a huge risk. However, if you want to take on that risk, 40 is a really good time to do it. At 50, I've got 15 years left of my career. I need to save for retirement (and I admit to neglecting that in order to traipse around the world doing strange things). I've got savings, but if I was out of work for a year or two, it would be rather bad for me. At 40 (or earlier) you can take that risk a lot more easily because you can then put your head down and do less risky things when you are older if you need to (like me).

    Especially since you are relatively young (still 25 years left of work!) and you have no children, you are pretty flexible. Earlier I've been pointing out the need to keep thinking about the work environment when interviewing. If work environment is very important to you, make sure that you value that yourself. Don't take a job for more money that has a worse environment. Maybe there's a jerk that you have to work with, but you can still get your job done acceptably -- don't give up that job. No job is going to be perfect, so make sure you prioritise things appropriately.

    If I were you, the strategy I would probably employ (because I'm hugely risk averse) is to find a job with part time WFH that has the option to lead to full time remote. Get a couple of years of experience with working from home (and at least 6 months of full time remote). Then toy with the idea of doing solo consulting (ideally fully remote). As you are learning to work remotely, go to meet ups, etc to make contacts so that you have an avenue for solo consulting. This may mean moving to a fairly large city if you don't already live in one. Try out selling yourself and seeing if you have the character to do that (because not everyone can be successful in that regard, and being solo means you don't have anyone else to lean on). And finally, don't panic. You have lots of time to sort this out. Good for you thinking about it now -- take a few years trying different things and seeing how they work out. But don't procrastinate. This is your time for exploring -- if you wait until you are 50, it gets much scarier (believe me!)

  4510. So You Want to Open a Small Press Bookstore/Artist-Run Space? A Cautionary Tale 2018-10-21 05:13:42 wild_preference
    Coffee is probably like wine to most people: critics who say it's bad always seem to be exaggerating, it's hard for the layman to actually tell if it's objectively good or bad, and in the end you're drinking it for an effect or company anyways.

    For example, burned coffee is more of a caricature of its normal taste unlike, say, burned popcorn which tastes like charcoal. You could probably tell most people including me that some burned coffee is some local artisanal roast and I'd chalk up any changes in its flavor to that and move on.

    People clearly just aren't making coffee purchases based on taste, so you have to liken the whole thing to people going to bars. At which point Starbucks is simply the well-known bar in town with no surprises. You know their hours, you know where it is, you know you can get a table and dominate it shamelessly for hours, and so do all the other people in your group.

    Sure, you'd like to try one of those lil cafes around the block sometime, but it's something you procrastinate just like anything else that will introduce the slightest change in your life.

  4511. Ask HN: Am I just a wantrepreneur? 2018-10-22 05:23:26 sixhobbits
    The most important thing is consistency. Pick one idea and stick with it (I'm a hypocrite here), and work on it every day for years.

    It's hard to keep anything going only during weekends as you spend 90% of your energy just trying to find momentum.

    Re "But after one day of programming for my job, I am exhausted and I cannot extract any brain-juice any more. And if I try to work during the week-ends, I can't rewind enough for the next week" -- I had exactly this problem too. It depends a lot on your other commitments, but after years of failing to do anything productive in evenings and weekends (evenings, too tired; weekends, too easy to procrastinate), I partially solved this by spending 30-60 minutes every morning on side projects. Waking up earlier was hard, but I managed to get into the habit of spending some time in a cafe on my way to work. The change in environment (not home) and the very limited time (often I only have one well-defined goal for a morning session) makes me super productive.

    I still battle with consistency, but I create a lot during these times. One thing I'm working on is a guide on how to start your own company in 30 minutes a day. It's still at idea stage, but there's a (currently partially broken) website slowly being pieced together[0]

    [0] https://startyourown.co/

  4512. Optimal Time-Inconsistent Beliefs: Misplanning, Procrastination, and Commitment [pdf] 2018-10-25 05:38:49 hippich
    ", people tend to postpone work because they hold overoptimistic beliefs about the ease of the task" - this is certainly not the case for me when I procrastinate. Usually, I procrastinate when mentally exhausted, not seeing a clear picture of how to achieve the end goal, not being extrinsically motivated about the end result, depression. And most of the time it is a combination of these, not just one. In fact, easily completable tasks are something I fall back onto during procrastination (that's how I can keep my kitchen sink clean)

  4513. Optimal Time-Inconsistent Beliefs: Misplanning, Procrastination, and Commitment [pdf] 2018-10-25 08:23:11 taneq
    The most annoying thing about exponential discounting is that even when you know you're doing it, and you can see what's happening, it's still really hard to fight it.

    And you're right, it works both ways - I think the primary driving factor for me when I procrastinate is that an annoying thing feels like it'll be much more annoying to do now than it will in an hour or a week, so I put it off. Which is why I'm writing this post right now, instead of finishing an email, instead of doing another email, instead of bringing my accounts up to date, instead of doing my taxes...

    (This also works with things like long term social planning - my wife's forever signing us up for things weeks in advance, and if asked if I want to go to a party in six weeks' time I'll usually say 'sure, sounds fun' even though if you asked me if I wanted to go to the exact same party tomorrow I'd say 'not really'. Then I end up cursing myself for agreeing to all these engagements.)

  4514. A Dark Consensus About Screens and Kids Begins to Emerge in Silicon Valley 2018-10-26 23:13:10 Yizahi
    Yes, RTS train certain skills and educate in general. Yes, some other games and whole genres do that. And still all video games cause non-linear, lets say "addiction", to them. They increase tendency to procrastinate. Especially after significant play time over lifetime, when those same educational aspects are a justification to continue procrastinating playing them. I know this from experience and it is very hard and feels like increasingly harder to stop or limit it.

  4515. Focus on your own shit (2016) 2018-10-29 21:35:46 matwood
    On the weekends I do sleep in until 7am or so mainly because my gym doesn't open until 7am on the weekends. I'm going to start building a home gym soon so I can save the time driving back and forth to the gym.

    I tell people that while it sounds silly, winning that first battle each day is a big thing. Get up, win. Gym, win. Now skipping that donut or working on something I would normally procrastinate on is easy.

  4516. World of Warcraft: one simple line of code can cost you dearly (2016) 2018-10-31 10:46:32 pdimitar
    Partially true but in my experience if you are cut off of WoW you will not find another way to procrastinate immediately. That's why there were studies that kids and teenagers being cut off from smartphones/tablets have found themselves more mentally healthy. You can search for those, they are out there.

    So while I agree in principle -- that the inability to address one's problems is not fixed overnight -- it's also true that removing the distractions you crave the most can and will push you to healthier habits even in the short term.

  4517. When Adolescents Give Up Pot, Their Cognition Quickly Improves 2018-11-01 00:26:48 grawprog
    I know people who were like that in high school who are just fine now. Actually, come to think of it I can't think of a single one of the 'stoners' that were in my grade at school who wasted their time being stoned constantly who didn't at least end up living a reasonable life to this point.

    The few that didn't were the ones that either got into harder drugs or were already also stealing or hanging out with gangsters also.

    The people that just sat around smoking weed though for the most part ended up alright.

    I didn't smoke weed through high school but I still did poorly because I didn't really care. I was more concerned with my mom slowly dying of lung cancer at the time. I did enough to pass but was about it. High school was honestly one of the most pointless things i've had to do in my life. It didn't stop me from going to school after and doing useful things with my life though. I also smoked weed constantly throughout university and was consistently among the top in my class. I'd be stoned during midterms and get 100% or more on a couple occasions.

    I've never found it slows me down or stops me from thinking. If anything it does the opposite. It lets my mind focus on one thing at a time without getting distracted and makes tasks i'd othwerwise find boring and probably procrastinate on fun and interesting and gives me more incentive to do those things.

  4518. When Adolescents Give Up Pot, Their Cognition Quickly Improves 2018-11-01 01:47:10 warent
    There's a few that I've found!

    1. Hyperfocus. It has been tremendous for programming or even reading. There's sort of an ADD threshold that I break through after ~30 minutes of self discipline and pain. Then I'm suddenly in the zone, some kind unshakeable state, for hours on end. Most people I know seem to need a break after 30-60 minutes, right when I'm just getting into it.

    2. Fun and physical activity. I use extreme difficulty of maintaining attention as an indicator that what I'm doing is just not stimulating or interesting enough. Of course this might not be good when you're with other humans, but I find I'm often able to focus on things better when my body is moving. That means when I take someone out on a date somewhere, it's usually very interesting and unusual.

    3. Fast context switching. This may be more of a coping mechanism than a benefit, but often times rather than focusing on a single task, I'll "procrastinate" by switching between multiple important tasks repeatedly or working on things that are peripherally related. As a result, I have a breadth of knowledge that helps me think creatively and still get work done as needed.

    4. Creative thinking. I believe (anecdotally, no evidence) that people with ADD are less likely to get stuck in a rut, or get bogged down with repetitive, boring, familiar things, because we simply don't have the attention span for it.

  4519. How to Make a Roguelike 2018-11-01 04:23:11 wild_preference
    I started building grid-based ASCII-art roguelikes thinking it would be an easy way to enter gamedev. Next thing I know I've spent all my allocated freetime over many weeks trying to implement a good line-of-sight/fog-of-war!

    The most naive solution (tracing a line to each tile and checking for collision) introduces weird artifacts, like illuminating a single cell 8 tiles away from a window when you're 45 degrees away from the window, that I couldn't persevere through the temptation of getting that perfect.

    Then I realized this is just a taste of why all gamedev is hard. Is $GameMechanic going to be more fun implemented like $this or like $that? Well, you can't just git-branch and try both because both options are non-trivial. And it's easy to procrastinate by working on things off the critical path of finishing the game because that is what's hard.

    Turns out it involves an impressive amount of visionary power + ability to laser-focus on the Hard Stuff That Matters to build a game. And I'll always respect the super heroes out there that are able to finish one. I suppose it's not so different from writing a book.

  4520. Agile won the war but lost the peace 2018-11-11 21:57:29 umvi
    In defense of sprints, not everyone is the same. Deadlines for me are a strong motivation to get things done, whereas "no deadline, just do it at your own pace until it's done" will cause me to procrastinate and get it done much more slowly.

    There is no silver bullet for software development process. It takes hard work and flexibility to optimize your team's work flow.

  4521. Ask HN: Has anyone managed to regain their attention span/ability to focus? 2018-11-12 23:36:39 muzani
    The advice about good diet, sleep, exercise is all good and it will cure the problem much of the time. But it's possible to go too far and stray into perfectionism.

    Discipline is simply habit. Habit is simply following patterns. Your brain sees a trigger, and it will initiate a pattern until completion.

    It's dangerous to force yourself to do a lengthy preparation routine. I got demotivated if the conditions weren't ideal. It then becomes a habit to procrastinate until you can get the ideal conditions.

    What I'd recommend is setting up some really simple conditions. Design a habit for when you sit in a room. Design a habit for when you get distracted. Sometimes you have to repeat a mantra to snap yourself back in. This is also why the Pomodoro Technique works so well - the ticking noise reminds you to get back to work until the bell rings.

  4522. Ask HN: Developers, how do you estimate projects and write proposals? 2018-11-13 03:11:58 dimitri-gnidash
    This is my approximate proposal and estimation process:

    1). This is a new and unproven client, and if so, I go with the gut feel estimate e.g. 3 months, 2 weeks, 6 months to see if they understand how expensive software development (or any custom professional services) could be.

    2). Understand if a rough or precise estimate is required. Are they looking for a fixed-price bid? Convince them that fixed-price is not in their interest. If the client insists on the fixed bid and the project is large and undefined, bow out. If the client is looking for a rough estimate, or the project is smallish (< 2 months), continue.

    3). The client relationship is existing or the client and I are on the same page with the rough costing. If the project is large, explain that the estimation task is large and time-consuming, and ask to be compensated for the task. If the project is small (<2 months), eat the estimation cost.

    4). a). Gather understanding and very rough requirements over several meetings, and create a document capturing this information. b). Procrastinate and then break down larger system areas into "epics" c). Create a set of releases that each deliver value to the customer d). Estimate each "epic" and assign reasonably buffered estimate to each release. 5). Walk the customer over the document, timelines, budget estimates.

  4523. The Dangerous Fetishization of ‘Hustle Porn’ 2018-11-13 17:55:30 carlospwk
    I wanted to give my thoughts Gary Vaynerchuck since I read some comments about him here. Yeah, he's super extra and too much for a lot of people. That's just kind of the way he is, or maybe more accurately, the way he has become. He's a showman, but with credentials.

    People kind of get the wrong image of him since they tend to hear only the 'hustle' stuff of working your ass off for a few years on some project. But he has a ton of other advice too, and much more "sensible" ones at that. Not too long ago he changed his eating habits, lost weight and promoted healthy living. I believe he's also put emphasis on getting enough sleep. He's said multiple times that he knows a lot of people who make 50k a year and are happier than many millionaires. I think he usually gives the "eat shit and work hard" type of advice to people who are asking him for a formula to success on their business. And it is true, you have to work hard to achieve something exceptional.

    Talking about 'hustle', I think it really depends how you define it in the first place. You can do a bad, BS hustle by working to get Internet points and validation from strangers on social media. Or even worse, do something to con people out of their money. To me a positive hustle is putting in constant work, not being afraid to sell and market your stuff, and most importantly, starting before you are ready.

    I'm not a zealot of the Vaynernation but I have found some of his messages helpful. One of his key principals is to document your journey. I love this idea and I've recently gotten over the fear of doing it myself, posting VLOGs and doing things more publicly using my real name (you can search this username and find out more). Another message is that "you could die tomorrow". Sure, this is a bit dramatic and cliche, but it did give me courage to push on with doing some things that I might have procrastinated on.

    Overall, I find Gary's content useful for the most part, especially his insights on social media. If you just know him from 'hustle hustle' type of things, I suggest you try to dig a bit deeper to his videos and blogs. He does know his stuff.

  4524. Show HN: Find a Study Buddy for your MOOC 2018-11-17 00:46:30 kakaorka
    This is a fantastic idea. With some MOOCs, I tend to procrastinate heavily, so I hope societal pressure from a study buddy would help me avoid that :)

  4525. Ask HN: Why do we want to learn something new when we don't have time? 2018-11-18 04:00:55 yesenadam
    Yes, I was going to say, procrastination.

    I came across a piece of writing about Perry's theory years ago and thought "Gee, that's deep, the guy must be a philosopher" - and he is. The idea is to have such an impressive To Do[0] list that even when you do the things lower down on it - "procrastinate" - they're still not a bad use of your time, and maybe better than the urgent, important things at the top.

    [0] I just can't write 'Todo', as seems universal in English, because 'todo' = 'everything' in Spanish.

  4526. Ask HN: Why do we want to learn something new when we don't have time? 2018-11-18 15:40:10 klyrs
    I've been working on a problem for years. It's particularly vexatious, but some pieces fell into place think week and a solution is nearly in hand. It helps that I have a false deadline to toil under. Had, anyway; I digress.

    I'm a daydreaming mathematician who works with very pragmatic physicists and engineers. I caught wind that the physicists have an unsolved problem, so rather than toil at my project, I spent the morning reading wikipedia in search of obnoxious questions for physicists, and split the afternoon between asking those questions and coding up my putative solution to the problem I'm supposed to solve. It fails.

    Mulling over cryptic statements from physicists on the bus, a thought strikes in a flash. I get off the bus, talking to myself out loud, repeating the new inspiration until issues arise and solutions follow. I've been looking at it wrong.

    When I arrive home, I understand that my new inspiration is the right approach, to a problem that isn't blocking my deadline. Another problem, just as hard and just as old, is. A solution strikes me in a flash, and I know I won't sleep that night, because it's still too big to fit the complete solution in my head.

    There's a point where it's a bad idea to procrastinate with learning. But used judiciously, it distracts from the challenge -- the problem-solving processes are still running in the background but the foreground is engaged and full of wonder.

  4527. Don’t work “remotely” 2018-11-19 23:13:08 ramtatatam
    Remote (or distributed, as article is advocating to call it) work will not fit everyone's style. It requires certain level of self discipline and recognition that the one needs to develop certain habits in order to be able to efficiently deliver work while doing this remotely.

    What I noticed is that in early days of my startup when I was working remotely I was able to contribute much more than now, when I'm required to work from the (open plan) office. Working remotely gives flexibility on work hours (i.e. I could do normal 9-5 and then in the evening I usually checked in to add some extra but I could do that as I did not have to wake up early in the morning in order to commute to the office).

    Working remotely makes it more challenging (for some) to resist temptation to procrastinate. And also it requires leaders to understand how to measure the output (although, of course, leaders need to understand that despite the fact where does the worker deliver their work from).

  4528. Ask HN: What's the hardest problem you've ever solved? 2018-11-20 06:43:53 zerr
    Yes, I procrastinate.

  4529. Flying for Thanksgiving 2018-11-21 13:57:55 Xcelerate
    This reminds me: I procrastinated and haven't booked my Christmas ticket yet... Bay Area to Atlanta — anyone got any tips? I think Google Flights is the best way to find the cheapest ticket, but if there's something else out there I'd be glad to know!

  4530. Boss as a Service – Hire a boss, get stuff done 2018-11-23 10:59:51 Robotbeat
    Used to work for me. Now, it mostly just makes me procrastinate with better focus.

    I think it may be due to sleep disruption, but I don’t know.

  4531. Boss as a Service – Hire a boss, get stuff done 2018-11-23 13:20:50 techstrategist
    I imagine they focus on the tasks that they typically procrastinate.

  4532. Boss as a Service – Hire a boss, get stuff done 2018-11-24 06:19:41 dorchadas
    Ain't that the truth! I've got an easy list of all the projects and stuff I want/need to do, and can easily prioritize and reprioritize that (and often procrastinate by doing just that). But when it comes to actually sitting down and doing it...well, that's where I struggle.

  4533. Richard Stallman: We Can Do Better Than Bitcoin 2018-11-26 23:17:59 _Tev
    Some people just really dislike the shitty economics theories that are basis for cryptocurrencies. Hating on something you dislike is not too bad way to procrastinate.

  4534. How to balance full-time work with creative projects 2018-11-28 03:21:40 imhoguy
    In the past I tried creative night shifts too, sometimes till 3AM but in the morning I was wrecked. So what works now: I go to sleep same time as my kids and wake up much earlier.

    Benefits:

    1) kids get good habit going to sleep at the right time

    2) you get a proper sleep

    3) at least my morning mind is much more fresh after some exercise

    4) your creative wandering is time limited by how early you wake up - that is most difficult especially in the winter, but it is just a matter of habit and doesn't sacrifice health so much.

    5) I am unlikely to procrastinate in the morning if I wake up with a planed task in mind

  4535. Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations? 2018-12-04 00:21:06 csours
    1. Troubleshooting - I'm not sure if this counts, but my troubleshooting method involves cutting problems in half recursively. I think that's basic troubleshooting, but it seem like many people do not understand it.

    2. Understanding that there is an emotional impact to actions. One reason I procrastinate is because of negative feelings when I approach work. Often I sit down to mentally make a list of things to do, and then I will immediately think of all of the roadblocks and problems. Knowing that these are emotions helps to deal with them.

    3. Long walks. Taking long, boring walks helps me to unwind and also to reconsider problems that are hard in the present tense.

  4536. Ask HN: What are your “brain hacks” that help you manage everyday situations? 2018-12-04 02:42:24 13415
    1. I do unpleasant things as fast and effectively as possible, so I can procrastinate later.

    2. I only use the Get Things Done method when I'm really stressed, so I can suddenly benefit from its effects.

    3. I don't work at all after a certain time of day / switch off entirely at the weekends.

    4. I avoid problematic people like e.g. hidden narcissists or psychopaths like the plague. If I have to interact with them, I'll keep it as professional as possible and ignore their rants as best as I can. (There is a life outside work.)

    Obviously, these tricks only work if you can 'afford' them.

  4537. How Alexa knows “peanut butter” is one shopping-list item, not two 2018-12-19 03:42:14 ultramundane8
    I think the explanation there is as simple as "there are lots of different people." I can't write software half as well as a significant percentage (maybe a majority) of HN users, but the average person can't write software half as well as me.

    Of course, I could just be dead wrong. I'm just conjecturing while I procrastinate.

  4538. Ask HN: How to shadow a CEO? 2018-12-22 15:44:10 paradoxparalax
    >"I would completely disregard this advice"

    Much to the opposite, au contraire, I would say this is the best of all advices written here, as it goes to the point as if the OP wants to open a company of his own or just procrastinate, to use a less mild tone, as in your comment.

  4539. Ask HN: Did you learn any life changing lessons this year? 2018-12-24 03:09:07 strikelaserclaw
    I've learned that if you don't make a decision, that decision will be made for you. This is the most important lesson i learned this year. Never procrastinate on making important decisions, be decisive and be ready to weather consequences.

  4540. The Now Habit (2015) 2018-12-28 02:55:58 Infernal
    Could you continue with the knowledge of how to easily not procrastinate?

  4541. Ask HN: How to turn mindless browsing time into productive programming time? 2019-01-01 22:02:03 marktangotango
    procrastination defense mechanism

    I agree with this. I also did this for years. Then a couple of years ago I buckled down, built an MVP (mininamal viable product) in the most brain dead way possible, and put it out there. And... nothing, my idea received zero interest.

    So the really cruel thing here is, all the dithering and indecisiveness really do amount to nothing, none of the decisions you mentioned matter; language, framework, db, etc. If something you build does gain users, then worry about it!

  4542. Show HN: Focus Window – macOS tool to keep you focused 2019-01-02 23:01:18 mpurham
    Hi fellow Hackers,

    I often tend to procrastinate when I begin working on a task thus preventing me from finishing my tasks faster. I know it is very hard to focus at times especially with all of the distracting tools such as Facebook, YouTube, email, Slack etc.

    I have built a tool called Focus Window which allows you to focus on a single application at a time. This tool has improved my workflow tremendously for 2018.

    I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.

  4543. 20 Top Personal Development Blogs for 2019 2019-01-03 12:34:02 elenaw
    Self improvement - as in personal development, improving focus, better concentration, beating procrastination and being more efficient. Thanks.

  4544. We do not have 12 years to stop catastrophic climate change 2019-01-03 22:46:30 peterwwillis
    I'm pretty sure that if given the chance, the majority of the human population will continue to delay acting for as long as possible. I think basic psychology backs this up, as we all tend to value immediate gains over long term ones, and one example of procrastination is the delay of action due to fear.

    Personally I expect the worst. I don't have faith that the body of humanity will seriously act to save itself. I think we should start planning on how to survive a very hot planet.

  4545. Show HN: HN.Academy – Top online courses recommended by Hacker News users 2019-01-04 04:17:21 indigochill
    Although I can see why a technically-oriented person might say L2L is vacuous, I do disagree. It's not dense or technical, but I got two concrete insights and practices from it (and I don't think I even bothered to finish it):

    1. The pomodoro technique really is useful if you're a hopeless procrastinator like me. It's saved my butt numerous times.

    2. The explanation of the value of alternating between focused intense thinking and diffused thinking also helped clarify why unfocused thinking is genuinely productive (of course, as long as it's mixed with focused thinking). I've used this to work around mental blocks when I got too stuck in the focused mode.

  4546. Ask HN: How did you decide what problems to solve in your lifetime? 2019-01-07 05:23:46 hevi_jos
    "Decision" word comes from latin: https://www.etymonline.com/word/decide It means cutting off. Decision means choosing something and cutting the rest.

    If you try to avoid future regrets(future errors), you are going to procrastinate in life, because it is impossible to do anything meaningful in life without making mistakes.

    It is impossible to do anything new without making mistakes. Real life is not Academia, in which you can make strait As always. Unless you play it safe, which is quite a boring life IMHO.

    I would give me permission to fail, and will choose something. If you make a mistake you could always quit as soon as possible and choose something different.

    What happens is that real master takes commitment. Most people quit too early to succeed.

    Anyway, nobody could life your life but you, you should take responsibility for it, not trying to delegate on strangers on internet. Take a notebook, write everything down and learn from your previous mistakes until you are a master on thyself(the good and the bad).

    Once you know about you, read a book like "Principles" Ray Dalio, you will be able to do something about it, like finding people that complement you.

  4547. Marc Andreessen: VR will be 1,000 times bigger than AR 2019-01-08 23:14:34 finnthehuman
    >If voice was actually vastly preferable to the output of a keyboard, it wouldn't be the case that texting is more popular than calls

    Texting is preferable to voice only when it's a break from human interaction.

    That's why you call your parents but text the girl you met last weekend.

    It's not because they're too old to text. If the only way they could communicate with their children was through text, they'd be typing on their phone more than a stereotypical teen. It's because you're comfortable talking to your parents. Even when it's at it's most-uncomfortable, it's still familiar, safe, and never going to be as bad as the painful conversations you've already had with them. You don't need the safety net of putting the phone down, distracting yourself from the conversation by stressing about the conversation, procrastinating, or the flexibility to workshop every response with your friends.

    For human interaction, voice is vastly preferable.

  4548. The LaTeX fetish (2016) 2019-01-09 23:22:30 mettamage
    Countering counterarguments:

    > To cut to the chase, LaTeX documents are very hard to read until typeset,

    Not my experience on Overleaf. I compile early and often just like in programming since it is a programming language.

    > LaTeX is, as already noted, a markup language.

    It is also Turing Complete and I have used it to do bibliographic database lookups, replacement and insertions. I used to program a bibliography per medium item and it would automatically figure out what medium item it was (e.g. journal, online blog post, online video, book, etc.).

    > disruptive of the text for human readers (including editors and the original author): looking at the screenshot, we see the text mixed up with a lot of symbols that are not part of the text

    I'd recommend you to use something like Overleaf and see if that's still the case (disclaimer: not affiliated with them, I actually used ShareLatex before that, I only went to them because I had to since they merged -- ShareLatex is open source by the way, so no internet connection needed).

    > By the way, one of the words in the screenshot is not right. It’s a typing error that I deliberately inserted. I know where it is because I put it there, but looking for it is hurting my eyes.

    Again, use something like Overleaf. They have spell-check.

    > But that isn’t how most people want to write.

    Most people also don't want to program. I won't recommend LaTeX to my girlfriend either, but to fellow programmers, why not? Maybe they like the program/debug cycle more.

    > Never mind boilerplate code like \documentclass{article} or \begin{document} at the start of your document – running into something along the lines of \parencite[706]{lena_peterson_2008} in the middle of a paragraph and having to mentally parse it into ‘(Lena and Peterson 2008, p. 706)’ interrupts your train of thought and makes it harder to do what you really need to be doing: reading your punctuated words back to yourself to make sure that they ‘sound’ like what you really wanted to say and don’t have any mistakes in them.

    I disagree. I never wanted to read my citations full out and I'm happy I can read them by aliases.

    > This is what LaTeX is good for: not helping people to compose text, but helping them to make it look nice. If that is important to you, go ahead and give it a look.

    LaTeX is good for long pieces of text. I never need to scroll millions of pages since everything is in a folder structure that I can immediately click on. Making things look nice is very important and even a slight competitive advantage, it makes you look more credible.

    > I think you’ll probably agree that the LaTeX version looks better than the word processor export version. Whether it looks sufficiently better to justify the additional effort is a judgement call that you’ll have to make for yourself.

    I think that students can invest the time. It took me about 40 to 80 hours to get a good flow with LaTeX. After that I didn't have any issues anymore. Also, whenever I got issues it was a fun procrastination activity (students like that from time to time).

  4549. Marie Kondo's Advice Praised by Scientists: “Clutter Is Not a Good Thing” 2019-01-10 02:53:09 throwaway713
    > Decisional procrastinators report that they have too much clutter, which interferes with their quality of life, and clutter, in turn, is the best predictor of procrastination.

    Hmm... n=1 anecdote, but I hate clutter and lead a minimalist lifestyle yet procrastinate quite a bit.

  4550. End of Year Librem 5 Update 2019-01-10 06:33:56 dogma1138
    An Open Source phone would only be actually beneficial if there will be an automated transparent and trusted global support infrastructure for it that would require zero user interaction.

    I use an iPhone because it’s the most secure hardware and software combination you can get and you are guaranteed to receive support for 5> years.

    I don’t want to have to compile my own kernels, set up my own chain of trust or deploy my own patches. It’s too cumbersome which would lead to procrastination that is if you don’t screw up something in the process to being with.

    Also as far as the hardware goes I have currently more faith in Apple being able to get and secure its supply chain than a small company which completely relies on Chinese OEMs for its design.

    The baseband will not be open source, it will have to use blobs as such other than running a more vanilla flavor of Linux I don’t see it being any different than any phone that can run AOSP.

  4551. Show HN: Gathio, an easy way to share events for those of us without Facebook 2019-01-11 01:08:12 lowercasename
    It's just a very little Node thing I made in a serious bout of procrastination, but I'm surprised I've not seen anything like it around before - general, quick to use, easy to share, doesn't try to snoop on you. I'm sure it already exists in lots of forms, and I'd love comments and criticisms because it's one of the first things I've really coded (which is mildly exhilarating).

  4552. Roadmap to becoming a web developer in 2019 2019-01-11 02:12:12 robgering
    These roadmaps are always hilarious to me. The real roadmap to becoming a web developer is "write code and convince someone to pay you." I suppose you could even leave the paying part off, if you are contributing to open source or writing code for yourself.

    Of course, you should do a great job, dedicate regular time to learning, and explore things that interest you. These maxims are probably true for success in many other careers.

    I suppose that charts like this could be useful to find new things to learn? But you certainly don't need to know all of this to get a job. Trying to tick every box on a learning list like this amounts to procrastinating the real tasks of finding work and writing code.

  4553. Anxiety and burnout: why kids are consumed with worry 2019-01-11 02:52:22 JamesBarney
    This seems to resonate with me. My little sister who is graduated highschool in 2014 had a very different experience than I did graduating in 2004.

    I'd stay up late finishing homework in highschool but usually it'd be a rare occurrence caused by my own procrastination.

    She'd routinely stay up past my parents because she just genuinely had 6-10 hrs of homework a night.

  4554. Anxiety and burnout: why kids are consumed with worry 2019-01-11 21:24:22 nobodyandproud
    I think the quote, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" applies well to you. I never finished Walden but that quote hit me in the guts many years ago.

    I'm someone who lives in perpetual worry and it was something that I inherited from my parents. While I'm naturally lazy, a procrastinator, and completely unambitious; the sheer worry during my younger years forced me to try harder.

    As a head of household one thing I've come to accept is that it's a role that comes with perpetual worry. It can't be helped.

    The only way to mitigate it somewhat is to live well-beneath one's means.

    And the only ones who don't worry about disaster looming around a corner are like Aesop's grasshopper.

  4555. Ode to the 767 2019-01-11 21:37:04 dsfyu404ed
    >400 pounds of trailer requires strange elaborate sway bars and brake systems and strange dampeners on the hitch.

    You don't need any sway control whatsoever so long as the weight distribution is sane for the speed you want to travel. Look at large boat trailers for examples. They never have sway control unless the owner adds it because they want to load the boat farther back (because their vehicle can't handle the tongue weight).

    Vehicles not being able to handle the tongue weight of a properly loaded trailer is becoming less of an issue for light loads because asinine CAFE rules force OEMs to push the axles to the very edges of the vehicle increasing wheelbase and reducing rear overhang so your average car or small/midsize SUV today can handle tongue weight a lot better than 15yr ago.

    >In theory a perfect aerodynamic and weight balance tow and trailer would never fishtail at any speed; in practice of course they do.

    Only because people are idiots and procrastinate putting the heavy things in the uhaul until the end and then they want to drive 80mph with it. It's not a matter of theory vs reality. There are very few situations where you can't get good weight distribution if you have ten brain cells and ten seconds to plan how you're gonna load stuff.

  4556. Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do? 2019-01-12 21:32:55 D4RKH0R53
    I was in the same situation from the last 7-8 year, I read so many self-help books, watched countless motivational videos and other activities to stop procrastination. And the most important thing which I learned is 'Focus in one thing at a time' I will recommend you to read this https://www.briantracy.com/blog/time-management/the-truth-ab...

    Hope it will help you...

  4557. Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do? 2019-01-12 22:04:14 mondo9000
    Realize that this behavior is just fancy procrastination. I can collect recipes all day, but it won't make me a better cook.

  4558. Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do? 2019-01-12 22:30:32 davidscolgan
    Procrastination is fun and complicated. "Just Do It" doesn't seem to help much for me. After reading more I've found a number of reasons for procrastination that may be helpful depending on the cause:

    Is the task too vague? If so, making it more concrete helps. "Do taxes" is impossibly vague and scary and the brain rebels. "Make a list of all expenses this year" is better but still large. This is the most common actually helpful advice I've found. But also

    Do you not actually care about the task? Having a grand overarching goal for your career/life can help you make sure the task is worth doing. Or for something like taxes, you can say "this helps me achieve my goal because if I don't pay my taxes I'll probably go to jail."

    Do you not believe your project will succeed? This is a subtle one I only recently discovered. If I'm working on an app or a business idea and I get to the point where I don't believe it has a chance, I strongly lose motivation. Some say this is a survival mechanism - if a hunter gatherer had a plan to kill a wooley mammoth with a spear up close and that'd probably result in death, a strong sense of "procrastination" could be a lifesaver.

    Is it resistance to something that threatens your identity? This is a fun one - maybe you've internalized that you don't finish projects (I've had some of this I think). Finishing a project would threaten your "identity" of a non finisher, and some part of the brain _hates_ things that threaten it's identity. I think this one you just have to figure out a way to push through, and give that part of the brain fodder to convince itself that it's identity is not of "doesn't finish projects". The same can be true of earning money, and other kinds of success.

  4559. Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do? 2019-01-12 22:45:14 elorant
    I have a rather meticulous program. For starters, I write everything down on a daily log. Thoughts, notes, tasks, everything. I do it with pen and paper because I like writing and it helps me thinking things more thoroughly. Then at the end of the day I move actionable tasks to a different journal which has to-do lists by project. At the beginning of each week I peruse the projects lists and choose tasks to move to a weekly to-do list. This way I have a planned-ahead weekly schedule which keeps me from procrastinating.

    I suppose if you can focus on a single project you don't need to go into such lengths of detailed logging. But for me it's imperative to keep detailed notes because I work on multiple projects simultaneously, and I can also keep track of older ideas that might get lost in the mayhem that goes around in my head. The best way to stop procrastinating is to break down projects to single tasks. Then I don't feel overwhelmed by the variety of tasks I have to accomplish. I only need to do a single task each time. I've adopted this system in the last couple of years and my productivity has increased at least 100%.

  4560. Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do? 2019-01-12 22:55:25 lovelearning
    4 text files that go from vague life goals down to concrete hourly tasks:

    - todo-year.txt : all goals for the year

    - todo-month.txt : track subset of annual goals to finish this month

    - todo-week.txt : track all monthly high-level tasks to finish this week

    - todo.txt : daily task plan based on weekly plan. Switch tasks every 1 hour. In a day, I plan for about 4 tasks, so each task ends up getting about 2 hours.

    Self-employed consultant here who has suffered from chronic procrastination after my daily routine became disorganized and unsupervised for some years. If I focus on only one thing for days on end, I feel I'm not doing much. The system above has helped me reduce (but not eliminate) both procrastination and distractions, and given me some satisfaction that I'm being relatively more productive.

  4561. Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do? 2019-01-12 23:25:37 geezerjay
    > Realize that this behavior is just fancy procrastination. I can collect recipes all day, but it won't make me a better cook.

    I don't believe this assertion makes any sense. I may never be a Michelin-star chef, but if I set a goal to learn how to cook and set a plan on how to achieve that, I will surely be able to cook a decent meal within a reasonable amount of time and results will be far better than what I would get if I procrastinated instead.

  4562. Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do? 2019-01-13 00:00:43 sergiotapia
    Also the mind is masterful at protecting it's ego by making you procrastinate things you think are difficult. You end up not doing them because you _think_ they're hard to do and you don't want to risk it.

    Identify when this is happening and just do it. Force yourself to at least give it the 30 minute try and 90% of the time you'll find yourself in the zone and just doing it.

  4563. Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do? 2019-01-13 03:32:33 lovelearning
    Blocker in client project : either DIY, or look for workarounds, or escalate to client and reduce scope. Planning gets suitably modified for rest of the week and month.

    Blocker in personal projects : some of my ideas have turned out to be not as easily implementable as I had first imagined. I usually reduce scope - because the idea after all started off as part of some life goal - but I have also dropped some ideas entirely. I record the reasons in the project directory to revisit later. I deliberately avoid overanalyzing in such cases - as somebody prone to procrastination, overanalysis of a tough idea is like entering a blackhole for me.

  4564. Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do? 2019-01-13 05:09:23 rijoja
    One of the highest forms of procrastination, but it seems it's much easier to come up with ideas than to execute them.

    The best system I ever had consisted of papers that I just hammered up on a wall using nails. Such a good system it has a spatial element to it that is just fantastic. Might want to check with your landlord first though.

    Other than that I do trello, notes that I have in a directory and keep track of with git and tomboy. I have to say that tomboy is a gem for sure, does a lot of sense in many ways sad to see that it's not more polished.

  4565. Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do? 2019-01-13 06:47:14 abootstrapper
    You’re procrastinating. Your organization is probably not the problem.

    My trick: my work laptop has all my favorite websites blocked in the host file. I do my most productive work at coffee shops on that laptop. My todo list is a page in my notebook. I suggest creating a place to work, and only do work there, nothing else.

  4566. Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do? 2019-01-13 07:51:04 Jaepa
    > You’re procrastinating. Your organization is probably not the problem.

    I'm going to have to strongly disagree with this. I have ADHD. I have a strong guttural reaction to the summation of "Oh you're procrastinating, so stop it and work instead". The number of times I've been told this, or that I was just being lazy, or that I just needed to find something I truly cared about I've lost track of.

    Organization and structure is how I function.

    * Task managers store all of my individual task, so I can stop having them flit into my head and distract me. I organize them once a day, with a full review once a week (Sunday). There are also a series of recurring events to help me maintain a routine. I cannot stress how important having a strict routine is for me personally.

    * Timed work/break sessions. I use a pomodoro like system, by declaring break sessions it makes it easier to deal with all of the distractions or little things that I need to do so I'm not constantly switching between things. Anything no directly related to the item I'm currently working on goes into a list, which is reviewed during the break period.

    * Calendars keep track of irregular events and serves as a event log, with varying degrees of importance (e.g. doctors visits, when I change my water filter, conferences, when family will be where).

    * Long term goals are less of an issue for me. I will regularly flit back to them, or work in starts and fits on them, but I keep an orgmode notebook to keep notes and resources on it. Because of the irregular nature of my work on them, being able to return to something easily is important for me.

    * Text to Speech reader. I use these to 1. read back what I've written, and 2. read me blocks of text. Generally I will read along as well, but because its external to my attention with a constant flow it is easier to follow.

    All of these are what works for me. What works best you for may, and probably will, be entirely different. To somewhat agree with the sentiment of your post, experimenting with your system can often be counter-productive. Think of it akin to your editor. There is a cost-benefit ratio for improving your editor, and a point in which even if there is an improvement, the cost will never be recouped.

    The best suggestion I can possibly give is find a way, and do it continuously and unapologetically.

  4567. Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do? 2019-01-13 12:24:26 lovelearning
    You can be as meticulous or as high-level as you want, depending on your disposition.

    Because my default state is one of procrastination and laziness, I have to explicitly plan such things. If I don't, the other work or distractions will just expand to fill my time, and I'll just keep perpetually delaying them only to find at the EOM that I didn't indulge in my favorite hobby for even 1 hour the entire month, and that feels really bad. My system has evolved to overcome my own mental handicaps.

    But I personally know 5x times more productive people - with spouses and multiple kids and time sinks like house constructions - who don't do anything like what I do and still manage to fulfil all their professional and personal plans much better than I do.

    I have only one daily, one weekly, one monthly and one yearly file. Each file covers all categories of life goals. Organizing categories into multiple files seems natural at first and I had tried it in the past with mind mapping tools, but quickly realized that tracking and updating them is inconvenient and didn't really help me with planning my day. Here's an excerpt[1] from my daily todo to show what 2 days daily plan looked like - maybe it gives a better idea of what I'm describing.

    [1]: https://pastebin.com/tXtyXuEU

  4568. Ask HN: What is the difference between Burnout/Depression/Laziness/Wrong job? 2019-01-14 03:12:36 quantification
    Seems like a psychological probe. Bait, in a sense. Enough rope to hang. But okay, I’ll bite.

    Burnout: After all the effort you’ve expended, you never got anything in return. Like chasing unrequited love.

    Depression: In a word, hopelessness. An inabilitity to fantasize about the potential for a better tomorrow. With an emotion so broad, any cause is on the table. Grief for dead loved ones. Crippling physical disabilities. Consistent general rejection by any and all total strangers throughout the world at large.

    Laziness: As a qualitative word for external behavior, inner state cannot be discerned by this behavioral attribute. As an internal behavior, sometimes even we don’t know why we’re unable to summon motivation for something we cognitively know we should not procrastinate. Sometimes, at it’s core, once I get past a rough patch of avoiding something, I realize that my intuition was waiting on other cues. A subliminal signal was not yet present. Looking back, it was only until someone threw those final switches that my entire psyche agreed that the time was right to swing into action. I’m still not sure how that works, but I’ve seen it enough times, that by now, I’m usually able to interrogate my uncooperative subconscious to discover the things I’m sometimes left waiting on.

    Being In The Wrong Job?

    This presupposes a “right” job. As if we’re supposed to be wage slaves, living paycheck to paycheck, under pain of death or firing for the entirety of our youth, and productive adulthood, until we retire at an age too old to have fun.

    All jobs are the wrong job. This becomes obvious during periods when you don’t have to work.

    But, hey, let’s be realistic, right? We just have to be good little employees, right? It’s the way to world works. Can’t have too many chiefs and not enough Indians, can we?

    Well, sorry, but the sad fact is, this one’s not a one-size-fits-all kind of answer. The the others are adjectives of character or psychological state. But “fitting in” has no simple description. You could blame talent, mixture of personalities, or the resources supplied by the employer.

    Mostly, this thread seeks to lay blame. It smells like a manager looking to cut heads. And I think that’s the real problem.

  4569. Ask HN: Best things in your bash_profile/aliases? 2019-01-14 23:15:54 luord
    A simple but effective one:

      function lie {
    if [[ "$1" == "not" ]]
    then
      unset GIT_AUTHOR_DATE
      unset GIT_COMMITTER_DATE
      return 0
    fi
    export GIT_AUTHOR_DATE="$1"
    export export GIT_COMMITTER_DATE="$1"
  }
    My employers don't quite need to know how much I procrastinated in that particular task :P

  4570. Anxiety and burnout: why kids are consumed with worry 2019-01-15 00:43:09 ergothus
    > While I'm naturally lazy, a procrastinator, and completely unambitious; the sheer worry during my younger years forced me to try harder.

    This, so many times this. I tell people I'm lazy and they say "You have two jobs, GM a weekly RPG and a monthly LARP, how can you be lazy?" They don't look at how little I WANT to do, they don't see how perpetually behind I am because given 3 hours to catch up I'll waste 2.5 of them, they don't see how a lifetime of this has taught me to wing it really well, to hide and cover up how behind I am. They'll talk about taking hikes or wanting to travel, but I want to sit and read or play games. Their dream superpower is flying, while I dream of teleportation and telekinesis - anything that means I'll have to struggle with the act of "doing" less.

  4571. Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself to keep working on a project? 2019-01-15 01:19:48 robbrown451
    We have an "accountability group" that is amazingly powerful at addressing this, for people who are willing to admit they have issues with procrastination and motivation, and are committed to addressing it and helping others address it as well. This is mostly for the self-employed especially those that otherwise work mostly solo so they don't otherwise get a lot of external stimulus, which is essential to many people.

    The only thing I've found that comes anywhere close to this is Adderall, and that has awful side effects.

    I've been in several of these type of groups over the years, and they usually fail because people flake and no one calls them on it. I think we've finally gotten the formula right though. The main thing is that people who aren't doing their part will get a warning and get removed from the group if they don't take it to heart. We make it indirect....instead of calling someone on it directly, you tell someone else, and they address it with the person.

    I could describe our whole system in more detail (there are a lot of little tweaks we've made), but the main thing that is important is that you have to think of it as a complex engine that needs fine tuning to keep "firing on all cylinders". Don't be shy about telling others what you need. But mostly, make sure that everyone is vigilant. If you flake on the tasks you are committing to, we can work with that. If you flake on monitoring others, you get a warning and if you keep doing it you are out.

    One of the things we've found works well is to structure tasks so that getting started in the morning (or after a long break) is easy and -- if possible -- fun. That is, you never leave a task in a state where you have a long "warm up" period. Get it to a place where it is satisfying to work with before you put it down. This often means finishing up a major task, then starting a new one and just getting it going before you call it a day. And of course write some documentation (which could just be a todo list) before you stop work.

    We're eventually planning on doing this in a bigger way (with a web app, etc), but for now we're open to bringing new people in if they are very VERY committed. Get in touch if you are interested (rjbrown at gmail). You need to be willing to use Skype video chat several times a day.

  4572. Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself to keep working on a project? 2019-01-15 02:05:05 rvn1045
    do something else productive while your procrastinating on this task.

  4573. Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself to keep working on a project? 2019-01-15 02:56:32 CodeWriter23
    “The biggest challenge in business is not the competition, it’s what goes on inside your own head.” —-Barbara Corcoran

    From my experience, getting to release, it’s like I feel like I’m going to fail. The product isn’t attractive. The buckets of money won’t fall from the sky.

    And you know what, that’s 100% true.

    Engineering is but a small piece of making a business. “Build it and they won’t come” is what a bad ass marketing guy I know would say. So the thing is, you will NEVER figure out how to shake money loose from other people until you put it out there. So you have some choices, accept that the next phase is not going to be easy, and push through to learn and become the same bad ass at company as you are at coding. Or rm -rf your codebase and go back to your job. Or waste even more time before making one choice or the other. Procrastination does not change the reality of having to make tough choices; it merely makes getting to the results on the other side come much later.

  4574. Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself to keep working on a project? 2019-01-15 03:42:24 brianpgordon
    Great advice for industrial lifting robots. For actual living human beings, this is nowhere near the mark. Most people are terrible at self-motivation outside of traditional structures that keep them accountable. Many people even struggle to remain productive at the office since there's plenty of procrastination slack there too to hang yourself with.

  4575. Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself to keep working on a project? 2019-01-16 06:19:03 robbrown451
    Currently I would probably be the overall manager for any that I'm involved in, but it could be anyone as long as they have the skills. And the manager is mostly just making sure the whole system keeps working well, while individual monitors (everyone is a monitor) are the ones most directly keeping people on task.

    It sounds complicated, but it sort of takes the approach of "everything should be a simple as possible, but no simpler." It just has enough indirectness to make it much less susceptible to "death spirals."

    It differs from working for "the man" because you still decide what projects you want to work on and so forth. You are working for yourself, but the system (manager/monitors) is helping you keep on task in ways you have already decided you want to do.

    Really, the manager can be considered an agent of your long term interests (i.e. your desire to finish your projects and otherwise get things done), helping you defeat your short term interests (which might be your love of sleeping in, watching TV or playing video games, or whatever it is you do when you procrastinate).

    Get in touch if you want to join. I've got a few people but we could use a few more. We are starting a new group since I've sort of spun off the old one

  4576. Mastercard will stop free trials from automatically billing once they're over 2019-01-18 00:58:54 aeharding
    Meh. People forget pretty easily. I discovered this (wasn't trying to trick people -- I gave full refund when requested) and implemented an email sent 7 days before charging the user for an annual subscription. Very easy to do with Stripe, and now users blame themselves (and not me) when their card accidentally gets charged for another year (procrastination after receiving the warning email, usually).

  4577. Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email 2019-01-18 16:42:24 astrobe_
    Also people have been been trained to misuse email. My coworkers, who are all in IT, can't quote correctly. I am bewildered by the level of ignorance of what email has to offered shown by some comments here. How to stop receiving messages? Well, just make a filter if you don't want to hurt the sender's feelings.

    I blame it on the webmail wave that offered to the newbie Internet users of the nineties poor interfaces to email. People used it and said: "email sucks". No, that's just webmail that sucked. And stills sucks compared to native clients (except for Outlook that equally sucks in a different way).

    When you take a good look at email it is the ideal medium for social micro-networks:

    - no registration, no opt-in. All you need to start a conversation is an email address. - no vendor lock-in: thousands of email clients exist, on all platforms. - with a decent client, you manage your messages the way you want, not the way some company wants.

    Let's put it differently: how to create a social micro-network in three easy steps: 1. Get the email addresses of the people you want to talk with 2. Send them an email when you want to say something 3. (optional) write a blog post about how to use group email well and put it in your signature.

    Also, although I dislike it for it is often misused and abused, HTML-mail covers 99% of fancy formatting needs.

    > What people have come to expect of social media, of forums, etc. does not translate particularly well to email.

    Agreed. Email is for communication. Social media are for fun, distraction and procrastination. Social media are MMORPGs.

  4578. Going old school: how I replaced Facebook with email 2019-01-18 18:32:53 zapzupnz
    > Social media are for fun, distraction and procrastination. Social media are MMORPGs

    To be fair, you get out of social media whatever you want. If you want to use it for fun, distraction, and procrastination, you can. If you want to use email for those things, you can. I have friends who do.

    Personally, I'm fine with social media being websites/apps and mail being mail. Nobody emails me cookie recipes, 'interesting' GIFs and links to funny videos, discounts on snake-oil medication, surveys to find out what Disney Princess I am, inflammatory political posts, or megabytes upon megabytes worth of photos that I don't really want to delete because I know I'll need to come back to them again at some point.

    More importantly, everybody being away from email means I'm far less likely to be spammed. What I get in my inbox is what I want to see, nothing more, nothing less, and with no bloat. I'm happy with the status quo, much more than when people actually emailed me and I had to swift through messages to find out what to keep or delete — in the days before Gmail, might I add.

    Email's my sanctuary, I'll not have that taken away. :-)

  4579. Microsoft recommends switching to iPhone, Android as it kills off Windows phones 2019-01-19 04:22:44 WorldMaker
    > It was the last smartphone option that avoided both the Scylla of Google's data vacuuming and the Charybdis of Apple's pricey walled garden

    Yeah, the December date here confirms what Wikipedia has stated for a while for the RS3 fork's security lifetime. December is actually one bonus month past the expected 18 months.

    I expect I will continue to procrastinate making a decision until that Holiday season, really. I had an iPhone (3GS) and switching back to iOS doesn't really excite me. I develop some from Android and rather dislike it (though I realize that apps like Microsoft Launcher and Launcher 10 presumably make it more Windows Phone-like than iOS is capable of being), and I still hold a grudge against Google for killing Reader.

    It's not a decision I look forward to. Two ugly options and not a good reason to pick one, other than "I don't think I want a mobile computer on my person that isn't receiving security updates."

  4580. Ask HN: What keeps you going? 2019-01-19 06:32:17 muzani
    Csikszentmihalyi has searched for the key to happiness. His research was not so much what makes people happy but when they are happy. The results - flow.

    This graph hosted on Wikipedia might explain it: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/Ch...

    As you can see, apathy is on the bottom left. It's what happens when you're facing low skill, unchallenging work.

    Ideally, you want to be in the flow sector. Or at least in control/arousal sectors.

    The easiest step would be a little self training. Even if your job is just refactoring, learn to refactor better from sites like https://refactoring.guru/ or learn to type faster, use more shortcuts, master your IDE. If you're doing something like Wordpress, you can learn to deal with servers better. If you're a project manager, there are plenty of tools and techniques to pick up.

    This should at least push you from apathy to relaxation or control.

    The other path is vertical, which is to take on harder work. Learn a new framework and use it. Take a job outside your comfort zone. Work on a challenging side project.

    Most of my work puts me in the anxiety zone, which makes me procrastinate a lot and is not ideal. But it's still better than apathy.

    It is a more painful path, but it also tends to pay much better.

  4581. Ask HN: How do you organize everything you want to do? 2019-01-19 21:10:23 tertius
    And for people who make these mistakes it's probably helpful to re-read Allen's book and fix these issues.

    > It's pretty easy to OVER categorize your life and never get anything done either.

    This is called procrastination.

    > perpetually planning and never actually doing

    GTD is specifically about clearing your mind so that you can focus on doing without distraction.

  4582. Ask HN: How to deal with internet addiction? 2019-01-21 00:42:15 albertgoeswoof
    Like all addictions you should look at the underlying causes for your behaviour. Are you procrastinating? Anxious? Compensating for something else?

  4583. Ask HN: How to deal with internet addiction? 2019-01-21 01:09:10 everdev
    Environment plays a huge and under appreciated role in addiction. Try changing up your physical space: go to a coffee shop, a friend's house, the library, etc. and just observe if the same desires arise.

    Also, it might help to know that your body is craving the immediate dopamine rush it gets from Facebook or news. The trick is to find something more rewarding and that usually comes from starting as small as possible. Try doing 1 pushup, reading 1 page of a book, taking a 5 min walk, etc. Sometimes these little pattern disruptions can be the spark that lights the fire.

    It's not easy to change our behavior, but it is possible if you want to and it sounds like you do.

    Here are some resources I found useful:

    Wait But Why - https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrasti...

    (visuals / cartoons)

    Stoic Philosophy - https://youtube.com/watch?v=A0XxceO4qX0

    (step by step process)

  4584. Ask HN: How to deal with internet addiction? 2019-01-21 01:32:07 imhoguy
    Procrastination may be symptom of some deeper problem with motivation and planning. Maybe your tasks are too chunky, boring or too much undefined?

    Also to spoil a procrastiation pattern a bit I use Leechblock NG on FF. Sure you can unlock pages pretty easily but that one obstacle makes you remind your resolution.

  4585. Ask HN: How to deal with internet addiction? 2019-01-21 02:07:50 ivankirigin
    How many folks on this thread are procrastinating right now?

    I know I am, and it's sad.

  4586. Students learn from people they love 2019-01-21 02:43:28 MarsAscendant
    > A radar chart with both being pretty much opposite each other should work better, right?

    Not when there's only two values measured. What else do you have in mind?

    I'd never encountered people who experience separate influences, academically (that I know of). The best-indicative situation I'd seen (or, perhaps, only noticed) are people who don't do well in school because their home environment is discouraging and negative.

    That said, my experience is such that, at school, I'd enjoy doing tasks – exercises, experiments etc. – but would avoid homework as much as possible. I wouldn't be able to sit down and learn anything by rote in a library: somehow, it increased internal tension, I was unable to sit down for the process.

    On the other hand, I once memorized the Latin noun declension system in an evening, before the exam – more as a result of procrastination on my part than a motivated necessity.

  4587. Ask HN: How to deal with internet addiction? 2019-01-21 02:45:34 wool_gather
    Agreed! I often find this kind of self-bargaining helpful, but I would suggest that you start really small with the thing you agree to do. Otherwise it becomes just another set of tasks to avoid/procrastinate over.

    I have used the Pomodoro technique on and off over the years, and I find it to be really useful for exactly what you suggested. I promise I will do just one Pomodoro, twenty minutes' of work, and then I can go do whatever. Twenty minutes is short enough to not trigger avoidance or distraction, but it's also long enough to really get rolling. Almost without exception, at the end of the twenty, I don't want to stop. I keep going and end up with a full set of four Pomodoros completed, and desire and energy to continue beyond that (if other responsibilities allow).

  4588. Fever effect 2019-01-21 03:06:40 CodeFunctor
    Anecdotally this has not been my experience; I am just as likely to procrastinate while also being marginally cognitively impaired.

  4589. When Jeff Bezos decided not to become a physicist [video] 2019-01-22 07:42:15 james_s_tayler
    conscientiousness is more complex than that. You have to understand what positive benefits manifest in what scenario for every given level of conscientiousness.

    I'm very low-c and that means I have a proclivity to procrastinate and a tendency to not be able to stick with things very long term of my own volition. This doesn't make things impossible to do for me as I even managed to become fluent in Japanese which was a tortuous multi-year effort. Suffice to say higher conscientious would be nice, but it means I have a tendency to also not feel the need to follow all the rules all of the time and this results in my sometimes taking a contrarian or unorthodox approach and sometimes this has a massive and positive benefit. It also means I'm constantly forgetting to log my time sheets and take out the rubbish and things like that piss off my boss and my wife and this is generally considered a problem but my boss and my wife also love me because I do things they don't see other people doing and im considered unconventional but in a very good way.

    Everything is a trade-off. It's not like all high conscientiousness people is the right mix of people to have.

  4590. Show HN: LazyHabit – A habit app to tackle procrastination 2019-01-23 00:05:19 lazyeva
    Hi,

    The app is free to install and try out with no sign up needed!

    I built this app to try a different approach to procrastination. Instead of focusing on tracking and stats (plenty of apps do this well already), the app focuses on helping you start by smoothing over frictions to your habit. Frictions can be mental, emotional or physical, like not being in the mood, not feeling prepared, feeling tired, feeling like it takes too much work, etc.

    Being the first release version, note that it's still limited in some aspects:

      - Currently only available on iOS

  - Currently only available in English

  - The habits are scheduled at fixed times, so probably not recommended for people looking for flexible scheduling ("Do 3 times a week")

  - No tracking or stats (by design)

  - Still a bit rough around the edges
    I consider it a feature to not have tracking, check-ins or stats functionality because the goal of the app is not to make sure that you do your habits perfectly, but that you're still sticking with your habit irregardless of imperfect streaks.

    Feedbacks and bug reports welcomed! :)

  4591. My self-published book: 11,000 copies, $19,000 royalties, only $3,000 profit!? 2019-01-23 13:09:52 apo
    The steep marketing spend ("more than $15,000") may have something to do with the title/subtitle. Specifically, it doesn't say anything to me at least:

    The Heart to Start: Win the Inner War & Let Your Art Shine

    This is a book for procrastinators then? For people who doubt themselves? For the timid? Artists only? Start what?

    Assuming the book is for me, it's not clear how actionable the advice it contains will be given the lack of specificity.

    I would consider re-titling the book with a clear message for a specific group of people. I think it's even possible to A/B test this on Amazon, but I'm not sure.

    What process did the author use to choose the title? Control-f on "title" gives no hits.

    Compare this with the author's previous book, Design for Hackers. Are you a hacker? Do you need help with design? This book is for you. Sold!

  4592. Queueing theory: The science of waiting in line 2019-01-24 06:44:56 crdrost
    There is also a rough application of some queueing theory ideas (one might also say, the more general lessons one sees in the physics of transport phenomena, before one specializes in continuums etc) to business, called "theory of constraints." The basic idea is that there is probably right now only a handful of things that are slowing down your ability to make more money, and if you can figure out what they are and add extra capacity to those things, you can presumably get "more bang for your buck" than attempts to improve every part of the system individually. A lot of authors also discuss similar concepts under "systems thinking."

    More specifically, the theory of constraints is kind of half-applied to the "projects" contexts that we work in in software in the "critical chain" methodology. It basically says in our context that for each project you have, at any given point during a sprint, there should be one person who is "holding the baton" for that project, they need to be aware that any delays in their work are getting communicated to the project launch date, while others working in parallel are usually exempt. Essentially exactly one person on the project should be panicking, and everyone else should have spare capacity to handle the routine "hey Alice from HR wants us to change all of the articles in the table which Bob has authored so that they no longer say that they were authored by Bob since his last day is next Friday, can someone write SQL to do that?" -- even if Carol has the most domain knowledge about that, if she's holding some other baton, that comes first. In fact, if Carol can split her work -- one common one in our field would be between functionality and tests/documentation -- so that she can pass the baton a little sooner, often that is a net win, too: she finishes the core functionality up to testing-by-hand, she delivers it to Darryl who is the next to hold the baton, then she documents and adds unit tests in a separate PR before she loses her context about it.

    Similarly the management of these projects is different because you don't want to estimate "hey Carol we think this is a two-day PR and we will hassle you come day three," since if she judges it to be a half-day PR then it's in her best interests to spend a week on other urgent-seeming requests as those minimize who is hassling her. But instead you want to communicate "hey, this is going to take however long it takes, and I know I cannot make it happen faster by hassling you. I want you to know that even though we guessed that this was a within-one-day task we put an extra safety cushion in the project in case it goes longer, but you have the entire project's safety cushion if you ultimately need it: conversely, any time you save right now can be passed on to your other developers. What I need from you is a daily guess about when you realistically think you can pass that baton so that I can tell Darryl, 'hey, heads up, you're about to have to drop everything and pick up this baton.' You can change that estimate at any time, I just want to minimize that friction and encourage you to sprint as hard as you can on this since you're on the critical path, if anyone tries to tell you that they have something more important for you to be doing, you tell them to talk to me and I will do it personally."

    Also the queueing theory makes me a lot more patient with myself. Like I used to get really hard on myself about how "you spent all of this time on the job doing this other thing that didn't need to get done, you lazy procrastinator you!" ... with some queueing theory you start to ask, "what would happen if we defined load as the maximum usage of CPU, RAM, network -- what would happen if we ran a server at 100% load? Machine failure, yes... but also high latency, and things would just get dropped forever. So what would happen if I run myself at 100% load, is that really what's best for the company?" and in a couple of cases (like on these critical paths, with a crucial deadline) that is what's best for the company, but in most cases actually the company should want you to have some idle bandwidth so that you can promptly serve their ad-hoc needs.

  4593. Show HN: LazyHabit – Automate hard habits with mini routines 2019-01-25 01:35:29 avac
    Hi everyone,

    As a solo founder, the app is the product of 2 years of love, sweat and procrastination.

    I wanted to build an alternative to habit tracking apps, minus the perfectionism and guilt-tripping that plagues most of them. Instead of focusing on post-habit tracking and stats, LazyHabit focuses on the critical transition period BEFORE the habit.

    With the momentum of mini steps and a dash of gamification, it's possible to make hard habits feel effortless to do.

    You can further supercharge your mini routines by integrating with other awesome apps for meditation, fitness, diet, sleep, study, you name it.

    It's free to install on iOS and require no signup.

    Would love to hear what you guys think!

  4594. Why Are Young People Pretending to Love Work? 2019-01-27 01:09:19 sonnyblarney
    You're going to grind yourself to death.

    The huge advantage of the 7th day is that you know you cannot work, nobody else is working, that it's pointless and you can relax. It's 'the time for not working'.

    When you work 'every day' - the nagging of 'maybe I can do something' always exists.

    If you put in your time on the 5 days, then you can have this 'I know I gave it 100%' feeling.

    Also, knowing that you can 'finish stuff on the weekend' I find makes one even a little bit more likely to procrastinate!

    I've lived extensively in both worlds (i.e. 5, 6 , 7 days) and I think 7 will catch up to you. It caught up to me.

  4595. Ten minutes a day 2019-01-28 02:43:22 Tempest1981
    The email trick seems like a great way to avoid procrastinating, and get started:

    > The other thing that really helped is that I didn’t allow myself to check my email until I worked on the book.

  4596. Ten minutes a day 2019-01-28 02:49:22 Tempest1981
    For me, Pomodoro is a technique to help you get started, and to focus. Vs procrastinate all day.

    For the case you mention, I would adapt the technique to whatever benefits you the most. If you're in the flow, defer the break. If you defer too much, and start feeling burned out, adjust.

    For some people, 25 minutes is too long. Find what works for you.

  4597. Most People With Addiction Grow Out of It (2014) 2019-01-28 18:11:47 WebDanube
    Can confirm anecdotally. Used to be super addicted to the online MOBA game, "DotA 2" back when I was in college. Stopped playing it after moving out from home (deleted my Steam account, in fact), and I haven't touched the game ever since. Guess my prefrontal cortex wrestled back control away from my "monkey brain." [0]

    [0]https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrasti...

  4598. Ask HN: Do you enjoy working in a coworking space? 2019-01-28 19:54:11 thinkingemote
    I can focus more in a co-working space as I can't procrastinate as much.

  4599. Ask HN: Do you enjoy working in a coworking space? 2019-01-29 00:57:06 skraelingjar
    For me, the main benefit of coworking has been the community. It's been great to chat with someone else who needs a break or to go get lunch/coffee with people. The second big benefit is that I am more productive than when at home (too many things I can use to procrastinate).

    Really, the only drawback is that I don't have a dedicated space because all the offices are full right now. I thrive in noisy environments and many of the drawbacks (visual barriers, wantrepreneurs, slow internet) for others don't apply in my case.

    Also, I helped open this space (the only one in a city of ~100,000) and have been involved in the community from the beginning.

    EDIT: I've worked in a few coworking spaces around the US and these pros/cons still generally apply for me.

  4600. Become CEO of this sexy startup for just $1 a month 2019-01-30 23:37:47 mromanuk
    That was really clever (Marketing).

    And got me thinking about a service, where the "CEO" get pay $1 to manage a "worker", to stop him from procrastinating. The "worker", which really is the customer, pays to have this service.

  4601. Ask HN: How do you come up with side projects? 2019-01-31 05:36:07 wrestlerman
    I think that coming up with a good project idea is a hard task. Don't listen to people that claim they have so many ideas. Most of that ideas are probably bullshit, that's why they have so many of them.

    In my opinion, it can take even a few weeks to come up with something that's even worthy of doing. You should be asking yourself what are the reasons not to do it first. Try to observe your life every day and see if there is something that drives you nuts or maybe something that makes you procrastinate. After that figure out the solution and go for it.

  4602. Ask HN: Discipline but no focus, how to fix? 2019-01-31 05:49:30 JabavuAdams
    * Are you tired during the day? Do you sleep less than 7 hrs/day? 95% of people who believe they need < 7 hours of sleep a day are wrong. If you're feeling sleepy even when getting lots of sleep, get checked out for Sleep Apnea, etc. Lack of quality sleep -> lack of focus and poor decision making around impulsivity. Sleep deprivation is like hypoxia. You'll be debilitated but claim that you're not.

    * Assuming your sleep is fine, have you ever been checked for ADHD? Medication has helped me be less impulsive. I call it my "anti-F-it" medication. Where I used to think "I shouldn't really go off to do this, but f it", I now think "I shouldn't really go off to do this -- so I won't." Not a silver bullet, but a noticeable improvement.

    * I've struggled with focus vs. exploration since childhood (I'm 43). It has never become easy, but I've become much better at it through experience and training.

    * One dynamic I have is overcommitting time-wise. I know I don't really have a lot of time to do task A, but f-it, I'll do some B, an it should just work out. Oh, I didn't finish my work tasks by EOD Friday, OK I'll just work the weekend. Can I do this in a week? Sure. A week is effectively infinite time to my knee-jerk-reaction task planner.

    To combat that, I now put all upcoming deliverables in my calendar. I have a TODO note in Evernote separated into TODAY, and BACKLOG. Anytime I think of a cool project or idea, I put it in BACKLOG. The day's tasks go in TODAY. To avoid over-filling the day with tasks, I actually block out time for each task in the calendar. The idea is not to rigidly stick to the calendar, but to get constant reminders that there isn't infinite time in a day or in a week. Sometimes you really can't make up the lost time later.

    * I track my time with Toggl.com. Not everything, but studying and software development projects. I now know that it takes 1hr to do a 2 question thrice-weekly physics assignment. If I ship some personal project, I'd like to have some idea of how much time I actually spent on it. $/hr and all that.

    * Try Pomodoro. This got me out of a sticky situation a few years ago, but I stopped using it. Have started using it with my kid, for homework, for good effect. These days I only use it when I notice myself procrastinating.

    EDIT> Also, as many others have said don't work 12 hours a day if you can avoid it. It's killing your long-term productivity. I have been burned out for years, and am only now getting out of that.

  4603. Ask HN: Discipline but no focus, how to fix? 2019-01-31 11:59:11 segmondy
    You have convinced yourself that discipline is different from focus. It's not, it's one and the same. If you don't have focus, you don't have discipline. It's easy to procrastinate and do things you shouldn't focus on and convince yourself that you're doing work. It takes discipline or focus if you will to do what you don't want to do. Before you begin work, plan your day, make your plan visible, stick to the plan and don't move away from it. That's the strategy. Plan ahead.

  4604. A “gold standard” study finds deleting Facebook is great for your mental health 2019-01-31 23:52:45 sevensor
    I recommend the procrastination setting. I have it set for 10 minutes -- I just need enough of a kick in the seat to stop wasting my time.

  4605. BuzzFeed’s 19-year-old quizmaker will no longer work for free 2019-02-04 04:03:38 wutbrodo
    Sure, as irrational as that may be, you're right that it's a larger problem to fix that's probably out of scope here.

    But the larger point is that economically productive employees in their early career are almost always exploited, so it wouldn't have been hard for Buzzfeed to throw some relatively token amount towards her and have her be over the moon with it. Most college students would love to get $20k for doing something they were procrastinating and doing for free, especially if you package it with an ego-boosting title.

  4606. The Over-Engaged Knowledge Worker 2019-02-04 17:53:26 TuringTest
    I have an idea for your (2), which is a tool for interrupting you when you are procrastinating, and showing something interesting to do from your TO DO list, adequate to the current moment and place.

    This could use all the addictiveness techniques of current "engagement+advertising" platforms and turn it to good use.

  4607. Ask HN: What have you found the most useful interview question to be? 2019-02-05 03:49:18 projectramo
    I am usually sarcastic but am not trolling this time.

    I agree with your observation.

    I will add that one simple reason people fail to do the task is because they try to remember it in their heads and then procrastinate. That is a deadly combo.

    A simple to-do list can solve this issue.

    However, a good manager can be the to do list. You can use an app to assign tasks. That is partly why Trello boards and the like work so well. It simply gets people to focus on things and not just have a bunch of tasks in memory.

    I must also add that a Trello board can force the manager to put down what they expect to get done in writing.

  4608. Pijul for Git users 2019-02-05 16:28:58 awestroke
    Pijul keeps touting "patches" instead of commits, and they show how to record and unrecord these patches. But how do you actually work with such a repository? How do you handle merge conflicts? The documentation does not even describe how to resolve conflicts, just that you can procrastinate and save the conflicts "for later"[1]. There is probably technical merit in Pijul, but the documentation and marketing sucks.

    [1]: https://pijul.org/manual/conflicts.html

  4609. Making Swallowing Safer for those who have trouble swallowing 2019-02-06 10:20:14 freedomben
    As someone who is young (mid 30s) but suffers from Dysphagia, this is interesting to see. As instances of eosinophilic esophagitis continue to increase, more and more people will experience this.

    If you have trouble swallowing sometimes, or it feels like food or pills get stuck, you may want to go see an allergist to get tested for food allergies. Don't procrastinate it thinking it will go away or is just in your head. If you do that, you'll get be at huge risk for Dysphagia, which is Hell. If you distrust the medical establishment, want concrete results (medical tests have false positives/negatives all the time) or would rather save the money, check out the book "The Elimination Diet" by Tom Malterre and Alissa Segersten.

  4610. Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything? 2019-02-06 13:43:42 yogeshp
    1. Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension [1]

    2. Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time.[2]

    [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33426.Hyperspace

    [2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/95887.Eat_That_Frog_

  4611. Ask HN: Work-life balance? 2019-02-06 15:54:01 rcarmo
    I work as an Azure solution architect (Linux, containers, networking, lots of AI and IoT), averaging between 40-60 hours a week if you take into account travel times, evenings and some weekend afternoons catching up on e-mail and doing prep work.

    My two main time sinks are travel to customers (sometimes 2-3h train rides one way, which I use to work) and conference calls (which are scheduled all over the place by sales people and make a complete mess of my focus time). Neither is considered to be an issue (since many of my co-workers have absolutely no clue about what it takes to do good technical work and think I conjure it up magically).

    Typical day starts at 6:30: breakfast (occasionally with kids), read news/RSS/HN, pack for going out to customers, start work at 9:00-9:30. If lucky, I can spend at least half a day (usually mornings) working from home until I am interrupted. Lunch takes me less than 30m if at home, 2h if with customer/peers (Mediterranean culture).

    I usually stop working at around 19:30 (dinner time with kids) and then spend some time clearing out my inbox and scheduling things while watching TV or conference videos. The default downtime pastime is reading if there’s nothing else to do.

    This still piles up enough that I have to work the occasional Sunday afternoon (usually coding or putting together PoC scenarios). To keep sane, I do side projects on weekends and pick stuff that I can re-use for work.

    I walk everywhere I can (hate driving, haven’t done it in years) and have an exercise bike I use in the mornings (but not usually in Winter, it’s too cold). No upper body exercises, which is a pain in various regards since one of my shoulders is going stiff (am looking into that).

    The most important factor for me is sleep. If I don’t sleep at least 7 hours a day everything goes downhill - focus, mood, output, etc. So I make it a point of going to bed early and avoiding unnecessary trips (which compress my schedule and force me to get up too early or arrive home too late). That does not sit well with some of my peers, but, again, the amount of time required to keep up to date and/or do quality work is not appreciated.

    Everything else is just a matter of making sure I keep tabs on my inbox, schedule the right amount of time for prep/meetings/follow up and just do stuff instead of procrastinating - which I avoid by scheduling time for stuff and sticking to that schedule.

    My most useful mind hack is to start small, iterate and test things as I go along, largely because I get interrupted so many times that it makes it easier to start another iteration when I go back to actual work.

    I also switch off notifications/email/chat/etc. now and then, although (to try to keep ahead of possible interruptions for the next day) I do check my e-mail in the evenings - but never 1-2h before bed, otherwise I’ll start to stress out and get insomnia (it’s best to cancel or say no to some things in the morning than reply immediately).

    I try to keep some things light and humorous, but the e-mail/meeting culture I’m in can be beyond overwhelming.

    The worst thing is that I don’t spend enough quality time at home - I’m either working at a customer (usually in a meeting of some sort, which makes it all the less productive) or in my home office most of the time.

    I also miss doing full-on engineering. Mentoring and advising customers is the best part of my job, but I get moved around so much I don’t see it come to fruition.

  4612. Ask HN: How are you getting through (and back from) burning out? 2019-02-06 23:37:30 newsgremlin
    I try (keyword try) to stick to my base routine that involves sleep, work, exercise, cook food/prep, washing/cleaning, meditation, duolingo practice, shopping for necessities and non-essentials that makes things a little nicer e.g. new high thread bedding and bed topper, coffee (for the times I give myself a reward for staving it off for several days), oil-infused humidifyer. Reading and writing is also thrown in whenever I can stop myself from procrastinating on youtube. All that fills up most of my daily time, I always find I have a list of things to do but either put them off or don't get around to it which is my struggle to have true "free time".

    That's probably the crux of it, being able to forget about work and have your mind taken off it. Perhaps making a vacation plan that will ensure you are busy having a new experience or relaxing whatever it may be to take your mind off work. After all our employment does occupy most of minds on a daily basis.

  4613. Ask HN: How are you getting through (and back from) burning out? 2019-02-07 00:46:40 DigitalBison
    It's been mentioned a few times already but I just wanted to +1 the suggestion of considering therapy. And I don't even mean that in a "you sound like you need therapy" sense; I think therapy can be a great tool for anyone trying to improve the way they handle stresses like this, regardless of whether you think anything is "wrong" with you (e.g. depression, anxiety, etc). I have struggled with fairly severe anxiety at points in my career/life, but therapy has just generally helped me a lot with handling stress, not taking things so personally, fighting procrastination, not coupling so much of my self-worth to my work performance, etc.

  4614. Incrementally migrating over one million lines of code from Python 2 to Python 3 2019-02-07 03:42:47 saltcured
    At work, we have much smaller codebases that have fractional FTEs allocated to their ongoing maintenance. In spite of the difference in scale, my experience is similar to what was described in the article. Because we had focused on getting the unicode to work right in those old code bases, we had good test coverage for those features as a result.

    The other common legacy problems to address were:

    - Other implicit encode/decode behaviors in py2 that need to be explicit in py3

    - Old 'print' and 'except' statements not valid in py3, easily rewritten

    - Implicitly relative 'import' statements not valid in py3, rewritten with a little care

    - Arithmetic needing a change to the '//' operator for integer division

    - Waiting for py3 support in all third-party dependencies

    - Dealing with restructuring in standard lib packages and in upgraded third-party libs w/ py3 support

    As I reviewed the techniques for straddling py2 and py3, I was displeased with how many seemed to involve a third dialect which was not really idiomatic py2 nor py3, particularly for the unicode/bytes handling. Many third-party libraries and frameworks also made different choices for how they handled this. Trying to integrate those approaches looked to produce even uglier code.

    Also, some of our code had evolved since the Python 2.2 days and had accumulated cruft to import and wrap multiple generations of older standard lib and add-on packages which we have not cared about for 5+ years. The additional package restructuring in py3 would have made this even more bizarre. I wanted to see the code reset to use standard libs where possible and cull these legacy third-party dependencies. I also wanted the code to become more idiomatically py3, so whoever visited it for future maintenance would not need to work so hard to understand it.

    So, we chose a clean break where we finally clean up and modernize the code to py3-only without the added burden of supporting py2 deployments from the same code. The declared 2020 deadline helped this decision. We branched our repos and worked on py3 ports and integration testing in parallel while continuing to run py2 in production. We declared a feature freeze on the py2 code, so we would not have a merging nightmare later, and so that we could use that as pressure to prevent procrastination on scheduling the flag day where we merge PRs and convert all our repos to a py3-only worldview.

  4615. Marker: A terminal command palette 2019-02-08 01:13:53 hzhou321
    I have been wanting to do something like this and been procrastinating hoping someone will do it for me.

  4616. Ask HN: How do you get over the initial fear of learning something hard or new? 2019-02-09 00:27:18 kuroguro
    It doesn't exactly feel like fear. I'd say it's more like the goal is so far that you give up even before trying / push it back forever / procrastinate. For ex "I'm going to learn how to do security research / do bug bounties / write exploits" and never do much. It is fear based tho. I'd say it's fear of wasting time and not getting anywhere.

  4617. So you want to be a wizard 2019-02-09 07:50:32 thaumaturgy
    The most valuable part of this talk has got to be her attitude (not to diminish the rest of it, which is great too).

    After you've been around the block a few times, and tried to learn all the things, and been responsible for trying to un-break a lot of the things, and the things that need to be un-broken start to look like an endless trickle, and then -- as word gets out that you can fix broken things -- starts to look like a Firehose of Infinite Dumping, then your attitude can start to take a hit.

    Because ultimately you want to start making things better, not just dealing with other people's mistakes all the time, and endlessly chasing mistakes prevents you from making things better, and then you start to see common causes behind a lot of the mistakes and you think, if people would just fix those, I'd like my job a lot more.

    And that attitude is self-defeating. It leads to unhappiness and unfulfillment and procrastination and mistakes of your own and, finally, resentment.

    Fostering an attitude like hers is a great antidote for all that, and the longer you can hold on to a curious and positive attitude, the longer you'll be happy to learn about new things and new ways of fixing things.

  4618. So you want to be a wizard 2019-02-09 08:23:55 rabidrat
    > then you start to see common causes behind a lot of the mistakes and you think, if people would just fix those, I'd like my job a lot more.

    > And that attitude is self-defeating. It leads to unhappiness and unfulfillment and procrastination and mistakes of your own and, finally, resentment.

    I get that there's a bad attitude lurking in there, but if you see the common causes behind a lot of the mistakes and you don't work to fix those, then you are just going to be constantly shoveling dirt around. In my mind the most important thing you can do to level-up as an engineer, is to ask, "how could we have avoided these hours/days/weeks of pain?" and then work to address those root (or more root) causes.

    Sometimes the answer is very simple, like changing the naming scheme for your data files, because we just spent days chasing our tails looking at the wrong data and making assumptions that weren't true (has happened at several teams I've been on). You can't just tell everyone to be more diligent and "check all your assumptions", because they won't (and no one has time for that in a crunch anyway). But you can make it easier for them to validate their assumptions in the background with things like filenames and clean logs. (Too many false warnings and people stop paying attention.)

  4619. The future of life insurance may depend on your online presence 2019-02-09 09:12:10 wahern
    > Algorithms speed up this process — though there aren’t many cases where a decision is entirely automated — and can make it more precise. Sometimes, the algorithm will greenlight a person so they don’t have to go through the invasive medical tests.

    That sounds like a stupid idea except for very short-term, high-premium policies. How many people immediately post to Facebook a cancer diagnosis? Unless it's close to 100% then an insurer would be a fool to rely on it for anything other than the most niche products.

    > The convenience of immediately receiving a policy is appealing to those who don’t want to wait weeks for a doctor’s appointment, and that can lead to more life insurance policies being purchased.

    When I was originally looking at term life insurance, the policy offered by my employer required me to go to the doctor's office for a physical. I elected the insurance but never bothered getting the physical so it never took effect. A couple years later when I got serious about term life insurance and looked into it more seriously, I discovered two things: 1) an individual policy is a much better deal long term, and 2) many (most? all?) insurers for individual policies send a phlebotomist to you--the one sent to me arrived with a needle and scale and left so quickly I almost felt jilted.

    > And while life insurance sales have traditionally been face-to-face interactions with agents, that mode is quickly falling out of favor, meaning that algorithmic processes are better for online sales.

    That's another thing I learned: never buy any kind of insurance from a salesperson. State Farm? Extremely overpriced because they spend a ton of money on advertising and especially their enormous sales network. How many local sales offices have you seen for Principal or Mutual of Omaha? Agents selling their policies exist all over but the sales model for these insurers is different which ultimately results in lower premiums.

    And you don't need AI to disintermediate the sales networks. I got my policy from policygenius.com. There are usually local sales agents who take a cut of the premium. I think it's an artifact of the state regulatory structures. Policy Genius and some local agent get a couple dollars every month from my premium, even though the only thing local agent did was take my paperwork. But that's still just a fraction of the overhead involved for insurers with more aggressive marketing and sales models.

    Finally, get term life and term disability insurance as young as you can. The moment you feel you need it (e.g. new parent) do not hesitate. Disability insurance is arguably more important than life simply because medicine is so advanced these days you're unlikely to die from accidents or disease until you're older, but you'll still likely be disabled. I'm still procrastinating on the disability, though....

  4620. Create your own game engine but don't use it (2017) 2019-02-10 03:36:56 KaoruAoiShiho
    He probably thinks there is stuff that can be done to make the source code actually usable for people. However that stuff is causing him anguish in his current mentality, leading to procrastination and unwillingness to actually accomplish things.

    The screenshots are pretty though and he's obviously talented. Things would probably be completely different if he had a steve jobs-esque figure to guide him. There's a lot of consternation on HN over business guys trying to find a tech co-founder but in this case we have a reverse. What a shame. Ultimately I see this as a logistical problem in society, our inability to pair people up effectively.

  4621. Ask HN: Starting a CS degree at 28? 2019-02-12 12:09:32 miguelrochefort
    > Sounds like you want to work as a dev, which you already are, but are hoping a degree will open doors at larger, more prestigious companies, perhaps for more money. Is that what you want?

    Pretty much. I'm mainly looking for security. I might eventually want to become a manager, as I start caring more about people and less about code.

    My dream was to be a HCI researcher, but I think it's too late for that.

    > I would guess that it’s necessary but not sufficient. I’m guessing you also need a very good resume and coding chops, and maybe the right connections wouldn’t hurt. I have never applied to those, but I know a couple of people who work there. If you want to know what you’re in for in an interview, get a copy of ‘Cracking the Coding Interview’.

    I looked into this stuff. I'm not great at it. I'd rather do higher-level stuff, like architecture and design. Maybe non-FAANG tech companies in the US would be a good compromise.

    > Getting BS in anything is a lot of work. Getting STEM degree is a fucking lot work. I had to work 60 – 80 hours a week as a CS senior. There was room for almost nothing else in my life. (Pro tip: as a student (and probably anything else hard) make time for reasonable diet, exercise, sleep, and going out side in full day light even if you think you don’t have time. If you don’t, you will go slowly insane and perform badly.)

    I never thought school was very difficult. Learning things I'm not interested in is more challenging, but not difficult. I'm more concerned with the volume of work than I am concerned with anything else.

    > Unless you you quit CS right at the end of your senior, how do you know you wouldn’t learn anything? In my opinion, the most valuable CS classes were probably D&A, Analysis of Algorithms, Software Eng., Programming Languages/compilers, and maybe Discrete Math.

    I'm learning every day and I regularly watch lectures or read research papers in my spare time. I expect most of CS courses to be about things I've been exposed to before, albeit not in depth. I have already internalized how these topics fit within everyday software development, and I can appreciate them in a way that someone who's never been exposed to them can't. Isn't it much easier to learn something you can already relate to, as opposed to some alien abstract concept that only make sense in retrospect? I can't really tell without seeing what a "difficult" course looks like.

    > My school had things like this. Ask the advisors while you are shopping for college(s).

    Wouldn't this solve all my problems? Seems to good to be true. I wonder what their requirements are.

    > Here are the questions I would need to answer yes to before proceeding:

    > --Can you afford to go to school for a few years without working?

    Yes, although I will feel the opportunity cost.

    > --Can you handle the pressure of college while remaining reasonably well adjusted and mentally healthy? (Was it ok the first time? Can you handle people younger than you being ahead in their work? Triage of deadlines, bad grades, scolding instructors and childish policies without freaking out?)

    I think school is generally well-structured and relatively easy. But I've never had to deal with other obligations when going to school. I'm not worried about other students or instructors, I would do an online degree. I do have a problem with procrastination.

    > --Do you have enough slack to finish behind schedule?

    Yes, but I would feel devastated.

    > --Will you be satisfied with the result of meeting the BS requirement even if interviewing afterwards is brutal, and you still feel like an impostor?

    No. I guess my excuse would switch from lacking a degree to lacking coding interview skills, and I would post "Ask HN: Practicing 'Cracking the Coding Interview' at 32".

    > --Have you tried looking at/applying for jobs that have the BS requirement, so you know really know what the next step will be, and what your in for?

    I have not. I only interviewed at one company, and only worked there. The interview was easy. Pretty much all my coworkers had BS degrees. My performance was on a par with if not better than theirs.

    For a decade, I thought I was special and would change the world. The delusion is now fading, and I'm trying to reverse it by seeking conformity and security. I guess that's what happen when you get older and more mature.

  4622. Vim Is Saving Me Hours of Work When Writing Books and Courses 2019-02-13 04:03:15 TeMPOraL
    I use proper org-mode functions to query the built-in agenda and then group entries by org-mode tags. My code expects a configuration that maps tags to their line item names (as on invoice), hourly rates and applicable tax. I use this to output a dynamic[0] table like this:

       | Tag             | Invoice line name     | Hours |  Rate |    Net | VAT % | VAT amount |  Total |
   |-----------------+-----------------------+-------+-------+--------+-------+------------+--------|
   | meeting         | Meetings              |    10 | 12.00 | 120.00 | NP    |       0.00 | 120.00 |
   | procrastinating | Important tasks       |    20 | 13.00 | 260.00 | NP    |       0.00 | 260.00 |
   | hn              | Other important tasks |    40 | 14.00 | 560.00 | NP    |       0.00 | 560.00 |
   | coding          | Occasional code       |     3 | 15.00 |  45.00 | NP    |       0.00 |  45.00 |
   |-----------------+-----------------------+-------+-------+--------+-------+------------+--------|
   | Totals          | -                     |    73 |     - | 985.00 | -     |       0.00 | 985.00 |
   #+TBLFM: @>$3=vsum(@2..@-1)::@>$5=vsum(@2..@-1);%.2f::@>$7=vsum(@2..@-1);%.2f::@>$8=vsum(@2..@-1);%.2f::$5=$3*$4;%.2f::$7=if(typeof($6) < 10, $5*$6, 0);%.2f::$8=$7+$5;%.2f
    The #+TBLFM: line at the bottom is org-mode spreadsheet functionality; it ensures I can modify the table text in-place, and just press C-c C-c to recalculate all values in it. I generate a similar table with data for invoices; some taken from my configuration, some computed (e.g. invoice number is generated by looking at filenames of previous invoices; sale date and service period are estimated from current date and the time range you specified when generating line items table, etc.).

    The code for generating above table is hand-crafted. While org-mode provides you a generator for agenda tables based on TODO item name - see [1], I had to write similar feature that aggregated time by org-mode tags. I used [2] as a reference, but essentially wrote my own implementation. Surprisingly, it turned out to be almost trivial.

    Then, it's simply a matter of turning those two org-mode tables into an elisp list of keys and values. This I accomplish using a simple elisp that uses built-in Emacs calls:

      (defun trc-invoicing--named-table-to-lisp (name)
    "Convert a named org mode table in the current buffer into a list.
  The function finds a table named `NAME', passes it through `ORG-TABLE-TO-LISP',
  and return the result. Refer to the documentation of `ORG-TABLE-TO-LISP'
  for info about result's shape."
    (save-excursion
      (goto-char (point-min))
      (search-forward (format "#+NAME: %s" name))
      (forward-line)
      (org-table-to-lisp)))
    Then it's a matter of populating a LaTeX template with extracted values, invoking pdflatex, and copying the resulting PDF in an appropriate place. That last part I yet have to finish.

    It's the biggest piece of elisp I wrote since Nyan Mode, but all in all, I find it surprisingly easy to code for Emacs. Availability of source code, extensive in-editor documentation and built-in source-level debugger make this process pretty pleasant.

    --

    [0] - Org Mode has a concept of "dynamic blocks". You type in #+BEGIN: blockname some params, and then using C-c C-c on it causes Org Mode to invoke an elisp function named org-dblock-write:blockname. The called function is then responsible for outputting contents of the dynamic block.

    [1] - http://orgmode.org/manual/The-clock-table.html

    [2] - https://gist.github.com/tsu-nera/d9ffa6a51a6e7bdb957b

  4623. I Bought a House with Solar Panels 2019-02-15 01:22:52 octorian
    I have a system from SolarCity that also came with my home when I bought it. This past year was finally the point where "buying it out" was possible, but I procrastinated. In retrospect, it's actually a good thing I did. My panels turned out to have a manufacturing defect, and now all need to be replaced. Because of the arrangement, SolarCity is doing it for me.

    That being said, their monthly cost is fixed so it's more a philosophical issue for me. I may still just buy it outright someday, especially if I want to expand it.

  4624. Why I hate the weekends (2017) 2019-02-17 16:09:23 atemerev
    There are different problems. I have to overcome procrastination, sure, and regular meetings are a strain, but if I want to work at nights, I can. If I want to go for a walk and think, I can. The balance is much better.

  4625. Kodak's Discovery of A-Bomb Testing (2016) 2019-02-19 06:37:26 smueller1234
    That's a beautiful quote, thank you for sharing! It's also how I acquired most of the skills that today define my career. I studied physics and procrastinated with code, and to a lesser extent with studying computer science, extensively. Today I work on Google's technical infrastructure. I suspect that this is not at all an unusual turn of events amongst readers here.

  4626. Kodak's Discovery of A-Bomb Testing (2016) 2019-02-19 06:49:27 TeMPOraL
    > I suspect that this is not at all an unusual turn of events amongst readers here.

    Definitely not. On large scale, I own most of my career to that disease. On small scale, pretty much every job I got could be attributed to something that I learned through procrastination a year or two earlier.

  4627. Kodak's Discovery of A-Bomb Testing (2016) 2019-02-19 16:01:28 smueller1234
    I have another variant of this: I get code rage (which I can easily self diagnose after the fact as being simply NIH in most cases). So whenever I got stuck debugging a bunch of spaghetti, I'd go look for distractions. But because at this point, that was in a professional setting and no longer just my target for procrastination, I was looking for professionally valid distractions. So I became a team lead/manager that way. One thing leads to another and here I am. Turns out I liked that career, too.

  4628. Average Office Worker Spends Less Than 3 Hours of the Day Working Productively 2019-02-19 21:58:01 ahaferburg
    The entire article is not much more interesting than the title. The more interesting question is why. Why do workers procrastinate, why do managers ignore it or don't do something about it. And while it might be true that office workers need unproductive activities, it's a bit of a stretch from that to "workers need 5 hours of unproductive activities for every 3 hours of work". There's got to be a saner balance.

    I don't really care about what 1000 people don't do. I'd rather learn why 10 people work the way they do, and how to change it.

  4629. Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output 2019-02-19 23:55:08 dalbasal
    "... a New Zealand financial services company, switched its 240 staff from a five-day week to a four-day week last November and maintained their pay. Productivity increased in the four days they worked so there was no drop in the total amount of work done."

    The result/claim makes intuitive sense to me but..... The problem trying to study this is that "productivity" of many/most white collar workers is basically impossible to measure.

    Some do. Customer support can be benchmarked (and prodctivity-pushed) But... customers support jobs don't lend to this 4d workweek thing. The jobs that do lend to it, don't lend to measurement.

    This difficulty can lead to all sorts of wierdness. Tyler Cowen claimed that office worker productivity has not been (measurably) increased by office computerization. IE, going from secretaries, fax and typwriters to Google docs hasn't produced any economic gains.

    Strange claim. Difficult to measure. David Graeber (anarchist that reckons most office work is pointless busy-work) quotes the same stat this white paper quotes, people spend about 2/8 hrs working and the rest procrastinating on social media.

    Measurement is also not incidental here. Measurablity changes everything. Once an employees job productivity is measurable, it can be optimized and already has been.

    It's a Shrodinger's product evangalist problem...

    That said, I like the jist.Lets shorten the workweek. Science-wise... well...

  4630. Ask HN: Would You Stay at a Boring, Well Paying Job? 2019-02-20 01:32:40 apohn
    I've had a job like this. IMO it's okay to stay in this type of job as long as you are able to use the spare time and energy for your personal life, side projects, personal or career growth, etc. If you are forced to sit in an office and look busy, find another job.

    It's also important to leave before you turn into that person who does barely anything for 10 years and are then unemployable. Unless you are okay with that. But you are asking on HN, so I'm guessing you are not okay with it.

    >My sense of purpose is slowly but surely going away as I spend my days doing things that could be done so much more efficiently but that no one wants to improve. I have not had a real challenge at work for quite a long time now.

    To paraphrase something posted on HN "Find a way to wind your own gears." I had a job like yours and I grew increasingly frustrated with the lack of control and the number of people who actually made things worse in their effort to control things. This job came soon after a challenging/interesting but really bad job (crazy work hours, toxic boss).

    I was ready to quit the new job, but I had some stuff going on in my personal life so I ended up finding a career coach to explore where I was, how I got there, and where I wanted to go. It helped me find ways to wind my own gears. Part of that was realizing how much of my own growth had some from my own initiative and learning, not only from my job. I had to find ways to be true to my values despite being in a job where I felt my values were violated in a regular basis.

    For example, we had a project where we had to process a large quantity of data. What followed was 6+ months of meetings and nonsense as people chased after building a big data stack and trying to build something that could solve all the companies data problems (hint: After more than a year nothing useful was delivered, but the PowerPoints were amazing)

    Partly though the project I thought about how the solution might run on my laptop and spent two weeks building it in Python. I never told anybody what I did. But I learned a lot(!!) more about handling large quantities of data that I ever would have trying to influence that nonsense big data project.

    >I spend most of my days having to wait for other people/companies or procrastinating which drives me crazy.

    I think the important thing is to find a way to not let it drive you crazy. Channel that frustration into something useful for yourself. Lots of people will say "You have an opportunity to improve things and show them how it's done." But sometimes doing that is useless and not worth the energy. It can be like trying to use logic to convince a toddler to change their mind - the stupid person in that situation is not the toddler!

    Also, realize that the vast majority of jobs are dealing with politics, waiting for other people, etc. It's important to find a way to deal with that without driving yourself crazy.

  4631. Ask HN: How Can I Be More Hardworking? 2019-02-20 12:29:54 muzani
    I've tried working from other places. It's actually a little less effective. It's tempting to procrastinate other ways - walking a little further for lunch, taking long walks around the nice co-working building, or just making small talk with people.

    Coffee places tend to cut the internet after an hour, which straight up kills flow. I have issues starting, not continuing work, and this limited time brings enough dread to not start at all.

  4632. Ask HN: Would You Stay at a Boring, Well Paying Job? 2019-02-20 14:40:28 pydeveloper22
    Hi,

    Thanks for sharing this personal account of your experiences. However, the part of you creating a personal project in Python to could have potentially automate the solution to you company's project would have been neat.

    Now if there's a way to automate procrastination, the politics, work stresses and etc ...sign me up!!

  4633. Show HN: Find Eco-friendly alternatives to Products You Use Everyday 2019-02-20 21:28:22 eeZah7Ux
    Minimizing small sources of pollution is always good, but I'm seeing a huge pattern of greenwashing.

    If people focus on ice trays and straws and forget large sources of pollution [1] we get what looks like an avoidance/displacement/procrastination behavior.

    It's like taking vitamins as an excuse to delay a needed surgery, so to speak.

    [1] https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10...

  4634. Show HN: A Hands-On Guide on PySpark Coding and Best Practices 2019-02-20 23:39:47 ericxiao251
    Hey quadrature, thanks for the feedback! Would you be able to go into more details about what skew you see :)?

    In chapter 7 I go into some methods of fixing skewed data when performing joins. This solved a majority of our skew problems, but we still see skew on aggregates I believe. I am working on how to debug/find skews in a spark application in Chapter 6, wanted to initially release this as I've been procrastinating over 2 years to do so lol.

    We have done more spark parameter optimizations but that helps after the data skew have been resolved.

  4635. My Notes on How to Start a Startup by YC 2019-02-21 15:08:57 midway
    Catchy title with strong words ('57-page', 'YC'), no real click-bait but close.

    I skimmed the first pages and most of the advice is neither wrong or bad. Still, reading a lenghty 57-note in order to learn is wrong.

    You learn by doing. If you want to start something stop procrastinating on HN and execute the first step: found the legal entity for your endeavor. This will keep you busy for the next days, and you learn.

    Btw, you don't need to have a good or any idea or co-founder now. This will all come. Just start, make mistakes, stop reading random advice.

    Edit: Don't downvote if you disagree, downvote if a comment doesn't add anything to the discussion.

  4636. Ask HN: Would You Stay at a Boring, Well Paying Job? 2019-02-22 15:59:44 pydeveloper22
    Oh my, I see. Now I think have a better context in how the politics, and the company's procrastination comes full circle.

    Even though you came up with your own solution, it sounds like based on how your current company operates, that there are many factors beyond your control to get to the root of solving a problem sooner and more efficiently. But instead, when they seem to get around it, an unnecessary amount of time has gone by and more work is created on top of what needed to be done in the first place.

    Well hey forgive me for trying to find a silver lining in things, but this personal account can kinda serves as a small indicator as a note wherever we end up in time whether tomorrow or years from now work-wise...that we'll have hopefully put ourselves in better position or be a part of something where we're continuously progressing leading to great things. And perhaps along the way, the things like company politics, procrastination, and the like are mitigated to a larger degree where we can focus on doing good work without all the nonsense.

    Maybe I sound a bit naive but it can make you appreciate the flaws of being human and not a machine in which what you are programmed to do it has to execute. At least being human you can adapt, keep life in perspective, and maybe along the way have a renewed sense of purpose that comes with the challenges which can lead one to be excited to wake up everyday to.

    My apologies, for being a be long winded and going off the rails a bit. I'm not in tech as I'm currently learning programming to get to the point someday but nice to learn a little what it's like when working in a professional company environment when you have so many moving elements in play while you're trying to accomplish a goal in mind. But I guess that's the game of life. :)

    Hang in there...you at least you noticed a problem then actively tried to fix it while at the same time kept in some perspective that it could've been worse when you mentioned at least it wasn't your old job before it. :)

  4637. Show HN: Sendnoodz.io Spam Your Friends Noodles MMS for an Hour 2019-02-22 23:00:25 badideaprojects
    Focussed procrastination

    Here’s a promo code: KXPK2-RDJQY-VNH1N

    You can use @ /promo-code.php

  4638. Yelp Fired Manager After He Didn't Take Calls, Check Email 24/7, Lawsuit Claims 2019-02-22 23:10:30 rpmcmurphy
    I take the approach of telling people to call or text me if something is urgent (my number is in the company directory), because I likely won't notice an email quickly, and will ignore Slack/IM completely so soon as I walk out the door. The only time my phone buzzes is when something is actually on fire.

    I remember previous jobs where late night emails demanding edits to someone's slide deck were routine (and anything is not urgent, it is editing some product manager's slide deck). That shit can wait until Monday, and if you are throwing it on me because you procrastinated, that's your problem.

  4639. New ‘past’ link on HN front page 2019-02-23 08:40:31 hombre_fatal
    This is great. I always wished I could see front pages from the past.

    The only downside is that getting bored of the current front page is sometimes the only reason I get off HN when I'm procrastinating and this makes it easier to prolong that. :)

  4640. Ask HN: What do productive people do on weekends? 2019-02-24 00:48:08 impendia
    I am not OP, but I'm interested in this question too.

    To be honest, I'm not too sure what "everyone else" does on the weekend either, and am curious about that also. Sometimes I end up intending to be productive, but end up more-or-less procrastinating and neither being productive nor genuinely relaxing. I've often wondered whether to attempt to be more disciplined and productive on the weekend (e.g., work, exercise, piano practice, read "serious" books, etc.), or to embrace relaxing and absolving myself temporarily of any responsibilities.

    I would very much welcome any testimonials from anyone who has made either decision!

  4641. Ask HN: How Do You Increase Your Output and Mental Stamina? 2019-02-24 01:08:49 dmfdmf
    1) Stop beating yourself up, I think this is normal as everyone has a peak time.

    2) A cause or a contributor to the distraction and procrastination could be due to forcing yourself to do difficult work in the PM when your mind just isn't up to the task. Plan around it with the difficult work scheduled for AM and easier tasks scheduled PM.

    3) Cut back or quit drinking coffee. A well known symptom of coffee addiction is the afternoon crash, leading to more coffee and disrupted sleep, an endless cycle.

    4) Make sure you are getting 7-8hrs of sleep and that your sleep schedule is stable, i.e. no wildly fluctuating sleep/wake times even on the weekends.

    5) Change your diet, look into paleo or other low-carb diets. A carb-heavy lunch will wipe you out in the afternoon. On low-carb my energy levels are more stable throughout the day.

    6) Get regular exercise. I like to lift free weights and do a little cardio. Cardio is overrated and lifting is underrated. Don't run yourself ragged on the treadmill or stationary bike. Put on some muscle mass and it will help with your mental and physical stamina and your posture when sitting in a chair for 7hrs a day.

    7) Don't drink alcohol, even a little. Apart from all the deleterious effects, one that I have noted is that even if I have a glass of wine or beer in the evening it lowers my tolerance for frustration (which aggravates getting distracted) for days. Part of taking on a challenging task is getting frustrated (i.e. part of learning) so it is at odds with getting things done. The real danger is that the solution for the lowered frustration tolerance due to alcohol is....more alcohol! That is not a merry-go-round you want to ride.

  4642. Ask HN: What do productive people do on weekends? 2019-02-24 11:17:37 yesenadam
    I don't have 'weekends'. Part of 'success' seems to me doing what you love and what you want to do, and if you're doing that, you want to do it every day, and never 'retire'. Then work and play aren't clearly separate. I don't really have 'hobbies', or I don't understand the idea, at least - I'm kind of equally serious (and unserious[0]) about everything I do. (e.g. for me, whether it's programming, making music, making art, learning some new subject or skill etc) I've noticed from all over the place that 'side projects' almost normally become peoples' main thing, whether in science, programming, art etc. Whatever they're working on for fun and curiosity.

    (I read recently about how the Institute for Advanced Studies produced almost nothing, because although it sounded great, to pay geniuses to spend as long as they wanted on anything, the effect was that there were 'no side projects', and making everything 'the main thing' seems to somehow stultify it. Maybe we're natural procrastinators, and the AIS model was defeated by that.)

    [0] I mean, in the sense of being alert for the comical, unexpected side of things. A playful sense of joy. Most of my favourite writers (e.g. Chesterton, Russell, Kierkegaard) have a great sense of humour, university lecturers too. I got into following chess tournament commentary online because of some commentators who were very funny. (e.g. Mig Greengard, Ben Finegold, Jan Gustafsson). I've noticed almost all great scientists, mathematicians I read/hear have a strong sense of humour, in their personalities if not in all their works. It's not separate from their curiosity and serious intellectual concerns.

  4643. I Ditched My Phone and Unbroke My Brain 2019-02-25 09:15:05 1_over_n
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique Pomodoro technique for the win. Just work for 25 minutes and then time box your procrastination for 5 minutes. Be disciplined and you will be surprised how far it gets you!

  4644. Ask HN: How do you relax without drugs/alcohol/sex/exercise? 2019-03-03 18:57:19 staz
    Meditation, cooking with my SO, playing video games, reading and napping.

    Unexpectedly for me another thing that is becoming relaxing as I grow older is to use my free time to stay on top of my household's chores. Just knowing I wont have the stress of having to rush them latter on because "oh fuck it's Monday morning and I don't have a clean shirt". Still far from perfect at it because procrastination run deep in me, but it's something I'm trying to slowly improve.

  4645. Hours of Rust Game Development 2019-03-05 09:53:13 jblow
    It is fine that people are experimenting with putting graphics on the screen and playing with new languages.

    But I just wanted to comment that you don't need an "Entity Component System" in a game, and especially not for a very simple not-yet-a-game like shown here. (You also don't need inheritance or composition).

    It bothers me that so many people are buying into this hive-mind marketing on ECS, when in reality it is just overengineering + procrastination in almost all cases.

    (None of my games have ever had anything as complicated as a component system).

    If you want to make a simple game like this, just sit down and program it in the obvious way. It will work. You don't need to be fancy.

  4646. 24 Hours of Rust Game Development 2019-03-05 10:11:58 keyle
    But but but... I thought game programming was 99% procrastinating?!

  4647. 24 Hours of Rust Game Development 2019-03-05 11:42:41 keyle
    Thank you guys you gave me a genuine big laugh. That said game programming is extremely hard. Probably the hardest IT field imho, so send my regards to all my fellow procrastinators.

  4648. Launch HN: Dockup (YC W19) – On demand staging environments for dev teams 2019-03-06 05:28:11 nloui
    This is great. Setting up proper staging environments has been on our procrastination list for a long time and as a small team, we haven't invested engineering hours for a real setup yet. If this simplifies the process so much that we barely need to think about it, I totally get the value.

  4649. Let over Lambda – Common Lisp Book (2008) 2019-03-07 15:16:40 ravieira
    I bought Land of Lisp by Conrad Barski but never really read it due to procrastination. I really wanna read Lisp one day. Also, I didn't see Land of Lisp mentioned here. What do experience lispers think about it?

  4650. Elizabeth Warren Proposes Breaking Up Tech Giants Like Amazon 2019-03-09 15:33:55 quadrangle
    I don't have time to answer your specific claim about why relative wealth inequality is a problem even if the poor aren't miserably poor. It's a complex and deep subject. There's resources out there if you are curious. And yes, there's a good share of BAD arguments against wealth inequity (lots of people who are just resentful and superficial and believe even factually wrong things) — so you could spend your time convincing yourself that everyone you disagree with is an idiot. There's no shortage of idiocy. But you can also find the real stuff from smart and expressive people discussing these things better, and that's what you should try to find. Sorry for not picking out citations, I'm already procrastinating too much by writing this.

    Now, Jeff Bezos is absolutely a remarkable and unique person who worked very hard and intelligently to get to where he is. But on just the pure matter of "deserve" it's so much more complex than the way you are looking at it. We don't live in a fair world. Look up "just world fallacy". In a world that is quite out of alignment from what we'd have if everyone got what they "deserve", it's simplistic to look at select cases like Bezos and judge from there.

    But that's not what this is about AT ALL.

    The concept of anti-trust and of managing this stuff is about power. The question is whether it's okay for Bezos and the whole company really to not only be wealthy but have monopoly-like power in the market. I have no reason to believe you checked out the link I posted earlier because you went on and repeated arguments about wealth — and this is NOT about that, not philosophically or legally. It's not even about taking away Bezos' wealth! Anti-trust is not about wealth redistribution, it's only about stopping anti-competitive threats to market competition.

    > In a capitalistic society it deisappears within 2-3 generations

    Well, that's just factually wrong. Capitalism doesn't just automatically do that, and the evidence doesn't support that claim either. And we don't have any sort of "pure" capitalism in existence to even study anyway. You need to get beyond these superficial specious ideas if you want to understand the reality. Start by treating your presumptions as hypotheses and figure out what evidence would be scientifically strong enough to validate or invalidate them and see how they hold up.

  4651. Ask HN: How to speak like a leader, not like an engineer? 2019-03-10 17:09:45 hevi_jos
    There is nothing wrong about being an engineer. In fact, most of the best leaders I know are engineers, because having both operative skills and decisions skills is incredible powerful.

    You don't need to negate your engineering skills, just acquire leadership skills over them. You will need:

    -Skills about people, phycology types, influence, procrastination, deals and negotiation skills.

    -Knowledge about the "Forrest" perspective of your business, in engineering you will have deep knowledge about the trees. It doesn't matter if you do a perfect job if you do the wrong job. If you do you will fail, and your best people will leave soon.

    -You need caring about your people(the people on your team). Isolate the blame on yourself(and your system, change your system when things go wrong) for all errors of your people. Give credit to them when things go well.

    People know when you care about them, they sense it. This overpowers anything you say.

    In today's business it is all words about how the most important things in the business is its people, and they they trow their people under the bus. You can even joke and say all day you don't care about your team that if they know you care it doesn't matter.

    This is very easy to state and say, but it requires years of practice and lots of mistakes before you are good at this. Focus on improving one skill at a time and log improvements on a notebook or something.

  4652. Future You Masturbation 2019-03-11 11:19:41 ryanmarsh
    If this was a form of cancer I would be Stage 4 and getting my affairs in order.

    So after years procrastinating on a book, doing research and taking notes but not publishing one word I started blogging. I’ve only written 4 blog posts and they get decent traffic. I was surprised. I’m trying to apply “do the work” to other areas too.

  4653. Guide to Personal Productivity (2007) 2019-03-11 16:31:11 MRD85
    Some of the points in this article I disagree with but others I like. Compared to my past self I am "super productive". I have a full-time career, a single parent to two young kids (approx 70% of the time I'm not at work I'm parenting) and I study nearly full time (3 units per semester) with a perfect GPA. I somehow still have time for "wasting", like commenting on online discussion boards, going on dates, etc.

    * Keeping lists: This one is huge. I have lists all the time which track what I need to have completed and when. I have watch lists for tasks like "get birthday present for this kids party", etc. I have a job list at work.

    Procrastination: I use this all the time. It's currently 7:23pm here, I'm wasting time now and I have been since 6pm but my deadline is I wake at 4am tomorrow to work.

    Food: This article touches on food but I feel it's really important. I eat low carb because I find carbs make me far more tired. I also avoid large meals because they make me tired.

    Something that isn't touched on in the article: Find ways to save yourself time. I get angry when I see an office worker earning 6 figures typing one finger looking at the keys. Touch typing doesn't take long to learn but it saves so much time and effort. Everyone has little quirks that take time/effort to fix but pay off in a big way once fixed. Do it, it's worth it.

  4654. Daydreaming about the future instead of doing work today 2019-03-11 19:01:48 TeMPOraL
    > I noticed many people doing the same thing with "to do"/"to read" lists. They'll add items to their lists thinking they'll get around to doing them some day, not realizing that future me is probably just as lazy as present me, and if I were going to do something, I would have done it now.

    Guilty as charged. That said, the primary purpose of my "to read" list today is to short-circuit my procrastination loop; when I realize it's high time to get back to work, I'll quickly scroll through the remaining 20 open tabs, put some on my "toread" list, and close the others.

  4655. Pomo Timer [macOS] 2019-03-11 21:32:49 maxgribov
    I decided to start fighting procrastination using the pomodoro technique, but didn't find a convenient and simple pomodoro timer, so I made my own. Check it out, maybe someone else will be helpful.

  4656. Another former Tesla security manager says the company spied on employees 2019-03-12 11:31:38 blotter_paper
    I simultaneously believe that you're correct about short breaks helping focus, that people who understand this effect tend to overestimate it in ways that help them rationalise procrastination, and that the renewed focus gained from a short walk or meditation is probably more helpful than whatever focus is gained from engaging in activities that require the social functions of your brain to kick in.

  4657. Show HN: Idea Minr – Business Ideas Aggregator 2019-03-12 18:03:42 dalbasal
    Ideas alone don't matter.

    That saying exists to deter procrastination, obsession with being first, being secret and other mistakes people make.

    But ideas do matter. Google AdWords' bidding model was an idea (I think overture had the first quality implementation at scale). That idea was/is responsible for adding 0s to Google's as income.

  4658. Willpower is a dangerous old idea that needs to be scrapped 2019-03-13 00:43:08 dade_
    My experience managing my own procrastination for years makes me think this could be true. I go to the gym to avoid cleaning my aquarium, I'll rewrite a software module for a personal project to avoid some undesirable work. The avoiding activity doesn't seem to take any willpower, but does when they become the avoided activity. Last winter I didn't go on vacation, but took 2 weeks off to catch up on personal projects and training, etc and what I realized is that those side projects require more than full time hours. As the story about the wine drinking lawyer in the blog post, maybe the problem is we don't really appreciate how much stress we are under. It causes anxiety that makes it extremely difficult to act.

  4659. Ask HN: How do I 3x my performance? 2019-03-13 02:10:03 all2
    > Don't aspire to be a high performer. It's a lie.

    Thank you for this reminder. It is often hard for me to see past projections. It is also hard to accept that I cannot do everything that I want to do.

    > Success in life is not how many shinies you get.

    I'm not so concerned about "success" on the world's terms. What I'm concerned about is the long periods of procrastination, being stressed about outstanding commitments (school? work?), feeling overwhelmed even though I know what I need to do next...

    > See the wonder that's right in front of you. Enjoy your youth while you still have it.

    Again, thank you for the reminder. I get lost in the world of "pending responsibilities" often enough that a reminder to slow down brings me some peace.

  4660. Ask HN: How do I 3x my performance? 2019-03-13 02:21:24 kstenerud
    I've found that I start procrastinating most after I've run myself too hard. It's important to have lazy days, where the goal is to accomplish nothing at all. This is one area I really struggle in, even after all these years...

  4661. Ask HN: How do I 3x my performance? 2019-03-13 02:30:55 all2
    I feel like I need lazy days about 1/2 of all days. Maybe this has to do with how I meter out my deep(er) work.

    I typically procrastinate enough that I spend 10 to 12 hours the day an assignment is due to get it done. Part of that is I get stressed out thinking about the assignment prior to when it is due, so I put it off.

    I've been reading GTD and I think at least part of my stress response is not having clear outcomes or clear next steps... I've been working to clarify my most important (time sensitive) projects and it seems to be helping some.

  4662. FBI accuses wealthy parents in college-entrance bribery scheme 2019-03-13 07:04:04 bryanbuckley
    > Did I just by chance happen to not go to some meeting or join some club that would have changed everything?

    Probably? Personally my first semester at uni was depressingly dull other than the novelty and the subjects (well, mostly dull there too but the future semesters looked interesting and I was programming for the first time). By chance I was walking through a club recruitment event when a single person stopped to talk to me and tried to convince me to join and come to a meeting that night. They got my email too. Well, I didn't go to the meeting but a few days later an email showed up saying the first practice will be tomorrow. I figured why not, I'm not doing anything, and showed up. I stuck with it for four years, taking on duties over time until I was president, it was most of my social life (e.g parties, hanging out) and I made most of my friends through it, shifted my lifestyle from videogames and procrastination to working out, having fun with sport and mastering it, having flow/mushin consistently, and getting work done ASAP, and other considerations.

    I've never felt the desire to donate to my old college, but certainly I already have donated to my old club and have considered doing more for it. I assume folks with very good experiences were part of some sort of organization: my high school friends that stuck together in college without branching out had a good time but was overall meh.

  4663. Researchers find trapdoor in SwissVote election system 2019-03-13 13:39:13 c22
    It is super convenient and I love being able to do research at my leisure with the ballot right in front of me--helps keep me from being lazy and voting a party line. The only downside is having weeks to procrastinate about it has caused me to miss a couple votes since we started doing it this way.

  4664. Getting too absorbed in side projects 2019-03-14 22:12:56 xkgt
    Procrastinating here at 95% completion of my side project. Can't wait enough for it to get over at the same time dreading the fact that the end result will be never as good as it was in my mind.

  4665. Book Summary: Radical Candor by Kim Scott 2019-03-15 05:54:17 openfuture
    I just read the whole thing and it was a very strange experience having 90 other people there while I was doing it, sort of like a library or something. At one point someone did a ctrl+a which startled me because I thought for a second I had to be careful not to press a button or I'd delete everything. Some people had been pointing out typos in the first couple of dozen pages but that stopped once you got further.

    Oh and the document is quite a good summary, some points get repeated a lot but I guess they are very important. To be honest I'm not sure if these lessons do much for people once they reach a certain threshold, similar to reading about procrastination, it's interesting at first but then you know the concepts and the jargon is just shifting and all you need to do is apply them instead of reading yet another explanation of what monads are or whatever.

  4666. Ask HN: Is Getting Things Done still a book that HN recommends? 2019-03-16 19:59:20 muzani
    I wouldn't recommend it. I've followed it for years. The Eisenhower Matrix is flawed for the same reason.

    The problem is that, unlike in 2001, there are now an infinite number of important things to do (e.g. learn a new framework, respond to boss's emails, unclog the toilet). All of these have bad consequences if you fail to do them, so they end up on the list.

    To quote Paul Graham: "You're "getting things done." Just the wrong things."

    Some better options might be the following options:

    Marc Andreessen: https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_personal_productivity.html

    (Make only two lists - one for today, one for later)

    Paul Graham: http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

    (Procrastinate on small things to work on big things)

  4667. Ask HN: Is jQuery on its way out? 2019-03-17 02:41:38 FPGAhacker
    Feel free to disregard this advice, I don't do anything in javascript.

    Whether or not it's worth becoming good at jQuery is essentially determined by your goals in life, and whether becoming good at jQuery in particular, is in alignment with those goals and also of high importance.

    Any time you spend honing one skill is time not spent honing another. You want to be sure to spend your time on the most important things. Figuring out what is important itself becomes a skill to learn.

    Pinging HN on whether it's worth learning jQuery is one way to assess importance. But keep in mind, if the people who answer have different goals than you, their answer may not be relevant and may actually be bad advice for your case. This answer included.

    Figure out your goals. Find people who have accomplished them. Talk to them directly about what they did and how they did it. Adapt what makes sense to your life.

    Finally, be careful of learning something just for the sake of learning. It feels great, but it can actually be procrastination in productivity's clothing. Make sure you are clear on why you are spending the time learning X right now, and be clear on why you are not spending time on learning Y right now.

  4668. Vim Anti-Patterns (2012) 2019-03-18 08:18:44 thatoneuser
    Skill of your too directly impacts your ability to complete a task. If you struggle to prep food for cooking, you're going to be slower and probably less effective than the master chef who doesn't even have to think about how to dice.

    But I'll agree with you in this way - there are a lot of people who want to just get good at their tools (huge vimrc that's mostly unused) and don't care about how well they actually write code. I think it stems from procrastinating.

  4669. See a cognitive bias explained in each new Chrome tab 2019-03-19 08:44:31 voidhorse
    First off, it's a neat idea and it extrapolates well to other domains. I'd love to have "random x definition" when I open a new tab--would ensure I at least get some learning done while procrastinating on the web.

    On a less positive note, and tangentially related:

    I'm kind of sick of the whole "bias" obsession. It's everyone's go-to counterargument these days, and it's a shallow, poorly developed one. It's like everyone's lost critical reasoning skills, which require delicate attention to the particular strategies and propositions deployed in a given argument, and found these set of stock biases to use instead. In fact it's impossible to purge an argument or line of thinking of all so-called biases (though these don't actually exist in arguments, they are deduced from arguments)--if it were, it wouldn't be an argument or thought.

    The goal of catching our own mistakes is an admirable one, and I'm not advocating people stop doing that--I just think it too frequently bleeds into trying to find so-called biases in arguments (whether written or verbal). In fact, this is more or less a fool's errand. What people are actually trying to point out in arguments are logical fallacies which are traits of the argument. Biases contrarily occur at the individual level and are operational flaws, they only occur during the thought process, and it's only meaningful to talk about them in these terms (that is, as they manifest in the ongoing practices of a person)--they are not properties of a line of thought's encoding (the written or spoken argument). Fallacies or viewpoints expressed in an argument may hint at the biases of the author, but it's a non-sequitur to start talking about them (when critiquing an argument), as the only way one could actually confirm this is by observing the author at work in daily life. To say, such an such an author is biased, is useless. It doesn't contribute meaningfully to a critique of the argument, and it would need to be verified through observation of the author.

    Demonstrating to someone that they have developed/fall prey to particular bias frequently and working to rectify that one-on-one is a totally different story, or trying to catch biases operating in yourself is a totally different story.

    Edit: I suppose you could say I'm biased against biases. A joke that illustrates my point.

  4670. Ask HN: Develop productivity app first for Mac or Windows 10? 2019-03-19 23:04:12 dmos62
    Let me step back a tad and comment on your use case, i.e. needing to be reminded to work and not procrastinate. I largely solved this problem by adopting the Pomodoro technique. Following it, I subdivide my work time into periods of concentrated work (20mn in my case) and relaxation (3-5mn). This increases my effective work stamina very much, helps with motivation, and has other benefits. Related literature is plentiful.

  4671. How I'm able to take notes in mathematics lectures using LaTeX and Vim 2019-03-20 20:02:48 blastbeat
    > But how about creating the LaTex notes after class as a method to help retain the information?

    I recommend solving exercises instead (with pen and paper), and creating flash cards for memorizing.

    Golden rule: Use LaTeX only, if you really need to publish something for a wider audience. It's relevant for your thesis, research papers and math books. For everything else, LaTeX is nothing but a huge time sink. Even if you communicate math via email, try to avoid sending PDFs. Use common LaTeX syntax in your email plain text instead.

    Don't abuse LaTeX for procrastination.

  4672. A list of the biggest datasets for machine learning 2019-03-21 02:56:17 gwern
    All humans, believe it or not. Never underestimate the power of procrastinating grad students or anime weebs.

    At present, the most advanced tagger for Danbooru, DeepDanbooru https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/akbc11/p_t... , still isn't good enough to do annotation by itself but I think that's mostly because no one has really tried.

  4673. Show HN: Everything I Know Wiki 2019-03-23 16:10:40 knight17
    Generally this is true, but I think you are being dismissive by throwing this truism at his note taking attempt. The point of keeping a personal wiki, is tonote the things that has come to his attention and not to forget it and to come back to it later. Writing things down gives it a concrete form. Sometime I even force myself to write down things that I read and that is a reasonable cure for my binge reading procrastination. Even if you think it as just a glorified bookmark manager, it is more useful than your browser's bookmark manager . Many people who do not maintain a wiki may not realise that knowledge is incrementally gained and by having a wiki (or any place really) to note these things makes the process transparent and recallable.

  4674. Best apps for writers 2019-03-24 10:33:21 Scarbutt
    I used your blocker last week, changing the system clock time (from time and date preferences) made your app useless (doesn't block anymore), so went back to editing /etc/hosts again. If circumventing the block is easier than editing a hosts file I don't see the point.

    For many, I don't think changing the clock time is an uncommon thing to think about if the desire to procrastinate arises again.

  4675. Ask HN: Going live with my app now or finish my master thesis first? 2019-03-24 23:11:31 blastbeat
    I would finish the master thesis first. Publishing a half finished app doesn't make sense for me. The whole thing rather sounds like some kind of procrastination. Successfully finishing university with a good degree on the other hand is a sure shot and something you can build on later in any case.

  4676. Dell Autism Hiring Program 2019-03-25 00:47:35 ThrustVectoring
    Autism and ADD are fairly often co-morbid, and ADD is the most treatable mental condition (via stimulant therapy). If you have executive function issues (procrastination, losing things, inability to remain focused on boring tasks, self-medicate with lots of caffeine, etc), you can get a combined Autism + ADD diagnosis and try out amphetamine or methylphenidate.

    As far as the autism itself, what a diagnosis gives you is access to talk or group therapy, possibly accommodations at work or school, and maybe classes for picking up social and coping skills.

    Workplace accommodations are a mixed bag: you have to tell your work about your autism and implicitly threaten a disability lawsuit against them to get them. If you're in software and you need to have a desk without rear-facing traffic, you often have the negotiating power to just ask for that as a thing that helps you do your job better, so the diagnosis isn't particularly useful. Oh also, the "just ask for things you need" works better for smaller accommodations at smaller companies, the diagnosis is way more useful for the more bureaucratized environments at large companies.

  4677. You Procrastinate (It Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control) 2019-03-25 22:48:17 paulsutter
    > Procrastination isn’t a unique character flaw or a mysterious curse on your ability to manage time, but a way of coping with challenging emotions and negative moods induced by certain tasks — boredom, anxiety, insecurity, frustration, resentment, self-doubt and beyond.

  4678. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-25 22:54:54 johnchristopher
    Yikes. That's a lot of negative emotions. But don't we judge our characters and other's by how we manage despite that ? So it's back to square one and procrastination is a character flaw ?

  4679. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-25 22:59:09 juandazapata
    Sleeping has a huge impact in procrastination. The lack of sleep translates into an hyperactive amygdala (which has a big influence in processing emotions and impulses) and an under-active frontal cortex (which influences our rational thinking, etc) [1]

    According to my experience, a good night of sleep is the best cure for procrastination, sadly, our current society don't optimize for sleeping well.

    ---

    1: https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501...

  4680. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-25 22:59:12 EndXA
    I find the article to be a bit misleading.

    The title says that procrastination has "nothing to do with self-control", which is obviously an appealing sentiment.

    However, the first paper that they reference says that "...if we have a great deal of self-discipline and dutifulness... we may exert the self-control necessary to engage in the task in a timely manner despite the lack of immediate reward or the negative mood that the task elicits. Procrastination, however, is the lack of this self-control, whether as a state or trait. Procrastination is the self-regulatory failure of not exerting the self-control necessary for task engagement... this failure at self-control may be the direct result of a focus on regulating moods and feeling states in the short term."

    Overall, a better argument would be that a lack of self-control isn't the driving force behind our decision to procrastinate. Rather, what causes us to procrastinate are things such as anxiety or fear of failure, and a high degree of self-control is what allows us to overcome these issues.

    If anyone is interested in learning more about the factors that can cause us to procrastinate, such as anxiety, perfectionism, and reliance on abstract goals, check out this article: https://solvingprocrastination.com/why-people-procrastinate/

  4681. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-25 23:04:18 qntty
    Keyword being unique. Our tendency to procrastinate is explained by our sensitivity to, or ability to cope with, negative emotions. It's not something separate, like our ability to ride a bike (or lack thereof).

  4682. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-25 23:11:08 IBCNU
    I know he's not for everyone but Nassim Taleb's quote is salient - “Few understand that procrastination is our natural defense, letting things take care of themselves and exercise their antifragility; it results from some ecological or naturalistic wisdom, and is not always bad -- at an existential level, it is my body rebelling against its entrapment. It is my soul fighting the Procrustean bed of modernity.”

  4683. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-25 23:16:40 pmoriarty
    "Cultivate curiosity: If you're feeling tempted to procrastinate, bring your attention to the sensations arising in your mind and body. What feelings are eliciting your temptation? Where do you feel them in your body? What do they remind you of? What happens to the thought of procrastinating as you observe it? Does it intensify? Dissipate? Cause other emotions to arise? How are the sensations in your body shifting as you continue to rest your awareness on them?"

    This sounds very much like meditation, and while it may well be beneficial, someone with a serious procrastination problem may have problems following through with their intention to meditate like this as well, and instead just compulsively do whatever makes them feel better.

  4684. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-25 23:28:34 ghaff
    There are probably more or less two classes of procrastination.

    There are tasks that really do need to be done. No magical fairy is going to come along and do your taxes for you or some household task that someone really does need to do.

    On the other hand, there are projects that aren't time-critical and that, if you hold off doing them, the need for them may really go away or you may otherwise decide that task isn't actually necessary.

  4685. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-25 23:28:51 pmoriarty
    "what causes us to procrastinate are things such as anxiety or fear of failure, and a high degree of self-control is what allows us to overcome these issues"

    Self-control seems to be a behavior rather than a characteristic, quality, or a skill. When one has controlled oneself, one has exhibited self-controlling behavior by definition. But what causes someone to exert that self-control?

  4686. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-25 23:32:46 TheOtherHobbes
    I could be wrong, but I strongly suspect that humans were procrastinating well before the first nail was hammered into the first plank of the Procrustean bed of modernity.

  4687. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-25 23:39:57 OscarTheGrinch
    Seconded, Tim is both wise and kind. His podcast is also well worth checking out for anyone currently stuck on the horns of the procrastination bull: http://iprocrastinate.libsyn.com/webpage/category/general

  4688. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-25 23:54:03 dawhizkid
    Hm. Not convinced of the link between the two. The article is arguing that procrastination is the proactive delay of making a hard decision to the detriment of our mental wellbeing. A good night's sleep isn't necessarily going to make you want to confront that decision.

  4689. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 00:10:12 beat
    This makes me think of the book Atomic Habits, which is all about how to form good habits and break bad ones. Procrastination can be seen in many cases as a lack of habit triggers to start down the path to work.

    Keeping a daily to-do list (I use bullet journaling, but other processes can work) has done wonders for my procrastination. I have a habit of writing down everything I need to do that day - even if I've already done it. I have a habit to check at the end of the day to complete what isn't yet done. I have a habit of marking things completed. So my to-do list habit leads to not procrastinating. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better than where I was.

    I also have a habit of taking my journal and a pen with me everywhere. I'd rather be without my phone than without my journal.

    I don't use a phone for my reference calendar or (especially) to-do lists, because a cell phone is full of all sorts of nasty bad-habit triggers, many designed by giant corporations that prey on my attention for money. It's basically a digital crack pipe I carry everywhere. So marking my tasks for the day without also checking email, weather, facebook (removed that app entirely and went cold turkey), etc... it's very difficult.

    Paper is how I manage my time. It gives me positive habits and positive reinforcement.

  4690. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 00:19:15 jrochkind1
    > Overall, a better argument would be that a lack of self-control isn't the driving force behind our decision to procrastinate. Rather, what causes us to procrastinate are things such as anxiety or fear of failure, and a high degree of self-control is what allows us to overcome these issues.

    Hmm, I don't think so. I would say:

    What causes us to procrastinate is that we are using it as a _coping mechanism_ for our anxiety (which is related to our fear of failure). But it is an ultimately unsuccesful coping mechanism -- it has short-term alleviation of the negative emotions we wanted to avoid, but in the long-term can make them worse (as well as interfering with accomplishing what we want to accomplish, which can itself trigger anxiety and fear of failure).

    Thinking a "high degree of self-control" is what will help us overcome procrastination does not actually help us overcome procrastination -- in fact, it can also trigger anxiety and fear of failure (as we are failing to have enough self-control).

    You don't overcome it with "high degree of self-control", you overcome it by recognizing the role it is playing, finding other ways to approach your anxiety (not trying to avoid it by procrastination), and by _self-compassion_, not self-blame for your lack of self-control.

    What is in the article matches my experience and observation. It also matches Buddhist philosophy/psychology.

    You can _disagree_ with the arguments of the article -- is that what you mean by "finding it a bit misleading"? But they are considered and to some extent evidence-based arguments, that really are intentionally saying it's _not_ about "self-control", and thinking it's about "self-control" and you just need to "try harder" won't get you out of it. That is what they are intentionally saying, it's not misleading if the title makes one think they are going to say that.

  4691. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 00:25:33 jrochkind1
    Almost nothing is _always_ bad. But I guess the question, as with everything, is if you believe it is interfering with your ability to do accomplish what is important to you in your life.

    And of course, there are always at least two possible paths there -- you can try to change it, or you can decide that you're actually okay with your life-under-procrastination after all.

    But sometimes some people are going to find their severe procrasnation is interfering with their ability to do what is important to them, and they want to do something about it. This decision alone does not make it _easy_ though. My observation and experience have matched the articles, that self-blame doesn't help, but that recognizing the relation it has to your anxiety and finding other ways to relate to your anxiety can.

  4692. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 00:26:40 EndXA
    Research has shown that there is absolutely a connection between sleep and procrastination, with low-quality sleep increasing the likelihood that people will procrastinate, particularly among people who are naturally prone to procrastination.

    This is attributed to the fact that sleep is crucial when it comes to replenishing the mental resources that you need in order to self-regulate your behavior effectively.

    This article contains a summary of research on the topic which came out recently: https://solvingprocrastination.com/study-procrastination-sle...

  4693. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 00:28:30 jrochkind1
    Hmm, what makes you think that line of thinking takes you "back to square one and procrastination is a character flaw"? I'm not following.

  4694. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 00:35:00 rb808
    I've often found myself procrastinating when working on a project where I've been thrown in not knowing enough and thought I could figure it all out. Often the solution is to step back and learn the technology/library/tool first, then I dont procrastinate any more and get the job done. I haven't seen this explanation, but I suspect it occurs often.

  4695. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 00:35:47 adrianmonk
    > “It’s self-harm,” said Dr. Piers Steel, a professor of motivational psychology

    I'm in the unfortunate position of being a layman who disagrees with an expert, but isn't it a bit inaccurate and confusing to call it "self-harm"? Doesn't that term already have a specific meaning?

    As I understand it, self-harm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-harm) is a behavior where someone seeks out pain (such as by cutting themselves). It can be because focusing on pain allows temporary escape from other thoughts, or maybe for other reasons, but in any case the pain is something the person seeks out and is an essential part of the process.

    It seems like "self-destructive" might be a better term to use when talking about procrastination. If I put off cleaning my bathroom, I'm avoiding something I can't/won't face, and that is going to come with feelings of guilt or shame, but I'm not seeking out that suffering as a tool for dealing with something else. It's just a side-effect of the choice to avoid something.

    Or, if it really is (a non-physical form of) self-harm, can someone explain how? Are they saying the feeling of guilt over not cleaning my bathroom alleviates the feelings of unpleasantness associated with having to scrub the shower?

    That doesn't seem right, but maybe there are two types of procrastination, a "light" one where the task is just unpleasant and says nothing about you (cleaning the shower) and a "serious" one where the task might reflect on you (learning to do something you don't think you're capable of)? I could imagine how self-harm might fit in with the "serious" form because maybe guilt over not trying could serve a purpose distracting you from the more-unpleasant feeling of doubt over whether you actually can do it.

  4696. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 00:46:08 EndXA
    I partially agree with what you’re saying.

    What I agree with: actively overcoming your procrastination has more to do with dealing with the obstacles that cause you to procrastinate in the first place. For example, if you’re procrastinating because of your anxiety, dealing with your anxiety is generally going to be a much more effective approach than trying to increase your self-control.

    What I disagree with: self-control is without a doubt one of the psychological mechanisms that play a role in our procrastination. That doesn’t mean that we should focus on it when we’re trying to help people stop procrastinating, but it does mean that it's important to understand the role that it plays.

    If you look at the research papers that this article mentions, this is something that the researchers themselves are saying. For instance, in the first paper, Sirois and Pychyl say that: “if we have a great deal of self-discipline and dutifulness, commonly associated with the Big Five trait of Conscientiousness… we may exert the self-control necessary to engage in the task in a timely manner despite the lack of immediate reward or the negative mood that the task elicits.”

    As such, while I think it’s reasonable for the article to conclude that when it comes to dealing with procrastination, your focus shouldn’t necessarily be on your self-control, I believe that it’s misleading for the title to claim that procrastination has “nothing to do with self-control”, when self-control clearly does play a role in this process.

  4697. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 00:52:45 nickjj
    I normally don't read NYTimes articles but this one was pretty good with a couple of useful external links.

    But then they dropped this line:

    "On the other side of the coin, Ms. Rubin also suggested that we make the things we want to do as easy as possible for ourselves."

    So what you're saying is I should tweak my vimrc file to make it easier to write code instead of working on my next project, got it!

    Jokes aside though, it's worth a read if you're afflicted by procrastination and its related friends.

  4698. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 00:57:33 hashberry
    Chronic procrastinator here. Procrastinating feels like an addiction for me because it offers instant pleasure. Right now I am procrastinating instead of trying to fix a dumb JavaScript bug. When it comes to "bad mood," I've noticed a pattern from my self-centered ego: 1). The work is "beneath" me, and/or 2). The work threatens my ego.

  4699. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 01:07:30 zemnmez
    rather unsurprising that a psychologist describes procrastination as a mismanagement of 'emotion' rather than a dysfunction of the dopaminergic reward systems. as someone taking ADHD medication, i can tell you that procrastination is fundamentally just a failure of dopamine management.

    For some unlike me perhaps it is true that there is a 'one little trick' to make your brain act rationally. I don't know, maybe it's possible via the brain's sheer neuroplasticity to evolve a dopaminergic flaw from a psychological failure or trauma.

    But at the end of the day, procrastination is very much neurological, with a fairly clear pathway and a chemical which is objectively known to drive it.

    More people absolutely need to know procrastination has nothing to do with self control, but psychological research like this will always appear to show the issue stemming from a psychological issue when this is known to be virtually always untrue. Treatment of ADHD with psychological approaches like CBT have a nearly non statistically significant effect, but ADHD medication has a 70%+ success rate.

  4700. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 01:08:44 adrianmonk
    I think this is definitely valid and real, but there also is a danger of pretending you're in this situation when you're not.

    For example, suppose you have some electronic item you want to repair but you're horrible at soldering, so you put it off because you don't want to face the negative feelings of failing at soldering again or the negative feelings of destroying that item you think you should have been able to repair. You could get past this by watching some videos on soldering, getting some better equipment, or practicing with a friend who's actually good at soldering. Once you don't suck at soldering, the negative feelings around fixing your electronic item are gone, and you can stop procrastinating. (And you can do it faster and better.)

    On the other hand, maybe you need to write a complicated and annoying SQL query that is going to be tricky to get right, and you already know SQL, but you go off on a huge tangent reading SQL documentation looking for a function or trick that will make it easier when there really isn't one. Pretty soon you're just learning about esoteric SQL functions that don't have anything to do with your problem. But maybe one of them could if you read long enough, so you keep reading and reading.

  4701. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 01:08:53 forgotAgain
    So say you're a procrastinator. Do you?

    a)read the article so you don't have to do xyz

    b)not read the article because learning how to stop procrastinating feels like self sabotage

    c)start the article but don't finish it because you have ADD from surfing the internet as a means of procrastinating

    d)something else.

    edit: e)skim the article and write an HN comment about it.

  4702. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 01:16:56 jrochkind1
    "First study" is http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/91793/1/Compass%20Paper%20rev... ? Yep, looks like it.

    I see what you are saying. That's in their literature review part.

    Other people in this thread have recommended reading other stuff from Pychyl, which I plan to, to get a fuller picture of his framework.

    While it has "something" to do with "self-control", the important point being made, including in that paper, is that "just trying harder" is not an effective strategy. I think that's what people think of when they think "it's a matter of self-control", and what the headline/article is meaning to disabuse (which Pychyl I believe would agree should be disabused).

    You say "it does mean that it's important to understand the role [self-control] plays" in anxiety -- I'm not sure. I think the thrust here (of Pychyl's research reported in the article, and after skimming that paper) is that it is much more important to understand the role "attempt at emotional self-regulation" plays, in that procrastination is one.

    That is, becoming comfortable with experiencing "negative mood" may be a useful direction; trying to increase one's "self-control" is unlikely to be.

    At any rate, I don't think the article mischaracterized Pychyl's writing, although you can take issue with Pychyl's arguments or conclusions.

  4703. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 01:35:53 mbrock
    I mostly associate procrastination with the inability to make myself want to deal with chores that seem alienating and dumb and like impositions from a boring bureaucratic external system that makes fundamental demands on me as a person with no personal connection—bookkeeping, entering long numbers into bank web apps, registering my residential address by filling out a form, going through KYC questionnaires over the phone, writing a report I know nobody will read, etc. And it’s worse the more the task is imbued with some kind of fake urgency by prudish pedantic adults while I also know that the negative consequences of not doing the thing on time are likely to be rather tame like a small fine or just a little bureaucratic slap on the wrist. I procrastinate with the same chores that might make me imagine dropping out of society to live on a homestead or as a monk. Probably I would get through these things easier if I had some “ADHD medicine” as the kids call it these days.

  4704. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 01:57:17 jrochkind1
    Is "treatment of ADHD" the same thing as "treatment of procrastination"? Are you suggesting anyone who is displeased with a regular procrastination habit has ADHD?

    Are you recommending medication for anyone who is displeased with their procrastination?

    I don't think the OP is suggesting there is "one little trick", but if, alternately, medication is in fact "one little trick" that worked for everyone, that would probably be welcome news to everyone!

  4705. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 02:17:56 curtis
    I am a terrible procrastinator, and for me procrastination seems to be very much like writer's block. The problem isn't doing something so much as it is starting something. In the case of writer's block, I try to start by free-writing. I start writing with the intention that it's going to be crap and I'm going to throw it away. In fact, I might even start with complete gibberish.

    Along with general procrastination and writer's block I also suffer from the closely related coder's block. I address this the same way: instead of free-writing I start "free-coding", where I write code with the intention that it's going to be crap, and I might even start writing gibberish, before I move on to writing code that compiles and maybe runs, but does nothing useful. The goal is just to get started.

    In the case of both free writing and free coding, once I start I pretty quickly move on to writing stuff that's decent even if it's not great. That's something I can work with, and once I get in that mode I have much greater resistance to distractions.

    To circle back to procrastination, I might use a similar approach. Say I need to clean up my work area, and I just don't want to (even though I also do want to). I need to reduce the scope of the problem to something absurdly simple, or maybe even just absurd. So I decide I'm just going to move all the loose items on my desk to another table so I can dust the desk. But I'm not even going to dust the desk, I'm just going to move the stuff off of it. For the immediate moment that's all I've got to care about it. Just moving stuff around.

    But once the desk is cleared, dusting it and wiping it down is easy. It's so easy in that moment that that's all I care about. Then once that's done, I move the stuff back. But as I'm moving the stuff back it's easy to address each item one-by-one. Old papers can go in the trash or recycling, the books can go back to their regular place on the book shelf, the stapler can go back in the desk drawer where it regularly resides, etc. Then I realize now would be a good time to wipe the dust off my monitor, sort through the nearby stack of mail, etc.

    Now mind you, I still procrastinate way more than I should, but these techniques work for me and I procrastinate a lot less than I used to.

  4706. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 02:26:26 GoToRO
    I agree. Beeing motivated but without a good sleep it's like a runner showing up to the race with a broken leg.

    I'm sure there are many types of procrastinating but this is the most common for me.

  4707. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 02:37:34 rajeshp1986
    "If we do not have strong enough character to regulate our short term desires, our long term goals suffer"

    Very well said. I have been dealing with procrastination issue and this line has hit me hard.

  4708. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 02:41:50 Mirioron
    >Is "treatment of ADHD" the same thing as "treatment of procrastination"?

    Not exactly, but excessive procrastination is a symptom of ADHD. Managing ADHD requires managing excessive procrastination and medication, so far, is the most effective treatment for ADHD.

  4709. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 02:44:18 zemnmez
    ADHD is a diagnosis based on a group of issues primarily owing to dopamine management. ADHD at the end of the day, is just a word.

    The way I see it, there's a spectrum of procrastination issues and those that are explosive enough to be diagnosable get the ADHD label and medication. If you have ADHD symptoms but they're not bad enough to warrant a diagnosis you get nothing.

    It's well known that ADHD medication is incredible for procrastination -- statistically speaking any student should be able to tell you that.

  4710. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 02:55:21 johnchristopher
    Because it gets the definition back to procrastination being a consequence of other traits and the sum of these negative traits. If cowardice is character flaw then it follows than cowardice in fighting over the tendency to run from things we are scared to do (aka procrastination) is a character flaw.

    Is there more to it than a definition ?

    I believe the outlook matters more to deal with it though.

  4711. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 02:57:24 debacle
    Procrastination was much more difficult before the modern age (1960+)

  4712. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 04:10:48 csomar
    I have two objections:

    1- It says we procrastinate against our better judgement. But isn't the science gearing toward the fact that it is not the conscious brain that is controlling our behavior and actions? In that case, you can't solve procrastination by simply being aware of it.

    2- Quoting from the article

    > We really weren’t designed to think ahead into the further future because we needed to focus on providing for ourselves in the here and now.

    Yet, every night I go to bed and I'm dreaming about a better future. Obviously the scenarios I'm dreaming about can't be for tomorrow and are quite distant in the future (better country, top job/career, traveling but mostly a hotter girl with big/nice house).

  4713. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 04:12:54 User23
    Is this why amphetamines make avoiding procrastination so much easier?

  4714. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 04:14:13 tombert
    I noticed that my tendencies to procrastinate greatly reduced (though never completely vanished) upon me taking antidepressants, after a very unpleasant conversation with my boss (at the time) telling me that I was underperforming, and it could lead to me being fired.

    I remember the feelings I had then; there was this feeling of "I'm not stupid, why am I constantly pushing things off to make it seem like I am?", and it became this vicious cycle of "I do poorly because I'm depressed, and I'm depressed because I do poorly". I could definitely see it as an act of "self-harm", as this article describes.

  4715. Linux touchpad like a Macbook: progress and a call for help 2019-03-26 04:33:22 bubblethink
    Thanks for all the information. It's one of those things that I'm aware of, but have just been procrastinating mainly because the synaptic driver is still packaged by all distros. Eventually, it may be deprecated. So I better get to it before that. I do test fedora betas/rawhides and ubuntu nightlies as well from time to time. I don't think this is fixed yet. Or maybe it's some hardware quirk and I'm hitting some other corner case.

  4716. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 05:07:53 jrochkind1
    So you are in fact recommending that anyone with procrastination problems take medications prescribed for ADHD, if they can? (And that they should be able to?) Any downsides in your opinion?

  4717. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 05:19:26 moate
    To point one: What's the objection here? You do something (like say, posting on HN instead of driving home from work) instead of doing the thing that you feel would be better for you. If you hadn't felt the 2nd option was better, either in the moment or in retrospect, then you wouldn't feel you procrastinated. You just did something. And the article isn't suggesting that being aware of it fixes it, it's saying that it has more to do with anxiety or other causes than simply not wanting to do something. It's trying to say WHY you're on HN instead of driving home.

    2- What does your example prove here? The human mind almost always prioritizes immediate needs over future needs and has poor understanding of how to achieve long term goals. This is very well understood by psychologists and sociologists. It's part of why people find game theory so interesting. It's why people act against their own self interests. Saying "I want things in the future" doesn't GET you those things, so you haven't really proven that you're great at planning a future.

  4718. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 07:03:16 sudosteph
    d.) something else - I didn't read the article because I've wasted enough time in my life figuring out why I procrastinate and it doesn't bother me any more. But I still read most of the comments because I enjoy learning about the range of human experience around procrastination, because I do acknowledge it's something I cared about in the past.

    edit) also lurking in comments is my preferred method of wasting time. Though I'm not wasting time to procrastinate at the moment. I'm just waiting for a scheduled event to start which I prepared for already. I think that's different.

  4719. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 07:07:28 agumonkey
    meditation to slow down turmoil, and be able to reflect on your thoughts

    sports to revive mental strength and thoroughness

    life rhythm for efficiency

    on a higher level: desire to deflect procrastination as a metalevel trick to find pleasure in doing something depth first

  4720. Self-forgiveness for procrastinating can reduce future procrastination (2010) [pdf] 2019-03-26 07:22:16 TheSpiceIsLife
    Procrastination keep coming up here, and elsewhere, and I keep thinking:

    Look, I regularly work 10 hour days five days a week and a 6 hour Saturday. If something needs to ship, I'm here till it ships. I voluntarily agreed to all this, and keep agreeing to it.

    If I get home and sit in front of a screen and read HN and watch old Star Trek episodes, who cares?

    I could be doing more? My only regret is I wished I'd worked more?

  4721. Self-forgiveness for procrastinating can reduce future procrastination (2010) [pdf] 2019-03-26 07:33:34 uneasy-sausage
    I mean I guess it's only procrastination if you are actively avoiding a task that you deem important and are constantly entering a loop of regret and remorse for delaying the task or work associated with it.

    Like homework or chores or in my case small steps to study for an exam I have to pass in order to keep my job.

    Very YMMV?

  4722. Self-forgiveness for procrastinating can reduce future procrastination (2010) [pdf] 2019-03-26 07:34:36 afarrell
    I have found this to be true. One big cause of procrastination is a to escape from mental discomfort. Part of the way to get through that is to build tolerance to discomfort using CBT/stoicism tequeniques.

    But also finding ways to release discomfort-causing thoughts help too.

  4723. Self-forgiveness for procrastinating can reduce future procrastination (2010) [pdf] 2019-03-26 07:50:26 jjw1414
    Very astute comment about external motivation versus internal motivation. The fact that someone else is depending on me will spur me to push through a task, particularly if it is for someone close to me (e.g. my daughter). However, in a small percentage of cases for work clients, I can experience mental resistance, almost like a internal rebellion, that will cause me to procrastinate. Happens even if the client is very nice and I like them, which makes me feel all the more guilty. Luckily, it is not the norm, or I would be out of a job pretty quickly.

  4724. Self-forgiveness for procrastinating can reduce future procrastination (2010) [pdf] 2019-03-26 08:10:11 faizshah
    That's not procrastination, procrastination is when you avoid completing a task even though it doesn't benefit you to avoid completing it. For example, if a feature is supposed to ship in 3 weeks and you spend all 3 weeks "researching" libraries and on the last day you write some really bad code with no tests, that's procrastination. If you had just spent all 3 weeks writing the code and iterating on it using the tools you know you would have completed the task but you avoided completing the task for ____ psychological reason. A better name for procrastination is "task avoidance."

    There's a more in-depth coverage of this in the book "Still Procrastinating" by Joseph R Ferrari (the top researcher on procrastination).

  4725. Self-forgiveness for procrastinating can reduce future procrastination (2010) [pdf] 2019-03-26 08:29:07 jaequery
    I found that the best way of curing procrastination was to have a partner or a group of people you can report to and keep tabs on your tasks.

    I even tested this theory by hiring a virtual assistant to do just that and it worked for me. But with all things said, YMMV.

  4726. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 08:34:31 tylerjwilk00
    I wonder if procrastinating may be a healthy response to having too little leisure time and being over committed to too many things.

    We are evolved for more immediate concerns. The TPS report lacks the same importance as catching dinner.

    Unfortunately in the modern era the TPS report is what you catch dinner with.

    What to do.

  4727. Self-forgiveness for procrastinating can reduce future procrastination (2010) [pdf] 2019-03-26 08:58:17 waitforawhile
    I've had my fair share of run-ins with procrastination, this premise has worked for me back when I considered procrastination to be 'wrong' (forgiving yourself implies you did something wrong) and so forgiving yourself absolves you of the guilt you feel. I tend to now approach procrastination as something I need to do and let myself indulge for a while, then chose to stop. My theory being; now that its ok to do, its easier to stop because I'm not caught up in the guilt spiral.

    A vague analogy might be: you can stop yourself breathing at will, you've likely never felt guilty for taking a breath. Now imagine feeling guilty for breathing because you thought it was wrong, you'd likely continue whilst you were caught up feeling guilty about it and that would build with each new breath.

  4728. Interviews with developers who became managers 2019-03-26 09:48:10 iheartpotatoes
    Oh man, I know exactly what you are going through. I had the "3am chest squeezes" for a long time, I'd wake up thinking I should be working harding doing SOMETHING to make SOMETHING happen. And realizing that even if I worked 80 hours a week there were somethings I could not budge. It's like with coding if you put in a lot of effort you can fix things, but with management there is no feedback loop like that. It took me a long time to get used to.

    Delegation is necessary but it hard the first few times. It takes a lot of getting used to because very few people are going to do things up to your standards (some will do >= you which is awesome). Note that eventually these feelings went away...until I got promoted and then they came back again: 3am chest squeezes and a sense of "I don't know what the fuck I'm doing again and no matter how hard I work the needle doesn't move."

    Over the years I realized this is just a side effect of new challenges with increased responsibility. You (YOU) are a natural problem solver and it takes MONTHS to come up to speed so don't beat yourself up. You will solve the problems and invent your own systems.

    Finding mentors is hard, but I found some through Meetup.com of all places (bay area, austin, and portland are my haunts). Note: they're not all older than me, but they have had similar experiences. Mentors can be younger than you. And mostly they don't have specific help because at this level techniques aren't really transferrable from person to person... my startup founder friends just remind me I'm not a phony fuckup. And that matters.

    Welcome to being a grown up!!! It'll never be quite as fun as being a 20-something hacking code 80 hours a week for years on end, but there are new things to enjoy with age!!! (Confession: I still write shell scripts to procrastinate because it makes me feel like I've accomplished something.)

    Good luck! This sounds cliche, but remember YOU REALLY CAN DO IT, don't set the bar impossibly high. You've got the right attitude with your realization in the sentence to last. Just trust that your knack for problem solving as a coder will cause your brain to inevitably figure out creative solutions to your current problems.

  4729. Self-forgiveness for procrastinating can reduce future procrastination (2010) [pdf] 2019-03-26 10:56:12 jey
    > Halfway between the first and second midterm, participants were asked, ‘‘Do you think your procrastinating affected how well you did on this exam?” on a three-point scale, where 0 = not at all and 3 = definitely. Interestingly, although procrastination is a self-regulatory failure and thus, by definition, is a transgression against the self, 14 participants did not believe this to be so, answering ‘‘not at all” on this item. Consequently, we eliminated these participants leaving a final sample of 119 participants (70 female, 49 male) whose age ranged from 17 to 56 years (M = 20.50, SD = 5.17).

    How is this elimination justified? This seems entirely unsound.

  4730. Self-forgiveness for procrastinating can reduce future procrastination (2010) [pdf] 2019-03-26 13:52:00 HiroshiSan
    Happy to see Tim on the list of co-authors, he has a wonderful talk on procrastination: https://youtu.be/mhFQA998WiA

  4731. Procrastination and Stress: Exploring the Role of Self-Compassion 2019-03-26 15:50:29 ews
    http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/91791/1/ProcrastinationFINAL....

  4732. Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control 2019-03-26 15:54:29 coldtea
    >An impulse is just a "want" over a shorter timescale.

    I don't think so. There's a qualitative difference. The "want over larger timescale" is a conscious decision. The impulse can be felt even at a gut level (and can even be tied to addiction mechanisms).

    Compared to "I want to quit cocaine", "I want a hit" is not the same thing in a "shorter timescale" at all.

    It's not just that "most of the time they want to quit, but for short periods of time they want X more than they want to quit". The impulse at those "short periods" is of a different kind too.

    And even for much less addictive issues, smoking, obesity, procrastination, exercise, etc, the two are different, and even involve different parts of the brain.

  4733. Self-forgiveness for procrastinating can reduce future procrastination (2010) [pdf] 2019-03-26 16:39:54 pmoriarty
    By coincidence, I've been watching dozens of videos on procrastination today, and this one is by far the best one:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhFQA998WiA

    It's by Dr. Tim Pychyl, a professor of psychology who in this video goes in to research on why people procrastinate and gives helpful suggestions on how to procrastinate less. It's an hour-long presentation, and is chock full of worthwhile content, unlike a ton of other videos out there which are full of fluff and basic suggestions everyone's heard a million times. Highly recommended.

  4734. European Parliament approves copyright reform 2019-03-26 22:43:51 kaybe
    I still see far too many sites which want me to opt out of 100+ trackers individually. I usually just leave. Thanks for hindering my procrastination habits I guess.

  4735. Life on the wrong side of China’s social credit system 2019-03-27 06:26:12 brundolf
    Studies, especially in recent years, have shown that punishment is not an effective way of improving on self-destructive behavior. Usually things like procrastination and substance abuse are irrational symptoms of emotional drain and hopelessness, and punishment exacerbates those problems. There was an HN post about it just the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19487411. Poverty and debt tend to also protract out from this kind of emotional bankruptcy.

    I hold some small hope that despite their lack of empathy, regimes will at least see the practical side of how ineffective this kind of policy is and how much it inevitably will hurt their economy, after trying it out for a while. Hopefully that lesson will be learned while it's still mostly contained to China.

  4736. What Winning $250k at Poker Taught Me About Money 2019-03-28 04:54:29 technofiend
    >You can play great poker, sometimes over the span of a few days, and suddenly get hit with a cold deck or get unlucky and poof you are eliminated with nothing, along with your chance at a 5 or 6 figure top prize. Then you have to suck it back up and move on to the next one.

    I specialized in small, quick tournaments for this reason. Live players still weren't used to the even faster pace of online play but with rapidly escalating blinds it was critical. They were lulled into indecision and procrastination by the low early blinds, not realizing that they escalated quickly to force stacking out of the small players. I could easily make $1k+ a day clearing Binion's tournaments.

    I tried playing in a couple of Venetian Deep Stack events and usually busted out. I finally adapted to the slower play, longer rounds, bigger field and frankly better players to leave after two days of play with the same payout from winning one three hour Binion's tournament. The biggest upside being able to say I got my name published in Card Player magazine. LOL. Since for me it was just entertainment and I could reliably pay for my vacation in the smaller tourneys I went back to small ball.

  4737. The SR-71 Spy Plane Was So Fast, It Outran Every Missile Fired at It 2019-03-28 07:37:44 guhidalg
    This resonates with how I like to solve problems. Instead of thinking about how we can fix it or mitigate it, how can we make it impossible for a certain kind of problem to occur? Maybe it's just my procrastination speaking but I find it easier to just wipe out entire kinds of issues.

  4738. Low-quality sleep can lead to procrastination 2019-03-28 07:45:46 peshooo
    "you should first identify why you’re going to sleep later than intended, and then create a plan of action which allows you to deal with your specific set of reasons for procrastinating instead of going to sleep."

    If only it was this simple.

  4739. Low-quality sleep can lead to procrastination 2019-03-28 08:09:04 paulgb
    I’m just one data point, but I have definitely noticed that I procrastinate more when I haven’t slept as well.

    From a shallow skim, it looks like this study compared the same people across multiple days.

  4740. Low-quality sleep can lead to procrastination 2019-03-28 08:10:30 accrual
    Another commenter recently posted a link to a lecture by Tim Pychyl [0] on another post about procrastination. I decided to watch it and came away feeling deeply informed about procrastination, why we do it, and how to solve it. It's a nuanced topic. Highly recommended if you have an hour to listen to this articulated lecture.

    [0] http://youtube.com/watch?v=mhFQA998WiA (2012, 60 mins.)

  4741. Low-quality sleep can lead to procrastination 2019-03-28 08:11:50 EndXA
    I agree that this usually isn’t easy to accomplish, especially if bedtime procrastination is a serious issue for you. However, if you do decide to try and tackle this problem, this approach (identifying why you procrastinate and then tailoring a personal solution) is the way to go.

    For example:

    * If you can’t stop browsing social media before going to sleep, install an extension that cuts your access after a certain hour.

    * If you feel too energetic to sleep, reduce caffeine intake/blue light exposure in the hours before bedtime.

    * If you don’t feel motivated enough to go to sleep, use motivational techniques such as marking down streaks of days on which you successfully go to sleep on time.

    Again, I'm not saying that it's easy, but if you’re willing to put in some effort, there are a lot of effective techniques you can use: https://solvingprocrastination.com/how-to-stop-procrastinati...

  4742. Low-quality sleep can lead to procrastination 2019-03-28 08:16:11 saagarjha
    On the flip side, I also seem to sleep poorly when I procrastinate. So not sure which way causation flows yet ;)

  4743. Low-quality sleep can lead to procrastination 2019-03-28 08:35:21 davidscolgan
    I recently found that nearly all of my procrastination problems in life could be relatively straightforwardly traced back to internet surfing on sites with infinite sources of novelty. As the meme goes, one nacho cheese Dorito has more extreme nacho cheese flavor than a medieval peasant would get in their entire lifetime. [https://twitter.com/matthewpcrowley/status/62107825382700236...] Our brains just aren't equipped to deal with novelty of this magnitude.

    I'm relatively convinced that if I want to achieve my goals, especially as a solo founder working from my apartment, I'm going to _have_ to make an extraordinary effort to curb this, since the default is to just consume all evening (and for a work from home person like me, all day). I also have recently wondered if I've brewed the perfect cocktail of procrastination for myself as I may have some non-hyperactive ADD combined with this low accountability environment.

    So, all of the normal procrastination advice applies, but I found it useful to make it harder to access these sources of infinite novelty. Especially while working, but even during the evening. There are a number of blocking apps, but most of them can be trivially defeated by a developer with admin access.

    The two that I've found to work the best for me are http://getcoldturkey.com for Windows 10 and https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.mobilesoft.... for Android.

    I see no real reason to ever need to waste time on my phone. I've blocked apps like Chrome and the Youtube app permanently, and it's impossible to get around without wiping my phone (which I'm probably too lazy to do). I had to go ahead and install the Reddit app and mobile Firefox when I discovered I could install apps remotely through the Play Store on my laptop (ha!). I also block the Play Store app on the phone.

    This makes my phone a phone, text messager, podcast player, audiobook player, and maps device rather than a source of infinite novelty.

    For my laptop it's a little harder since I can't block the browser and and still do web dev, but the Cold Turkey app is the best app I've found to be as undefeatable as possible while still filtering specific sites. You can set up schedules, so I block sites after a certain time at night. Since, a key part of the procrastination cycle is staying up too late and then getting up later or tired, getting a bad start to the day, etc etc as the article suggests.

    Cold Turkey can unfortunately be defeated if you are realllllly clever, but it makes a very strong effort to disallow itself from being uninstalled. It's a desktop application, not a browser plugin, so it can actually prevent the whole "I'll just use IE to browse Reddit" problem that Chrome plugin blockers have. And having admin privileges, it can actually enforce blocks.

    This may be a bit extreme, but modern life isn't really "normal" in any possible way for our meat sack bodies and brains.

    See also https://www.sparringmind.com/supernormal-stimuli/

  4744. Low-quality sleep can lead to procrastination 2019-03-28 08:43:49 amanzi
    This is covered in the article: "Procrastinators sometimes fail to get enough sleep due to bedtime procrastination..."

    I think the point the article is making is that if you want to reduce your procrastination, you should first try to regulate your sleep. Procrastinators who get a good night's sleep, will have a better chance of not procrastinating.

  4745. Low-quality sleep can lead to procrastination 2019-03-28 09:13:50 SubiculumCode
    Pocrastination->loss of sleep-> procrastination->depression over procrastination->desperation->breakthrough->manic high productivity

    That is my friends pattern. Kind of rough.

  4746. Low-quality sleep can lead to procrastination 2019-03-28 11:01:11 ams6110
    I am a pathological procrastinator and don't find that lack of sleep has much to do with it. Sleeping is in fact one of my go-to procrastination tactics.

  4747. Low-quality sleep can lead to procrastination 2019-03-28 11:46:45 jghn
    I have a lot of trouble sleeping. One thing I've noticed is that when I'm not sleeping well not only do I procrastinate but a whole host of other negative things like overeating start to happen. The lack of sleep is clearly a cause for at least one of those things, but I suspect that many of the rest are chain reactions.

  4748. Low-quality sleep can lead to procrastination 2019-03-28 22:06:39 alexozer
    Interesting, it's the opposite for me. If I'm feeling rotten, unmotivated, unproductive, and guilty about it, I'll tend to stay up later because my "self-discipline for the day" will feel eroded and I'll want to procrastinate the arrival of the next day where I'll be faced with dealing with the thing I put off. I can only usually make myself go to bed early if I feel like I'm already in a "disciplined state" for the day.

  4749. Ask HN: Tips on working for multiple clients simultaneously? 2019-03-29 18:45:59 muzani
    I just had this conversation with some people recently. I've got 4 clients, bit off more than I can chew, and the switching costs take about 2-3 days unfortunately.

    Some tips:

    1. Don't switch right in the middle of something difficult. I do this as a way of procrastinating, and it takes a very long time to get into the rhythm again.

    2. If something is a WIP over a break (e.g. weekend), get back to it as soon as you're back and don't switch.

    3. I would recommend spending one week per client if possible, but it doesn't look like your situation. So another alternative is a time block like one day, or a half day.

    4. You probably want to schedule meeting times, even if it's only one client. Interruptions are bad. The uncertainty of a future interruption could make you procrastinate. If you've got two clients, this anxiety is squared.

    5. Some things have low switching cost, e.g. writing tests. This was one thing I frequently did on the train and it's a good way to buy time. Meetings too.

    It is hard, and while two are okay, I wouldn't recommend doing more.

  4750. Ask HN: Do you have an optimal time allocation for cognitively draining tasks? 2019-03-29 21:12:13 otras
    It’s tangentially related, but I highly recommend the Coursera course Learning How To Learn for more insight into how your brain works. The course discusses procrastination and how to work with it.

    Specifically, I’d recommend pomodoros, sleep, exercise, and the balance between focus and diffuse mode. The latter could be something as simple as taking an hour walk to let your brain process in the background, and I’ve found that all four are helpful.

  4751. News Inside: A print publication that will be distributed in prisons 2019-03-30 03:49:09 shadowprofile76
    And down the procrastination from work rabbit hole I go... A lot of the reporting on this organizations site is fascinating and very well done, by prisoners themselves too.

  4752. Ask HN: What are your best learning methods/hacks/tips? 2019-03-30 07:23:54 afarrell
    Amen.

    Growing up, I asked so often for guidance for how to learn to write essays. I got told “just do it” and “just write the damned essay” and “just buckle down” so much I concluded that there wasn’t a way to learn a better writing process. So, I practiced writing via my having an emotional breakdown, procrastinating heavily and doing something at the last minute. As a 29-year-old, I’m trying to unlearn this and figure out how to write a technical blog post in a calm this-is-merely-work sort of way. Its really hard.

  4753. Chasing 10X: Leveraging A Poor Memory In Engineering 2019-03-30 22:00:05 swfisher
    To be honest, it sounds like the author’s issue was not really forgetting syntax but the stack of procrastination-related habits that were attached to looking up syntax. It sounds, at face value, like what folks describe as ADHD.

  4754. Productivity Is About Attention Management 2019-04-01 09:09:22 ChrisSD
    Perhaps but people can develop strategies that work for them. It helps if you can mix the mundane with more engaging work or some procrastination.

    This is where time management can be very useful. If possible I prefer short but intense bursts of mundane but high concentration tasks. I've been using timers to help train myself to spend a set amount of time fully concentrating on a task and then reward myself with a break (which could involve more engaging work or if might simply be spending time on HN).

  4755. Productivity Is About Attention Management 2019-04-01 09:56:17 kochikame
    Ironic to see this post on HN, the place where I go to procrastinate

  4756. Productivity Is About Attention Management 2019-04-01 15:01:23 ivanhoe
    We're all different... I enjoy figuring out the things, but when it's time to start implementing it I've already lost my grit partially and that's when I start procrastinating the most. Once I move past that milestone and start doing the actual work it gets much easier again.

  4757. How to lose $172k per second for 45 minutes (2013) 2019-04-02 03:08:49 hinkley
    Yeah there's a lot of macho, procrastinatory bullshit that gets in the way of having a good process. There's always someone who thinks that each step is 'simple' and refuses to believe in death by a thousand cuts. They blame people who make mistakes and feel better about themselves.

  4758. Deadlines Are Killing Us, and Almost Everything Else I Know About Leadership 2019-04-02 04:57:00 WalterBright
    Some people work effectively only if you micromanage them. Some work effectively only if you're hands off.

    There is no one technique fits everyone.

    As for deadlines, you cannot manage a complex project with multiple teams without deadlines. After all, if you're building a car, you can't afford to hold up everything while you wait for the wheel department to get around to delivering wheels.

    As for me personally, without deadlines I tend to procrastinate.

  4759. Deadlines Are Killing Us, and Almost Everything Else I Know About Leadership 2019-04-02 05:04:18 umvi
    > As for me personally, without deadlines I tend to procrastinate.

    I agree. Deadlines are highly motivating and help me determine scope of work I need to do.

    "Make a tool that does X. You have infinite time."

    Me: "Great! Maybe I'll implement it in Rust, I've always wanted to learn that. Or maybe I just research for a few days what's out there. And I'll need to think about testing infrastructure of course and benchmarking..."

    vs.

    "Make a tool that does X. We need it by Friday so we can use it for Y."

    Me: "Ok! I can probably whip up something quick and dirty in python that gets the job done!"

  4760. Why Evernote failed to realize its potential 2019-04-02 21:38:02 guiriduro
    Reminders of that sort are pretty basic; I had something more like "Now where was I?" in mind - recovering the context, or at least easing the context switch cognitive load. E.g. a task which pops out of the backlog based on your current context of being at the hardware store, to remind you to get a claw hammer, along with the why (you may have forgotten). A memory aid as a synergy of todos, note-taking and reminders basically. It also reduces the constant re-iteration and procrastination over important but not urgent items or ideas that you can push off the top of mind to your note taking app if you can trust it to bring it back at the right time and place or in the right context.

  4761. French ISPs Ordered to Block Sci-Hub and LibGen 2019-04-02 22:12:33 Aromasin
    Should be Mb. Project deadlines mean sleep deprived Hacker News procrastination comments.

  4762. The Burden of Proof: Why People Must Support Their Arguments 2019-04-04 11:41:46 TomMckenny
    The reason burden of proof is on the person making the argument is that it is trivial to come up with arguments that are not falsifiable. And for any non-falsifiable claim you can make a contradictory non-falsifiable claim.

    So if you can accurately say of some claim "there is no evidence of that" then the claim is completely refuted. Thus asking for evidence is a polite way of pointing out when something is completely made up.

    Sure, if someone makes a claim that is widely established, like climate change or natural selection, then of course some rando on the web asking for yet more evidence is probably trying to derail the conversation.

    But if a claim is not widely established, like intelligent design, then a request for evidence is perfectly reasonable. There can be no a-priori convincing counter argument without referring to facts in the real world. Indeed, almost not claim is refutable a-priori without real world facts.

    So given an unreasonable and unsupported claim on the internet I suppose we can 1) assume the poster is a troll and ignore them or 2) assume they and the audience are genuine and point out their statement is unsupported and therefore false. Whether one actually wants to go around correcting people being wrong in the Internet is another question. But a guy's gotta procrastinate somehow.

  4763. How Does Codementor Work? 2019-04-06 04:49:13 rboyd
    Some emergency help. Some people just wanting tutorship. Some entrepreneurs. A lot of CS students that procrastinated too long and just want you to do their homework assignment.

    Set your rates higher than you would think you need to. You need to offset the amount of calls where you waste your time up front and the job goes nowhere (usually the first 15 minutes or so are unbilled while you explore the problem description).

    It can be pretty good. You do need to build the skill of discovering which jobs aren't worth taking though.

  4764. I let a stranger watch me work for a day–and I've never been more productive 2019-04-07 00:45:03 Mirioron
    That's interesting and I have no doubt it works. However, I think that you might simply get used to the pressure and start procrastinating either on the service itself or simply procrastinating using in the service.

    The other problem is that any kind of outside force that pushes you to work harder also creates stress. This stress isn't entirely regulated by yourself and it's possible for it to backfire.

  4765. I let a stranger watch me work for a day–and I've never been more productive 2019-04-07 01:11:45 Svoka
    Legends say that long ago outside of the bubble where people working constantly monitoring each others and there even was people who's position was literally supervisors.

    This is called "office". Somehow absolute peak of my procrastination happened in those human filled dedicated work places with supervision, from bosses, peers and subordinates.

  4766. I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive 2019-04-07 01:34:42 BurningFrog
    My first month of pair programming was utterly exhausting, but once I got into the pace, it was the best thing I've ever done.

    The mutual focus is definitely a big part. You're in a social context, and there is no place to stray from the mutual task, and that discipline is very liberating, weird as it may sound, for someone prone to procrastinating like myself.

  4767. I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive 2019-04-07 03:24:01 myth2018
    Procrastination has destroyed my life.

    Three years ago I finally achieved my dream of working from home. I was writing my thesis and believed I could finish my masters in 8 months. I decided to fully focus on it and, afterwards, I would create my long dreamed own software company.

    It worked really well for some weeks. I was much more focused than I used to be working in regular offices, with bosses. But soon I started getting distracted with amateur radio, social media, couch and TV and so on.

    Then I couldn't concentrate on anything anymore. After almost a year I had finished only half of my thesis. I started to feel desperate because I hadn't even started my company, and my savings were being burned day after day. This contributed to further drops in my productivity and concentration.

    I finished my masters 14 months past what I initially imagined. And I eventually had almost no energy left to work on my products. I sporadically had some boosts in productivity and managed to get something done. But I wasn't able to commit to plans anymore. I was always getting stuck. And my money going away.

    My life-worth savings are basically depleted now, I have no wife anymore and I feel pretty bad and alone.

    Coincidentally, yesterday I started to work on a co-working space. That new atmosphere helped me significantly and I hope it keeps this way for some time at least.

    Good to know about Focusmate and alikes. I will definitely try them if my productivity drops again.

  4768. I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive 2019-04-07 03:42:37 emerongi
    Working from home changed my life in the opposite direction. Being able to fully manage my own time and not have someone breathing down my neck has enabled me to actually not procrastinate.

    I used to suffer from a lot of stress and anxiety and I think that fueled my procrastination. Now that I no longer suffer from those, I can just focus on work.

    For a while I've wondered how I even started procrastinating as hard as I did. I used to be the type to first get all pending tasks done and then go and enjoy my free time, but at some point it flipped. It's weird.

  4769. Average American Has Just 4 Hours, 26 Minutes of Free Time per Week 2019-04-07 04:52:07 deevolution
    If you're like me and you constantly procrastinate, then you have 20+hours of free time every week!

  4770. I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive 2019-04-07 04:56:49 deevolution
    I think the stress and anxiety is caused by procrastination and the stress and anxiety causes further procrastination. It's a loop! The trick is to get out of the loop by establishing productive, rewarding habits.

  4771. Average American Has Just 4 Hours, 26 Minutes of Free Time per Week 2019-04-07 05:01:05 adamnemecek
    Procrastination is a symptom of being overwhelmed.

  4772. I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive 2019-04-07 05:47:52 throwaway713
    > I have no wife anymore and I feel pretty bad and alone.

    If you lost a spouse just because you had a bit of a down period in your life where you procrastinated, the problem in that marriage most likely wasn't you...

  4773. I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive 2019-04-07 07:20:13 myth2018
    I totally agree and I got caught in such loop. And it took me too long to do something about. Had to reach a really sad local minimum until I decided to act.

    I will maybe write something about this in the future. When it comes to procrastination, people are usually so concerned about not realizing their full potentials. But it can be much worse than that. I was concerned about a suboptimal improvement and I ended up in a position worse than when I started.

  4774. I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive 2019-04-07 09:22:06 wisty
    I'd imagine that after a week you'll start checking email (because that's still work, right?) and after a month you'll be on Facebook because really, who cares about some stranger knowing you're procrastinating?

  4775. I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive 2019-04-07 10:24:23 glennpratt
    This is not black and white, many of us procrastinate in ways that are not always a healthy break and finding ways to curb some of that is not bad.

  4776. I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive 2019-04-07 11:20:05 adjkant
    I don't think this approach necessarily helps with that distinction of good breaks and bad procrastination. I think it would be interesting to distinguish those, but I would look for another method if that were my goal. That also isn't to disregard the interest of the experiment above, just to say it doesn't help here.

  4777. I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive 2019-04-07 11:31:00 hliyan
    I don't believe this is the case at all. When I was in university, everyone I know (including myself) organized into study groups precisely to combat procrastination, and not for any intellectual benefits. It worked. At the end of a day of solo studying, you would feel horrible and ashamed because you got so little done. But at the end of a group study session, you actually feel fulfilled.

  4778. I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive 2019-04-07 21:22:25 em-bee
    that's what we use daily standups for. i announce my plan for the day, and the next day i report on how well it went. if i procrastinate to much i have nothing to report.

    it doesn't impact my freedom and autonomy because i decide what to do every day, so i set my own goals and only report on how well i achieved them or explain why i didn't (run into a bug etc)

  4779. Battery Reality: There’s Nothing Better Than Lithium-Ion Coming Soon 2019-04-09 07:28:29 cagenut
    things only get worse the more we procrastinate. it is a compounding debt.

  4780. Congress Is About to Ban the Government from Offering Free Online Tax Filing 2019-04-09 23:45:24 r_klancer
    Not quite true! I was planning to complain that Free File Fillable Forms, the only way to e-file for free regardless of income, had been taken away a couple years ago.

    However, I noticed that it's back for the 2018 tax year. https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-f...

    It's very basic -- it's literally just a way to fill out and submit the paper forms electronically (though it does the "add lines 35 and 36"-type arithmetic for you.) But it's an option for you procrastinators who earned more than $66K last year.

    Relatedly, Massachusetts used to run a free online "TurboTax" program for all. To file your taxes you went to a government website and answered the questions. Unfortunately, that program was canceled a year ago when they upgraded systems, and now the only way to e-file is via a paid preparer.

  4781. Marissa Mayer on career growth and how a revenue guarantee almost killed Google 2019-04-10 05:15:40 matwood
    A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week. - George S. Patton

    I think about this quote a lot. It's so easy to get trapped in analysis paralysis which is really just procrastinating a decision. Like most things, there is a balance. Notice he says 'good' plan, not any plan.

  4782. Ask HN: What tool/trick has most improved your programming productivity? 2019-04-17 06:05:41 muzani
    Meditation. Not the type that keeps you calm, but the type that acts as internal debugging.

    All my issues with procrastination come from some deep internal issues, for example, an aversion to working hard, sleeping early, or wanting to spend a lot of time on games as some sort of status symbol.

    A lot of these come from mental scars in our past, or even the wrong cultural conditioning. Basically just think what we would do if we were in complete control of ourselves, and why we're not doing that. And then dig really deep to find out where. You'll definitely know when you strike the nerve - it can trigger a sudden rage or tears. But hitting that nerve reduces the control it has over you.

  4783. Ask HN: I lost my ability to focus for hours on coding. How to regain? 2019-04-19 10:13:02 muzani
    For me, I find this is more about fear/dread. I don't procrastinate on social media when I'm doing something well.

    You'll have to find a way past that fear. You can:

    1. Be braver - admit you're afraid and do it anyway.

    2. Find the root cause of fear. Maybe you've dealt with too many death marches. Maybe you don't feel like you can meet your expectations. Just admitting it can make it go away.

    3. Plan it out in a way that nobody can screw it up, not even you.

  4784. Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming/CS? 2019-04-21 23:03:16 cgriswald
    How did you get started?

    I've been wanting to get into this for awhile, but find myself procrastinating mostly out of uncertainty and fear of failure; but somewhat out of just having no idea where I should start, what tools I need to start, and what is achievable for a beginner.

  4785. TurboTax Uses Dark Patterns to Trick You into Paying to File Your Taxes 2019-04-23 03:20:04 0x0000000
    I've also been using FreeTaxUSA for the past couple years and have been pretty happy, but this year, for the first time, they went down for several hours on April 15[0] (I know, I know, my fault for procrastinating). I ended up filing via CreditKarma about 45 minutes before midnight, thankfully FreeTaxUSA came online long enough for me to pull up last year's return to get my AGI for the necessary IRS identity verification.

    I'll probably try them again next year, but CreditKarma worked out pretty well (they've come a long way since the first version a couple years ago) and doesn't charge for state filing. The big downside is that you have to agree to let them use whatever data they pull in as part of your profile for better marketing etc.

    [0] https://twitter.com/FreeTaxUSA/status/1117953907550855168

  4786. Meal Kits Have a Smaller Carbon Footprint Than Grocery Shopping, Study Says 2019-04-24 02:59:12 sct202
    There are a lot of assumptions with the rate of emissions in regards to transportation to the store and food waste as result of overbuying that make this study hard to believe.

    Meal kits don't fully replace all your food for a week, so it is unlikely to eliminate a whole trip to the store so those emission savings that they are counting towards the meal kits are suspect. And then the waste statistics will vary heavily on the person and household characteristics. I've known people who procrastinate on making the meal kits and throw the whole thing out or let their roommates pick over whatever hasn't rotten. In addition, since some things with Blue Apron come pre-cut or picked, I wonder how the researchers measured waste at Blue Apron's kit production facilities, where some parts of the vegetables/meat aren't used in any recipe or waste from over-ordered produce.

    Edit: More details are here https://news.umich.edu/those-home-delivered-meal-kits-are-gr...

  4787. Ask HN: How did you learn another spoken language? 2019-04-25 21:05:28 yorwba
    The simplest way is to sign up for in-person lessons, do your homework and keep attending until you are fluent.

    In addition or even as an alternative, there are a few things you can study on your own:

    1. Phonology. Learn the International Phonetic Alphabet and use it to understand how the pronunciation of your target language differs from your mother tongue. I like using Wikipedia's help pages of the form https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Any_Language for that.

    2. Vocabulary. In the beginning, it's probably most efficient to learn new words ordered by decreasing frequency. Once you can read simple texts with the help of a dictionary, learn words you had to look up repeatedly.

    3. Practice. Use a spaced repetition program like Anki ( https://apps.ankiweb.net/ ) and make your own flashcards. Pre-made decks are unlikely to take you in exactly the direction you want to go.

    3. Listening. Even before you're able to understand anything, you can get a feeling for the language by watching subtitled shows. ( https://www.viki.com/ has a decent selection in East Asian languages.) Later you can turn off subtitles (or switch them to the target language) to avoid overly relying on them.

    4. Reading. Find something you can enjoy and read a little of it every day. In the beginning, that might just be a single sentence; you'll naturally end up reading more as your skill improves.

    5. Speaking. This is the hardest to do on your own, and you definitely need a solid base vocabulary before you can have an intelligent conversation. To speed up the process, you can try finding a partner who'll be willing to listen to you babbling as long as you do the same for them. You need to make sure not to fall back to your mother tongue too easily, though.

    6. Form a habit. If you have some fixed amount of time dedicated to learning every day, you're not as likely to procrastinate on it.

  4788. Entrepreneurs Are Better Off Going It Alone, Study Says 2019-04-29 17:20:59 PaulRobinson
    As ever, surely the true answer here is "it depends". Prickly personalities are going to do better in solo enterprises (less arguing), whilst people with a tendency to procrastinate might find a team dynamic encouraging.

    I think I personally would thrive more in a partnership or team, but then I've been running a limited company with a mate for over a decade as a side business, and it's hard for us to agree on anything. He's not a bad guy, he just has different goals to me.

    And when I reflect on that, I realise many of my goals are about being able to be my own boss. As such, my next venture will likely be solo.

    Definitely not for everybody, though!

  4789. Ask HN: How do you stay disciplined in the long run? 2019-04-29 21:36:25 300bps
    There are so many books dedicated to this topic. I’ve liked The War of Art and Solving the Procrastination Puzzle.

    I think you have the right answer - discipline as opposed to motivation. Now you need to develop it.

  4790. Ask HN: How do you stay disciplined in the long run? 2019-04-29 22:14:35 wbharding
    I wrote an essay about this topic a couple months ago that you might find applicable https://www.amplenote.com/blog/what_makes_long_term_personal...

    The essay describes exactly half of the what has helped me, which is to create processes that make it a little bit easier to procrastinate on long-term goals and then pick them up again later. But the other half, which sounds especially applicable to your situation, is to pick a goal that will continue to be worth pursuing. This is much harder than most people expect.

    A few years ago I started a "goal of the month" list with some friends. In January, we picked 12 goals we'd pursue during the year. For the first few months, it was gravy -- everyone completed their goal and had a satisfying summary ("I did this, I learned this") they shared with the group afterwards. But, around the 6th month, the failures began. Between the 9-12th months, our cumulative success rate was lower than 50%. It was mystifying, because everyone had purported to spend hours of time carefully choosing their 12 goals in January.

    In my case, I tried to pick easy goals for month 9-12. For November, I picked the goal "bowl a 200" because what could be more fun or easy than going bowling (though I've never bowled above 150, so there was a hill to climb). Still, by the time 11 months passed, there had developed 100 things that were more interesting to me than bowling a 200. I willed myself to go bowling one time that month, and scored 125. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    We tweaked the rules for the list the following year so you set 12 months worth of goals, but you could substitute a goal if your original choice was no longer interesting. Again, by the 9th month, everybody was substituting like crazy. The goals list experience taught me that my friends and I are woefully bad at choosing goals that will still be interesting to us 6+ months in the future.

    Fast forward to today, and I've been working on Linux touchpad drivers for about two years now (e.g., https://bill.harding.blog/2019/03/25/linux-touchpad-like-a-m...). My "success" on this project has been made possible because I have a good system to allow myself to procrastinate, and because every time I use my Linux laptop, I continue to hate how the touchpad works. I am forced to face that unpleasantness over and over again, with no escape. So in this case, there is a goal that has remained important to me because it involves a part of my life that remains constant, and remains frustrating.

    Which is to say, if you can find a problem that is going to continue to eat away at you for years, I think you're barking up the right tree. If your goal is one of whimsy or interest, your best bet is to scope your solution so it can be completed in 6 months or less, because chances are your human interest will be somewhere else past that point.

  4791. Ask HN: How do you stay disciplined in the long run? 2019-04-30 03:35:09 ThrustVectoring
    >Execute and get to, say, 25-50% of the journey --> Get bored --> Abandon

    >I have strongly come to perceive myself as being driven by external accountabilities

    These are classic ADHD symptoms, along with some of the other tells I've gotten from your description. The number one way to improve ADHD symptoms, by an enormous margin, is through stimulant therapy. If this kind of pattern happened a lot in childhood, and you have a history of other related issues (losing homework, procrastination until deadlines, high caffeine use), then I'd highly suggest scheduling a meeting with your mental health provider about this and getting a diagnosis.

    And again, it's quite hard to overstate how effective stimulant therapy is for treating ADHD. It's the most effective mental health intervention. For me personally, it makes a night-and-day difference.

  4792. Ask HN: How do you stay disciplined in the long run? 2019-04-30 08:55:39 LrnByTeach
    yes, the below are the classic ADHD symptoms

    >If this kind of pattern happened a lot in childhood, and you have a history of other related issues (losing homework, procrastination until deadlines, high caffeine use)

    > cannot maintain professional employment or a long-term romantic relationship

  4793. Have a personal web site 2019-04-30 18:36:15 Spare_account
    I'm lucky that I share a first and last name with someone who is a successful Social Media influencer, also with a professional photographer, a journalist and and an amateur model (Haha, I wonder if that is enough for an Internet detective to work out my name!). This helps because they all have very searchable content online.

    I've tried to strike a balance between anonymity and retaining 'placeholder' accounts with my name. I can't rule out a change of heart in the future.

    I removed all data from facebook manually by using Social Book Posts Manager. Clunky but it works. It took about a week of different sessions to allow it to work through all of my facebook content. My FB account still exists but is effectively private, all the settings are as locked down as I can make them.

    https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-book-post-m...

    I deleted all my tweets manually and set my account to private where possible.

    I stripped my LinkedIn profile back to basics manually because I didn't really use it anyway. I don't need it, I have a job I'm happy with that pays the mortgage, I don't feel the need to network myself.

    I removed the content from my website (<firstname><lastname>.co.uk). I left it displaying my domain registrar's holding page because I figured Google would down-rate that. It appears to have worked because it never appears in search results for either or both of my names.

    My domain is a .co.uk so I've taken advantage of Nominet's anonymity service and no details are visible via public WHOIS.

    I haven't asked Archive.org to remove the archived versions of my site, if someone knows about it, they could look there. At present I don't actually have any publicly accessible storage to place the robots.txt so I keep procrastinating about it.

    I submitted a removal request to 192.com which is a site that publishes UK telephone directory data. They honour removal requests.

    I occasionally google myself (especially from new devices and new locations/IP addresses to see if Google is presenting different results for different searchers) to check.

  4794. It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age 2019-05-01 02:57:15 irq11
    ”Exactly my point. It shouldn't be necessary to spend all that time futzing with tools, the tools should be there, ready to use.”

    It isn’t necessary. The tools are fine, and/or improving them won’t solve the fundamental problem. People are just procrastinating.

    ”Online availability does not scale. These are precisely the issues that digital tools should be good at addressing, but have failed to do so.”

    Short of making an AGI that fluently speaks your target language, there are no obvious improvements to learning tools that will address the fundamental problem: you need to talk to actual humans.

  4795. It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age 2019-05-01 03:58:14 travisjungroth
    I get what you’re saying. It is a really weird phenomenon that:

    1) Everyone has basically the same problem (learning a language).

    2) Many people are building their own tools.

    3) Most people are dissatisfied with the tools available.

    I have a hard time believing that there is no more efficient way possible than conversing with native speakers as one commenter seemed to suggest.

    I also don’t believe the “procrastination” suggestion. My girlfriend has worked through the entire path on Duolingo Spanish. She can’t speak Spanish.

  4796. Ask HN: What does your development stack look like in your favorite language? 2019-05-01 10:10:59 iLemming
    No, I've been hoping to write a blogpost about the process but been procrastinating for ages. Unfortunately I can't make my dotfile public - there are things in init that I rather keep private. Essentially you just need an .org file with source blocks with headings like this:

    #+begin_src gitconfig :tangle ~/.gitconfig

    You can even do it for different systems like so:

    #+begin_src gitconfig :tangle (when (eq system-type 'darwin) "~/.gitconfig")

    if you need file to be tangled in nested dirs you can add this header:

    :mkdirp yes

    if you need the content to be encrypted:

    #+begin_src emacs-lisp :tangle ~/.authinfo.gpg :mkdirp yes # -- epa-file-encrypt-to: ("your-email@email.com") -- #+end_src

  4797. Wio: A Clone of Plan 9’s Rio for Wayland 2019-05-02 10:05:09 jimjimjim
    This looks like a really interesting project.

    Im always looking for new window interaction styles. And this seems refreshing after years of minor tweaks on win95’s style.

    I really should have tried plan9 years ago instead of always procrastinating.

  4798. How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy 2019-05-02 18:45:11 p2t2p
    I'm tree weeks into:

    git clone https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts.git && cd hosts && pip3 install --user -r requirements.txt && python3 updateHostsFile.py --auto --replace --extensions social porn gambling

    and going strong.

    What I figured so far is that the trick is to stay away from the browser. So I've removed Safari on my iPhone (well, more like hidden), I've changed my rss client to newsboat - command line one, I moved all of my youtube subscriptions into rss, I've written a script that keeps track of videos I would like to watch from those rss subscriptions, downloads them in bulk in background (all hail systemd timers) and then gives me dmenu to pick a video to play in mpv.

    I had Google app installed on my iPhone but I noticed that I use this thing to surf mindlessly again, so I deleted it. Basically I can't google stuff anymore on my phone =/. But so be it, it turned into communicator/navigator/music player/food orderer.

    I did start reading books again because... Well, taking phone into toilet is pointless now, gotta do something, so I started reading books again. I'm actually reading multiple at the time, there is a paper book in the toilet, there is a book on my iphone and there is a book on my laptop, three completely unrelated topics so whenever I feel like procrastinating I read one of them. Well, except the one in toilet, I'm not procrastinating, I'm working hard there ;-).

    Stay away from the browser guys.

  4799. How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy 2019-05-03 00:47:42 MayeulC
    I recently bought a minitel for something like 3€, and would like to convert this dumb terminal into a workstation for when I have to write long reports, distraction-free.

    1200 bauds, plain-text ought to be enough for writing something in vim+latex, while setting this up could give me a meaningful project to spend some time on... I must say it has been collecting dust for now, while I procrastinate on HN (not entirely true, but I found that I tend to junk-fill my free time with consuming content and writing "internet conmments" like a fastfood addict).

  4800. Don't Do This 2019-05-03 20:15:55 cmwright
    Agreed! The ORM I'm currently using has been setting text for all my `string` columns by default and I was feeling the need to go fix a few, so this is one of those magical times when procrastinating on an issue paid off in my favour.

    On that note though, I wonder what impact (if any) this has on an index covering the column? I could be off here but from my mysql days I was under the impression the index would be more efficient if there was a length limit on the column.

  4801. Permafrost is thawing in the Arctic so fast scientists lost their equipment 2019-05-03 21:50:06 sandworm101
    Life may survive as a concept, but few people want to live in a world populated by jellyfish and cockroaches. The cute, cuddly megafauna (whales, snow leopards, humans etc) certainly do care about what we do to this planet. I'm on the side of the snow leopards and really do not care a jot about the jellyfish. The argument that "life shall be OK" is a delay tactic, a reason to procrastinate the coming nightmare.

  4802. People's sense of control over actions is reduced when angry or afraid: study 2019-05-05 07:30:03 bitcuration
    It's about energy. Anger and fear boost energy temporarily, probably evolved for survival. That's all there is to it, something to do with motivation. For example, when in anger you won't procrastinate which otherwise would be almost impossible to beat.

  4803. Launch HN: Prometheus (YC W19) – Remove CO2 from Air and Turn It into Gasoline 2019-05-07 04:04:24 34k5jo3i4toig
    My issue is that this is a step in the wrong direction, it is incentivizing the current dirty status quo. Why would anyone replace their dirty engine if they can feel good about by using your 'cleaned' fuel.

    I agree we need to do something now, but this is just putting off the inevitable. Re-engineering dirty fuel sources doesn't buy us time to resolve this. It is procrastinating, shuffling titanic deckchairs.

    The main advantage of this tech I can see is making 'primary' sourced fuel illegal, 'secondary' sourced fuel like this prohibitively expensive, and forcing everyone to go pure electric engine by economy.

  4804. Dear Client, Here’s Why That Change Took So Long 2019-05-08 00:10:06 projektfu
    Too much protest here. I feel you'd be eventually judged on those numbers as well. Are you a time & materials shop? The fact is that you either start a clock when you start working on something and stop it when it's done or you have standard times that things should take (like an auto shop does.) If you're working efficiently, you can tell your client that you work efficiently and this is simply how long the change took. If you're procrastinating and charging the client for the time, you should fix that.

  4805. Ask HN: Help. My startup is failing 2019-05-09 16:59:26 appstorelottery
    Hey, just to give you a prod:

    "I'll refuel my morale for now and get back into it soon."

    This is the procrastinators dream ticket. :-) It's well known that simply getting started on the task makes it easier. What's stopping you from making five calls right now? I know you don't like it. But if you want this to succeed - this is the price you must pay.

    Do it now :-)

  4806. Show HN: Impartial crowdsourced guide to the Australian federal election 2019-05-10 12:59:03 lsh
    damn shame this wasn't posted in the news section, I only came across this by accident (procrastination ;)

  4807. I Run a Company with ADHD 2019-05-13 08:29:46 justboxing
    Very informative article.

    The author didn't really delve into whether he uses meds to cope with ADHD.

    How do other people who have ADHD cope with it as startup founders? Do meds like Adderall, Ritalin or Concerta work? What about Nootropics?

    Asking cos this situation seems to be very common in our profession i.e. starting some side project, getting overwhelmed with perfectionism, distractions and never shipping. Is that ADHD or just plain procrastination?

  4808. How I Run a Company with ADHD 2019-05-13 09:17:12 leoc
    It does nothing for procrastination and so proved useless to me.

  4809. How I Run a Company with ADHD 2019-05-13 22:59:00 cowpewter
    Interestingly, I find that medication does not affect my hyperfocus in a negative way. If anything, it's even easier for me to achieve hyperfocus on a task when my Adderall is "on". I find that what medication helps me most with is the initial hurdle of starting a task. Once I actually get going, I'll usually hyperfocus on it (if it's the type of task I hyperfocus on, which includes programming, but sadly does not include housework). I procrastinate at work far far less when I'm medicated. Without medication, I struggle hard with starting new tasks.

  4810. How I Run a Company with ADHD 2019-05-13 23:16:48 cowpewter
    One of the ways that stimulants treat ADHD is by raising dopamine and norepinephrine levels. Also, one of the big problems with ADHD is time-blindness. Basically, to the ADHD person, there are only two times: Now and Not Now.

    Video games are highly stimulating and full of immediate feedback when you do well or poorly. This gives you the dopamine hit that your brain is searching for. And the immediate feedback means that the results of your doing well or poorly are felt right away, instead of in a nebulous future.

    So you can focus during the game because you're getting a constant stream of dopamine and you always know how well you're doing. Get to the blog post though and... where'd the dopamine go? If you don't write this blog post right now when will you feel the pain? If it's not for a while, then it's too far away for the ADHD brain to put it into perspective because of the time-blindness. It's one of the reasons ADHDers are famous for procrastinating til the last moment, then suddenly cranking out that paper the night before. Once you finally get that sense of urgency of the impending deadline, you can focus.

  4811. How I Run a Company with ADHD 2019-05-14 00:13:40 JabavuAdams
    Went through a bad spell last year. Got what I thought was the ideal contract: working from home on (non-game i.e. $$$) VR. Billing more in USD than I had ever billed in CAD. Working with genuinely nice people.

    Couldn't make it work. Would get into loops of crunching all weekend to finish the work I'd committed to doing in the week. Became a shitty and irritable Dad due to work stress. Spent hours in loops like "This would be totally doable if I just started now ... but it hurts too much to stop thinking about what I'm interested right this minute ... but it's going to hurt later ... let's analyze all of the ways this is a repeat of my previous fuckups to see if I can figure my way out of this one ... and down the HOOOOOoooooooole"

    Confounding factors: (1) trying to do school at the same time. (2) getting served with divorce papers when I thought I had come to terms with things. (3) Sleep apnea treated with CPAP. Impulsivity / exhaustion / obstacles at bedtime results in not using CPAP which results in greater distraction and higher impulsivity -> downward spiral for the week.

    I learned a very valuable lesson, though.

    You CANNOT fight procrastination by analysis. You MUST start the thing. There is no other solution. Any other choice is procrastination. Mantra: "You need to stop. What's your next action? What's your next action? ... " This seems obvious, but in the throes of an analysis / procrastination spiral it seems like maybe, just maybe you might be able to think your way out of this. NO.

    I also started a new medication at the beginning of 2017 - generic Strattera. It didn't prevent these problems, but it has actually been a great help. There are side-effects, but I'm willing to accept them. I call it my "anti fuck-it" medication. It damps down impulsivity without reducing my creativity (impulsivity is the source of creativity). This is suprisingly multi-faceted. I am less likely to overeat (less likely to say I don't need more pie but fuck it!). I can do deeper search in strategy games or planning (less likely to look a few moves ahead, get befuddled, and say fuck it, I'll just do this random action). It also feels like I have another register of short-term memory, although this could be due to sleep, etc.

    So ... don't rule out meds, but they're not a silver bullet. Also, the wrong meds can damage or kill you. I still have some interesting minor mental issues from Dexedrine a decade and a half ago. On it, I got paranoid and that almost killed me.

    EDIT> One other tip: limit any online discussion to 1 reply. You get one reply, and that's it. Don't keep responding to a thread. It really doesn't matter, and is a huuuuuge time sink.

  4812. How I Run a Company with ADHD 2019-05-14 00:51:36 TeMPOraL
    I have this tab open from a procrastination session some days ago:

    http://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidit...

    I like the definition of stupid vs. intelligent from there - intelligent person consistently makes win-win decisions. Stupid person consistently makes lose-lose decisions, inflicting loss on other people for no gain for themselves.

  4813. Ask HN: What overlooked class of tools should a self-taught programmer look into 2019-05-14 05:18:13 nickjj
    Shell scripting for processing text. You can often get so much done with so little code and effort.

    Also on a semi-related note, I think as a self taught programmer, it's easy to get stuck on things that seem cool but are just procrastination enablers (I know, I've been guilty of it for 20 years). Like, if you're about to start a new project and you want to flesh out what it's about, you really don't need to spend 5 hours researching which mind map tool to use. Just open a text document and start writing, or get a piece of paper and a pen. It won't even take that long.

    I spent about 1.5 hours the other day planning a substantially sized web app. All I did was open a text file and type what came into my head. For fun I decided to record the whole process too[0]. I wish more people recorded their process for things like that because I find the journey more interesting than the destination most of the time. Like your journey of eventually finding message queues must have been quite fun and you probably learned a ton (after all, it lead you to message queues, so it was certainly time well spent).

    [0]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/live-demo-of-planning-a-real-...

  4814. The Problem of Thinking Too Much (2003) [pdf] 2019-05-14 22:00:03 the_greyd
    Thinking should be a time boxed activity, with time proportional to the priority of the thing at hand. As a classic overthinker I've realized my overthinking is a weird amalgamation of perfectionism and procrastination. That took me a long time to accept, since I've always rationalized my overthinking as ultimately a good thing. If you assume that action (instead of thinking) is the primary unit in the world, then you can see that thinking is just a tool which informs action.

  4815. Did I Choose the Wrong Career? 2019-05-15 17:46:27 ThJ
    TL;DR: Some kind of tension, stress or resistance builds up over time, I procrastinate more and more until nothing gets done, and then I have to shake things up somehow.

  4816. SAT to Add ‘Adversity Score’ That Rates Students’ Hardships 2019-05-17 07:43:38 civilian
    When I have kids, I think I'm going to direct them to check the "Decline to respond" box for any race/income/parents-education-level questions.

    I used to believe in the value of collecting these stats to problem solve what we can do to help everyone achieve. But increasingly these stats are just being used for a different kind of discrimination.

    We've all got problems, and they're immeasurable. In high school I had severe anxiety that led to a lot of procrastination and avoiding school clubs. And as a 1st-generation immigrant, there were subtle cultural differences, even though I fit in with my appearance.

  4817. Guide to Deep Work 2019-05-18 04:40:26 noxToken
    I get that you're streaming yourself to a person, but how does that help enforce accountability? Part of my job entails very little typing or keyboard interaction, so comparatively, it could look like I was reading HN, Reddit, etc. Is it a purely psychological thing?

    ----

    Before I sent this comment, I went deeper into the website beyond the home page and 30s video. It is just that:

    >Research in psychology and behavioral science shows that regular human connection reduces the likelihood that a worker will procrastinate or become distracted.

    >In our most recent internal survey, 95.5% of users reported a significant increase in productivity, and reduced procrastination.

    It looks like it's not a site that will magically boost your productivity (which isn't really what it claims). You have to want to be productive, and the site helps facilitate that desire.

  4818. Show HN: Real-time image manipulation with Voronoi/Delaunay 2019-05-18 16:15:38 anigbrowl
    Keep exploring it. Voronoi diagrams are woefully underappreciated. Your project looks to be the thing that is finally going to make me do a video card upgrade I've been procrastinating for years.

  4819. How to Do Hard Things 2019-05-20 08:36:01 keypusher
    The most valuable thing I learned at university was how to tackle difficult problems. Taking advanced math and science courses where I had to really study, and still struggled, and having to write essays so frequently that I could no longer procrastinate or wait for the spark to hit me, was more valuable in the long run than any of the actual knowledge I gained.

    The advice to break a hard problem down into simpler pieces good, but I feel like that is often difficult without proper domain knowledge. In many cases, knowing how to break apart a problem like that is how you become an expert in the first place. If you want to learn a musical instrument, there are plenty of good simple excercises to start with, but only an expert can tell you what they are, you can’t easily intuit them from scratch. An experienced programmer will know how to break down a difficult project into small and simpler pieces, that ability is part of what makes them an expert. “Find a good teacher” and “put in the work” seem like rather banal pieces of advice, but it’s a system that has consistently worked throughout the ages. If you are truly breaking new ground then you should already have a framework and significant experience to guide your exploration.

  4820. How to Do Hard Things 2019-05-20 15:01:29 teekert
    Call me a hedonist, but I usually start with the most fun stuff that gets me some result soon (usually the part I already am good at). Then ideas come for the rest, the dark days I certainly procrastinate until I feel guilty enough to go on again. Works for me.

    It helps a lot if you have an employer that gives you the time. There is no substitute for getting paid 8hrs a day to learn new difficult tasks.

    It's actually the reason why some of my self-employed friends got a regular job again.

  4821. How to Do Hard Things 2019-05-20 20:12:49 keypusher
    It is unfortunate that many smart people go through their life without being truly challenged to work hard and develop these skills. It is often too easy for us (excuse my pride) to coast by on our ability to grasp material quickly and intuitively, yet ultimately feel dissatisfied as we know we didn’t work that hard at it. The only way I have found to overcome this is to engage in rigorous study with those who are better than you. In some ways I think many of the elite schools in the US do a disservice to their students by coddling them with inflated grades and subjective assessments. Having experienced both, I far prefer the brutal and objective assessments of difficult midterms and finals found at large public universities. If you don’t have access to such an education, then start by reading the original works of great thinkers. Take courses at the best school you can find. Online is ok, but don’t neglect the work. Find professional work with peers that challenge you. Being surrounded by smart people who work hard will change your perspective on what is possible. Procrastination is just one form of self-sabotage which allows us avoid confronting our own limitations. There’s no shame in turning in a crap project because you did it the night before, but it would be a catastrophe to spend weeks pouring your heart and soul into a piece and still have it be garbage! The reality is that many hard things require lots of practice, and you won’t always nail it. Laugh at your mistakes, throw it away, start over, iterate and improve. It’s ok to fail, it’s not an indictment of your potential. Great projects may start with inspiration from a long walk, but they also require lots of editing and refactoring. The important thing is to start the thing and keep working at it, keep chipping away at the small pieces until you get there.

  4822. How did you get over your gaming addiction to focus more on side projects? 2019-05-21 04:57:30 jolmg
    Maybe do nothing. I mean as in sit or lay down and stare at the wall or the window or the ceiling or something. Just stay like that for a while until you lose whatever urges you have. Keep your mind blank. Be comfortable doing nothing.

    I find that doing nothing helps me to reset myself and allow me to chose what activity I'm going to put my attention to.

    Once you're free of your urges, chose your side project, and just do it. Get moving.

    While you're working, you have to resist the urge to play games or do some other activity like watching TV or mindlessly browsing the web. You might give yourself the excuse that you're only doing it to resist the temptation to play games, but you're just replacing one addiction with another.

    Also, focus is an ability you need to exercise, so the better you resist those urges, the better you'll be able to focus with time.

    If you get stuck in your project, I refer you to:

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19955830

    Just continue by working on smaller problems at a time. When you slow down, look to accelerate. You can't go from 0 to 60 mph suddenly, but you can accelerate. It's better to move slowly than to not move at all.

    If you suddenly find yourself back to playing games or otherwise wasting your own time, repeat from the start, and do nothing once more.

    If the above doesn't work (probably if your gaming addiction doesn't come from procrastinating on your project), realize that gaming is a form of escapism. We use escapism to avoid facing something (or multiple things) in our lives. Something that, for lack of a better word, scares us. Everything that scares is so because we lack knowledge of it, especially how to deal with it. You need to figure out what that is and face it as best you can. By facing it, you learn about it, and by learning about it, it ceases to be scary. You don't need to deal with it perfectly, but often not dealing with it is worse than doing a poor job of doing so. Once you've done your best at dealing with it, realize that "your best" means you couldn't have done better. By definition, you gave it your all, so there's nothing to regret in how you dealt with it. By your ability when you dealt with the problem, it was impossible to do better. You can now move on from that problem and, hopefully, your need for escapism.

  4823. Ask HN: Low self confidence and self esteem. How to improve? 2019-05-21 07:05:24 wurp
    I'm reading The Procrastination Equation right now, and it has the following (excellent, IMO) advice:

    Find tasks of any sort at all that you can do. Do them, noting your success. Do this every day. Again, pay attention to successes. Recognize that you accomplish your goals, and expand on those goals.

    For goals that take multiple days to accomplish, your first task is to plan by breaking the goal down into smaller tasks you can accomplish in a day. Appreciate completion of each of these, including the planning itself.

    The book does a better job of pitching it & giving examples. The most relevant bit is in Chapter 8.

  4824. Procrastination is not a time management problem. It is an emotion 2019-05-22 08:52:04 tjkrusinski
    You can say procrastination is the result of the core belief that one is not capable or will not perform the given task well, or once you do that thing, what will you have to worry about then?

  4825. Procrastination is not a time management problem. It is an emotion 2019-05-22 09:12:49 friedman23
    Personally, I don't procrastinate on things I believe will pose a challenge. I procrastinate on the easy but tedious things.

  4826. Procrastination is not a time management problem. It is an emotion 2019-05-22 09:23:30 anonymfus
    It seems like proper title would be "Procrastination is not time management problem. It is emotion regulation problem" (no articles to fit into 80 characters limit).

    Currently submission title is "Procrastination is not a time management problem. It is an emotion".

  4827. Procrastination is not a time management problem. It is an emotion 2019-05-22 09:23:51 Swizec
    Personally I procrastinate on almost everything that doesn’t either shoot up the dopamines immediately or make the panic monster go away

  4828. Procrastination is not a time management problem. It is an emotion 2019-05-22 09:27:28 pelagic_sky
    I procrastinate because the task has no real personal value to me.

  4829. Procrastination is not a time management problem. It is an emotion 2019-05-22 09:31:42 arcticbull
    The latter rings true for me; I get a lot more done when I have a pile of stuff to do once I'm finished with the task at hand. If the task at hand is the only one left on my plate, I procrastinate, because what will I focus on after?

  4830. Procrastination is not a time management problem. It is an emotion 2019-05-22 09:33:19 titanomachy
    Or: Procrastination is an emotion regulation problem.

  4831. Procrastination is not a time management problem. It is an emotion 2019-05-22 09:51:03 hashberry
    Procrastination is an addiction because it offers relief from anxiety and instant gratification. Also, being a chronic procrastinator and a skilled developer is a deadly combination. I've been praised for my excellent work and rewarded with raises and bonuses, even though I often procrastinate until the very last minute.

    Tip: to make your git logs look socially acceptable to co-workers and management, don't commit at 3AM Monday morning, wait until 9AM.

  4832. The Most Expensive Lesson of My Life: Details of SIM Port Hack 2019-05-22 10:09:01 xs83
    Honestly - they are a pain in the ass, its not fun having to use them vs the convenience of an exchange, I certainly procrastinated about moving mine for a long time!

  4833. Procrastination is not a time management problem. It is an emotion 2019-05-22 12:06:49 hinkley
    One source of the procrastination is that the assignment is boring and the only way you can feel alive is to slam it out under pressure.

    There are other coping mechanisms you can use, although some of them are arguably worse than procrastination (eg overengineering).

  4834. Procrastination is not a time management problem. It is an emotion 2019-05-22 12:27:48 abhi3
    The fact that Chronic procrastination = Likely ADHD i.e. an inherent neurological issue, needs to be propagated more widely so people can stop feeling guilty about it and not treat it like some emotional/moral/work ethic failure.

  4835. Procrastination is not a time management problem. It is an emotion 2019-05-22 13:06:57 mntmoss
    I've gradually unlearned the anxiety-driven procrastination habits that I picked up in school but it's taken almost as long as the time I spent in the system:

    * I now focus on developing my own feedback mechanisms rather than worry about assigned/external ones. If you have a large enough number of "required to succeed" and "instant fail if this occurs" signals, you can know roughly how well you are doing without anyone to guide you.

    * I focus on work as a cycle, rather than tasks to be cleared out. The converse of the procrastinating is the idea that if you rush around enough, you will open up time for something else, something better, but what that something is, is a big ??? The cyclical approach keeps me more grounded in hammering out a few hours of work on a regular basis, which is more sustainable.

    * I look for opportunities to use my "activated" levels of energy to chase after a thread of a problem. I often don't know how long anything takes, but what I do know is that I'm doing more if I periodically throw myself at the work and solve the things I can solve and use the rest to develop more feedback(if I failed: okay, why?) - and doing this cyclically makes it sustainable.

    I still have periods where my work energy is low, but the causes are typically more obvious: stress is up, I found a new game that captured my attentiom, etc.

  4836. Procrastination is not a time management problem. It is an emotion 2019-05-22 13:33:21 xt00
    Some things that have helped procrastination for me are 2 things:

    1) think about something to look forward to regarding the particular task — for example maybe just simply writing the email saying that it’s done is the only thing I can look forward to, the current thing is super annoying to do, or the food I’ll eat afterward.

    2) second thing I do is when I sense that I’m not going to make progress on the thing, I just stop working on the thing and schedule it for later.. trying to do something for hours and not actually doing it is actually fairly stressful and wastes a bunch of time and emotionally you feel annoyed about it as well. This sounds like procrastination but I mean within a context where I actually attempt to do the thing at each scheduled time rather than sit there and play on your phone on top of your math book while you are supposed to be studying. I just say welp math ain’t happening right now. Schedule for later when I’ll be mentally prepared.

    I have definitely pretty much always thought procrastination is super emotional. Certain things you don’t want to do so you put it off. Once there is very little time left you know that you have forced yourself into a limited engagement on a thing you want to minimize your involvement with so you have made a reasonable decision to avoid dealing with something that could annoy you for an extended time.

  4837. Procrastination is not a time management problem. It is an emotion 2019-05-22 13:43:58 FooHentai
    >some of them are arguably worse than procrastination (eg overengineering).

    Drinking.

  4838. Procrastination is not a time management problem. It is an emotion 2019-05-22 13:49:59 hn_throwaway_99
    For me, I find procrastination to be the exact opposite. Say I have a big project I want to complete, and I know I'll feel happy, proud, and accomplished if I complete the project, but I get stuck or frustrated with some intermediate step. Then what I usually end up distracting me is chronic or boring things. I'll organize my email inbox, or watch a million YouTube videos I'm not all that into, etc.

  4839. Procrastination is not a time management problem. It is an emotion 2019-05-22 14:10:39 aeternus
    Seems like an unpopular opinion, but I also think procrastination is actually beneficial in this sense.

    It can sometimes eliminate or reduce recurrent tasks, IE procrastinate getting a haircut: fewer haircuts / year. Procrastinate cleaning or laundry: less total time spent since you can do more at once.

    There's always a small chance the task will entirely disappear (business priorities shift). In those cases, procrastination can actually be helpful.

  4840. Procrastination is not a time management problem. It is an emotion 2019-05-22 14:28:10 m12k
    My favorite tool/trick against procrastination is pomodoro technique: Work 25 minutes continuously with no interruptions, then take 5 minutes to relax/do other things, e.g. answer texts - then rinse and repeat. Do this 6-8 times and you'll have done more than most people do in a full work day. When I first heard of it I was very skeptical of it, because I know that as a programmer I need hours of uninterrupted focus, so purposely interrupting myself every 25 mins seemed counterproductive. But it turns out, most of us get micro-interruptions all the time, and they're much easier to ignore if you know that in at most 25 mins, you'll have 5 mins to deal with them. That way you don't create 5 mins of interruption, you batch the already existing interruptions together and timebox them. And 5 mins isn't enough to get you out of 'the zone' as long as you keep the breaks mentally 'light' - and going for a little walk really is healthier than just sitting all the time.

    And now for the real kicker: I found that I always procrastinate the most in the beginning of a project, where everything is vague and there's not yet a list of nicely broken down tasks to execute. And that makes sense cf. the whole 'procrastination is emotional' perspective that the article talks about, because completing tasks gives you a dopamine kick as a reward, but with no easy tasks in sight at the start of a project, it just feels like wandering the desert. It feels unpleasant and unsatisfying to grapple with that vagueness and trying to fit that 'too large' problem into your head so it can be broken down into bite size tasks. So you put it off until guilt or panic about a looming deadline becomes bigger than the pain of doing the work - it's the classic 'put off homework until the day before it's due' from school.

    A situation like this is where pomodoro technique really shines - I may not have small easy tasks to give me periodic dopamine kicks, but every 25 mins, I still get one for having completed a pomodoro without letting myself get distracted. And I even get to celebrate with a little break. Or to put this in other terms, at the beginning of a project, you cannot measure or reward results like you would prefer (because results are still a ways off - it takes too long to break down the initial vagueness, you don't even know what a result looks like or how hard it is to achieve yet), so you should measure and reward effort instead. And each pomodoro becomes a measure of effort that you can reward. It really does work for me - I often stop doing them later in the project, when I have a nice list of tasks to execute, and I don't do them at all for small easy projects. But whenever I realize that I dread some task or I begin to procrastinate, I pull out the pomodoros and soldier through that way.

  4841. Procrastination is not a time management problem. It is an emotion 2019-05-22 14:30:05 toomanybeersies
    Are you sure you don't have ADHD? Because that sounds a lot like what you're describing.

    ADHD is an addiction to procrastination in a sense. It could be that you missed diagnoses at a young age due to being intelligent enough to cruise through school and university with little effort, so your problem was never picked up as you never suffered any serious negative effects from ADHD due to your intelligence and ability to get tasks done quickly.

    That's basically what happened to me. I'd be able to do an assignment that would take people several days, in half a day. So I'd be able to procrastinate and delay up to the last minute and still manage to pull through, usually not with great grades, but I'd pass. I always thought I was lazy, and never considered the fact that it could be a deeper neurological problem.

  4842. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 14:49:23 nisa
    Chronic procrastinator here: I can partially agree - sometimes, in some situations. But having two dozens of dangling 30-70% projects lingering around is toxic to self-esteem and social interaction too. Hell, I've developing a growing anxiety going to a community meetup at the local hackspace that's more like a pub because I'm way behind some small projects that effect others because I'm into other small projects :/

  4843. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 14:51:38 vborovikov
    There are three tricks I've found work best to stop procrastinating.

    1. Ovsiankina effect. The effect states that an interrupted task, even without incentive, values as a "quasi-need". It creates intrusive thoughts, aimed at taking up the task again. [1]

    2. Structured procrastination. [2]

    3. Concentrating on the steps to complete the task, not your feelings and emotions about completing it. Action vs. state orientation. [3][4]

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovsiankina_effect

    [2] http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

    [3] https://catalyst.library.jhu.edu/catalog/bib_1668041

    [4] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jopy.12140

  4844. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 14:58:36 nisa
    I'm afraid I'm on undiagnosed adult ADHD, however it's difficult to get diagnosed here - expecially since I had no symptoms at a younger age - probably due to biking 3-5km to school every day and doing martial arts 2-3x a week - If I'm exercising regulary I'm procrastinating less after a few weeks - but as you can imagine I can't keep up the schedule...

  4845. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 15:06:10 jacobedawson
    I found Nassim Nicholas Taleb's take on procrastination in Antifragile interesting - he likens procrastination to a natural defense: "Few understand that procrastination is our natural defense, letting things take care of themselves and exercise their antifragility; it results from some ecological or naturalistic wisdom, and is not always bad -- at an existential level, it is my body rebelling against its entrapment. It is my soul fighting the Procrustean bed of modernity."

    He goes on to make the point that he use procrastination as a filter for his writing - if he feels strong resistance to writing a certain section he leaves it out as a service to his readers - why should they read something that he himself didn't particularly want to write? Instead of fighting procrastination as though it is an illness, maybe we should learn to understand it's utility:

    "Psychologists and economists who study ‘irrationality’ do not realize that humans may have an instinct to procrastinate only when no life is in danger. I do not procrastinate when I see a lion in my bedroom or fire in my neighbor’s library. I do not procrastinate after a severe injury. I do so with unnatural duties and procedures."

  4846. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 15:16:35 nisa
    Yeah, I'm still alive - but the amount of late-fees, insane interest rates and chronic struggle to have a flat and something to eat each months that could be solved with a lot less money and pain if I hadn't procrastinated on solving these problems earlier is not exactly nice also. Also procrastinating going to the dentist cost me... What I want to say: It's a nice quip at society - but utterly useless for the chronic procrastinator.

  4847. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 15:22:06 dcsilver
    I really feel I can make a helpful contribution on this topic. This article correctly asserts that procrastination is an avoidance mechanism for tasks that illicit an emotional response, but then tells you to figure out what that is by yourself. Good luck with that. So the problem is only partly identified to the reader. If this article at all interested or struck a chord with you then I strongly recommend an old-school procrastination book called The Now Habit by Niel Fiore to get a more complete explanation.

    Like many commenters that chime in on these procrastination threads, I am a chronic procrastinator, and feel like it’s really held me back in life. I was completely convinced of having undiagnosed adult ADHD for several years (didn’t want to go onto stims, though) - until Fiore’s book threw a spanner in the works and identified some reasonably serious unresolved psychological issues from my childhood - the source of the emotional response identified in this article. In my case it’s to do with putting impossibly high expectations on myself, but there are other common examples explored in the book. I was absolutely not expecting that and it hit me like a ton of bricks. It’s obvious in retrospect, and now I’ve correctly identified the thought patterns that sit just below the surface of conscious cognition I can catch myself in the act. It’s helped enormously.

  4848. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 15:34:05 mjburgess
    I think "procrastination" means a different thing when you're able to write a large number of books, etc.

    At that point you're not a procrastinator, just a productive person who doesn't like to do particular things.

  4849. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 15:48:45 MrP
    I was "cured" of my procrastination when I "discovered" the best way to not having things I hate to do in my to do list was to do the things.

    It sounds silly because it is. Just do it now.

  4850. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 16:08:48 beaker52
    I've long known my procrastination is born out of anxieties centered around the task or myself.

    But I'm so kind to myself that I forgive myself for procrastinating before I've even done it - a great example of the many ways/excuses to defeat most anti-procrastination techniques I've come up with :)))

    I even wonder how much my propensity toward picking up new hobbies (which usually involves spending decent amounts of money aka "shopping") before getting bored, selling everything (which I usually put off until I physically can't accommodate more stuff) and repeating the process is actually just me avoiding doing life stuff like saving for a house and being a responsible adult.

    I eat takeaway because I "don't have time" but then I don't actually get things I need to do done AND find myself becoming more and more unhealthy.

    I often get asked "what have you done today?" and it's quite frequent for me to not really even know (or care to admit).

    Interestingly, I went away on holiday the other week - when I arrived home, before I even paused (shoes still on), I immediately started doing things I'd been putting off for months, like I had an urge despite there being no more time pressure than at any point in the past 12 months that I had regularly ignored.

    Procrastination, and being with it, is a large part of my life. I find it incredibly interesting but if I could pay a large sum of money to take it away in an instant, I'd hand over the cash immediately. (And thus, this is another example of my aversion to difficult work)

  4851. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 16:50:58 cheerlessbog
    Returning from the holiday meant you had avoided your usual procrastination cues -couch, TV, phone, schedule.

    The key to defeating your procrastination may be to progressively build up a habit of doing work you prefer to avoid by setting up regular cues.

    Eg to build a gym habit I set out my gym clothes each night. Then after a week of that I began to put them on before getting in the car to work. Then after a few days I drove past the gym in the way to work. Then went in for 1 minute and so forth. I know this sounds absurd. With these tiny steps I built a habit of the gym that is now 1 hour five times a week. Now I am building a habit of keeping my kitchen clean with the same progression of micro cues. You could imagine similar steps involving preparing your desk, later just sitting down at it, and so forth,all with cues like your first coffee, or you finished dinner etc. The formula is regular cue + micro progression to build a habit. Eventually it is mentally easier to maintain the habit than to break it.

    Another tip, if you absolutely do not want to fulfill the habit on a particular cue, complete as many micro steps as you can, eg if I have an injury I will still go into the gym for a shower and to change before work.

  4852. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 17:02:45 cheerlessbog
    What solved procrastination for me (I described in more detail above) is to do the tiniest step. If that seems too large, do something tinier.

    For example say I have a presentation to prep for. For whatever reason, I'm procrastinating - maybe because it's boring or in nervous about delivering it. So I do a small step, perhaps, open my laptop, create a presentation and the title slide. Then it's ok to do something else, but often I will find myself continuing.

    (If that's intimidating the step could simply be to sit down and open the laptop.)

    If I don't continue that's OK, I don't get frustrated, I take a break (something bounded like coffee, walk, get groceries - not start reading reddit...) then again do a tiny step, perhaps draft one more slide.

    Again I often find myself continuing, one tiny step at a time. It's easy to commit to something they just takes 60 seconds. Again if I don't continue I take a little break and so on. Again when I take a break I don't judge myself.

    This system has been a revelation for me and I no longer procrastinate until the point of stress. I have also found it helpful to deal with with lack of motivation due to depression. I don't feel able to empty the dishwasher, well I can at least do one cup.

    Keys are - establish a regular cue that already exists, either an existing habit or something else regular such as kids leaving for school

    - do some tiny step

    - if that's intimidating make it tinier. There is always tinier!

    - if you find yourself continuing, go with it

    - otherwise take a break, without judging yourself. Return immediately you feel ready to make a tiny step. Sooner is better than less tiny

    - next tiny step

  4853. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 17:38:43 TeMPOraL
    It's a nice trick but for some people - like me - it doesn't work. The brain accepts the anticipated emotion on a conscious level, and then proceeds to ignore it.

    (I have a fresh case of this just recently; I was procrastinating on a household chore for a week. I was fully aware that I'll feel great if I complete it, and I'll feel really bad if I keep on procrastinating. That awareness did nothing. It took a realization that my sidearm netbook is still powerful enough to play a TV show to motivate me to go and do the chore, under the guise that I can allow myself to watch the show then. 3 hours and 4 episodes later, a whole bunch of chores was done. And I kind of understand now why some people I know like playing TV shows when cooking or cleaning.)

  4854. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 18:01:03 TeMPOraL
    If Taleb's procrastination works as a negative feedback loop, preventing him from wasting time, then good for him. This is not how procrastination looks like for those who struggle, though.

    For us, procrastination runs on a positive feedback loop - the pain you seek to avoid by delaying a task is increased the longer you avoid that task, locking you into a spiral of anxiety, out of which you usually break in two ways: either you flake on the task, or the "pain buffer" overflows and you find enough energy to complete it in a half-assed way. Rinse & repeat.

  4855. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 18:02:07 CrLf
    > Returning from the holiday meant you had avoided your usual procrastination cues -couch, TV, phone, schedule.

    I doubt this is it. Instead, I think that enough time without having to do the tasks that are being procrastinated reduces pressure and makes you less resistant to do them.

    In a way, procrastination is your brain resisting continuous grind.

  4856. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 18:04:22 TeMPOraL
    What you both describe sounds like a switch flipping in the brain. It's the holy grail of those struggling with procrastination - and the unsolved part is coercing the brain to flip that switch, to internalize that realization. I envy those who've done that by accident.

  4857. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 18:07:17 raxxorrax
    > I often procrastinate until the very last minute.

    I need that pressure too. Time clocking systems don't work at all and I tend not to use them after a while. Sure, fire me, be my guest. I think you have a release to worry about...

    Always shipped on time... or at least fast enough. At least you are not getting any change requests half a day before release. The day after always feels very good.

  4858. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 18:14:13 TeMPOraL
    It's an unpopular opinion because it isn't true for many (if not most) procrastinators, for at least two reasons. One, we procrastinate on tasks that we can't eliminate and which value scales linearly with doing them. Two, the time spent agonizing over it and the emotional cost it incurs is much greater than the savings from doing a recurring task less frequently.

  4859. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 18:22:18 monodeldiablo
    I think the guilt itself exacerbates procrastination. Perversely, I only stopped procrastinating once I stopped beating myself up about it.

    Now, I tell myself that some problems just need to marinate, or that I have some other need that I'm not addressing. I use procrastination as a signal that something else is wrong. It's been very helpful.

  4860. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 18:52:47 tempodox
    One could also argue that procrastination is time management (vs a time management problem). Just not the one with the best reputation.

  4861. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 18:54:32 menacingly
    This is a good article, but is it not simply finding a more polite (and perhaps, for the sake of publishing, novel) way to say procrastination is caused by insufficient will?

    "People procrastinate or avoid aversive tasks to improve their short-term mood at the cost of long-term goals."

    This description is true, but is it not also true for virtually every case where you would typically use the term "willpower"?

  4862. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 19:07:53 coleifer
    > And thus, this is another example of my aversion to difficult work

    Nice. A parallel: "I'd take a pill just to take my procrastination away! Hell I'd take 2."

    I had some real procrastination issues at work. I mean, I was really beating myself up, praying about it every night and sometimes during the day. Eventually I just had to start in on the tasks I had been putting off.

    Perfectionism is another facet of this thing: I need to handle x, y and z but that's going to be really tough, especially "z"... Fuck I'll start tomorrow. I had a gnarly data-munging thing for work, one of those "garbage in, garbage out"-type things, except the expectation was "garbage in, $$ out". I couldn't see my way around all the tiny difficulties I foresaw arising.

    When the pain of procrastinating became greater than the pain of just starting in on the work, I finally was able to make progress. It wasn't as bad as I had been thinking. So pessimism and cynicism seem to also play a role.

    Anyway, a favorite saying of mine is "god don't do manual labor". I could pray for motivation (or meditate or whatever), but what was needful was for me to tolerate the feelings and get started. Hard to do!

  4863. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 19:21:05 travisp
    It’s true that this is consistent with ADHD, but it’s not nearly enough information to diagnose because it’s also a common experience to many people (really). ADHD is basically defined as the bottom of a bell curve in a number of areas (depending on how you look at it, executive functions or behaviors) that are normal to the human experience, just so extreme and frequent that they are impairing to functioning in life. It is a real disorder, but it’s challenging to understand and diagnose because it’s basically an extreme version of experiences and troubles that most people have. Books and lectures about procrastination are extremely popular for a reason. Procrastination, to some extent, on work and school projects is almost a universal experience. Apart from a few outliers, most people I know waited until the day or two before to work on on week or month long assignments.

    Please be careful about telling strangers they may have a mental disorder — just like a false positive on a medical test, it can induce anxiety and cost a lot of money to investigate.

  4864. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 19:23:02 MrP
    You're absolutely right, it's like a switch flipping in the brain.

    Maybe a way to get there, or to try to explain it in a different way would be: You have to hate "having the item in your todo list" more than "doing the task".

    I know I do. It's annoying to "carry" that todo item in my head all the time, with its danger of forgetting it, or the need to note it down somewhere, then remember to check the somewhere... So I know I'l feel liberated when I do it.

    Yes, on the face of it this applies much better to "pay that bill" than to "write a book". But you'd be surprised. Soon you won't think of yourself as a procrastinator, you'll feel like someone who takes charge and does stuff. You know what people like that do, apart from the small stuff? The big stuff.

    Good luck!

  4865. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 19:29:53 Insanity
    I think that's what Larry Wall once described as his workflow. You get a problem, but you don't start working on it. Instead, you just procrastinate but slowly you'll think about the problem every now and then. You basically let it brew for some time, and at some point, the problem and solution will become clear.

    (I could misremember who said this).

    Contrast with the "Feynman approach" described by Gell-Mann:

    Write down the problem, think real hard, write down the solution

    EDIT: Formatting

  4866. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 19:38:31 decasteve
    On top of the suggestions in the article, a good diet and a regular routine of intense exercise helps me. If I have a consistent balance of diet, exercise, sleep, meditation, and some alone/solitude time in nature, I am most productive and unlikely to procrastinate.

  4867. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 19:41:46 TeMPOraL
    Out of the fun bag, sleep deprivation and loud active music work really well for me. They've been my main coping mechanisms for the past 15 or so years (loud music didn't feel cognitively impairing, though in retrospect I recognize it may have been - but it paid it back with interest in the elevated energy levels).

    > There's also bag of make-it-hards, including time constraint

    Or artificial commitments, aka. making it hurt to miss the deadline, usually by committing to pay someone money (there are services like Beeminder that handle this for you). I hate that one and it almost made me broke (it was around the same time I had to use the Ballmer Peak method to finally move forward). It works for some people, but it doesn't work for me; it only ends up triggering huge, debilitating anxiety attacks.

    > also bag of do-it-rights, like discussing how you feel with your stakeholders or partners

    AKA. career or social suicide. Nah, not risking that. There's too good a chance that your boss never had that problem, and way too likely your replacement won't have it either.

    > recognizing your NFC (need for cognition; handling it with, well, cognition or exercise, either will do)

    Could you elaborate on that one? Wrt. exercise, nah, I procrastinate too much on that :/.

    > meditation (or just introspection)

    I keep trying the insight meditation (vipassana) ever since I learned about it on HN & LessWrong close to a decade ago. It keeps not working :/.

  4868. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 20:22:59 AnIdiotOnTheNet
    Same Gentle had an interesting observation about procrastination:

    https://samgentle.com/posts/2016-09-16-what-changes

    follow up: https://samgentle.com/posts/2019-01-29-the-leverage-instinct

  4869. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 20:48:12 synthmeat
    > AKA. career or social suicide. Nah, not risking that. There's too good a chance that your boss never had that problem, and way too likely your replacement won't have it either.

    Sure, this is definitely dependant on environment. You owe it to yourself to someday work in a place where they'll go: "Sure, go hack at whatever you want for a week, get it out of the system. We've all been there." But, to note, main effect of this (for me at least) is early acknowledgment of the situation in a safe environment and a timely manner. These things can spiral out of control and shaving of a day or two in its inital stage is very helpful. Additionally, I'm frequently surprised by responses of the type "What? We didn't even have those expectations you think we had. Why are you even worried?" Don't let your mind build illusory labyrinths.

    > Could you elaborate on that one? Wrt. exercise, nah, I procrastinate too much on that :/.

    It's pretty well outlined on wikipedia[1], and it's simple idea - some people have a literal need to do cognitively hard things, so piled up boring stuff will drain you in various ways. An alternative route, recently proposed[2], is to wear that out via physical exercise. That route is a bit at odds with my goals in life, but I guess there's some sort of healthy balance.

    > I keep trying the insight meditation (vipassana) ever since I learned about it on HN & LessWrong close to a decade ago. It keeps not working :/.

    I've never studied any formal approach to it so I keep it simple - whenever I feel "noise" (anxiety, neurosis, whatever), I sit (not any strange yogi poses or whatever, nor lying down, since I'd fall asleep) in a quiet place for 5-10 minutes, and try to tune everything out. I focus on breathing and heartbeat, as those are the only things you can't really tune out in a non-handwavey way. If you're in a noisy environment, headphones with some brown noise or similar help.

    Also, I always welcome recommendations for "loud active cognitively-draining music". :) Just putting on King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard discography on album shuffle works really well for me last few months.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need_for_cognition

    [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19606141

    EDIT: Oh, I forgot one more for the fun bag - fasting.

  4870. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 21:06:02 bougiefever
    I like the list of things you can do to combat procrastination. It's all good to understand what drives it, but even better to know tactics that work to help you overcome it.

  4871. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 21:06:48 wincy
    I do pay to remove procrastination. I think a great example of the level of procrastination I’m talking about is this — despite getting two tickets, I didn’t renew my tags for my car for a year and a half after their expiration. It’s not like I was broke or busy. I just felt UGH every time I thought about it. I procrastinate things despite the great personal cost it might incur because of the anxiety of something even the most mildly unpleasant.

    I wouldn’t want to do work at work, so I’d endlessly scroll Hacker News or Reddit for about a year and a half. I’d leave at three because I was bored. I left one job and got fired from another.

    I take prescription amphetamines now. The difference is night and day. Developers I’ve worked with on the medication think I’m intelligent and diligent. Developers who have worked with me off the medication are baffled I got hired. People have a hard time believing they’re talking about the same person. The reward is great, but so are the costs. I’m really irritable in the evenings, and I struggle to be kind and enjoy time with my wife and daughter whom I’m ostensibly doing this for. I can’t just take some in the evenings, or I can’t sleep. It makes me more distant emotionally. My wife can instantly tell if I’ve taken Adderall, and not in a good way. My sense of humor changes, more cutting and rude. I take a drug that changes what interests me. I don’t take it on the weekends, because I’m terrified I’ll develop a tolerance, as happened once before. Tolerance doesn’t mean all effects (including side effects) are diminished. When tolerant the emotional effects seemed to scale linearly, bizarre things like crying on the kitchen floor because my wife didn’t want to talk about Austrian economics at 6am, but the concentration effect would level off and I’d feel foggy. So I sleep 14 hours on weekends, giving me even less time away from work and with my family. Vacations are the best because my wife says I’m “the man she married again” after a few days off the meds. I feel good but maaan am I unmotivated.

    I’m not saying I live in some dystopian nightmare. My life is so much better for it. Adderall has made me a firmly middle class citizen, it took me a year and a half of not taking it to realize without it (and propranolol, which reduces anxiety by just a tiny bit), there’s no way I can work a developer job. So every three months I pay the doctor, then pay the pharmacist, and I get a pill that fundamentally alters who I am.

  4872. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 21:18:03 qntty
    If you read the section of his book that was quoted, he makes it clear that he understands the argument that you're making, but he thinks it's wrong. He goes on to say:

    Since procrastination is a message from our natural willpower via low motivation, the cure is changing the environment, or one's profession, by selecting one in which one does not have to fight one's impulses. Few can grasp the logical consequence that, instead, one should lead a life in which procrastination is good, as a naturalistic-risk-based form of decision making.

    I think he would say that if your environment (which is requiring you to do things you don't want to do) is creating the conditions for a positive feedback loop as you describe, then it's your environment which is "irrational" (as he says), not you.

  4873. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 21:19:00 iSnow
    Did you get tested for ADHD? I know I always wondered about my procrastination habits, lack of discipline or executive functions (prioritizing and time-boxing tasks) and anxiety.

    Seems this is very frequently co-morbid with ADHD - and there are different ADHD subtypes, the loud-mouthed and irritable one and the silent, inattentive one.

    >my propensity toward picking up new hobbies (which usually involves spending decent amounts of money aka "shopping") before getting bored, selling everything (which I usually put off until I physically can't accommodate more stuff) and repeating the process

    This also is sooo common in ADHD people, just saying...

  4874. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 21:37:29 travisp
    I agree with you that most of human psychology is on a spectrum and that there is no shame in having a mental disorder or in seeking treatment for it, so I'm not sure if you're disagreeing with me or adding more information. At the same time, I think we should be cautious about suggesting to someone that they have a particular mental disorder for a behavior that is common.

    A psychiatrist or neurologist would want to know significantly more about the original commenter than "Procrastination is an addiction [for me]... I've been praised for my excellent work and rewarded with raises and bonuses, even though I often procrastinate until the very last minute" before deciding that they had ADHD. That experience exists well beyond the 5% of the population that has ADHD and in my opinion is not nearly close to sufficient in the DSM-5 to suggest ADHD, particularly as even extremely severe procrastination can explained by a number of other causes.

  4875. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 21:39:56 lifty
    Try mediation to identify and get more comfortable with the feelings that trigger the procrastination or task avoidance. Once you start on that path and identify the problems you can also make changes in your life, instead of just accepting the feelings.

  4876. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 21:49:26 ravenstine
    I find myself procrastinating the most when I know what what I'm doing will likely be interrupted, even if it's hours down the line. For instance, even if I can work on a certain thing for 3 hours, when I get word that I'm probably going to have to work on something else for the rest of the day, chances are I'll take those 3 hours less seriously because I know that, when I come back to the task the following day, I'll have to mentally start over. Even if I consciously try to push through it, the back of my mind keeps shouting "What's the point?"

  4877. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 22:05:01 TeMPOraL
    Pomodoro actually works quite OK for me. It doesn't solve the problem, but it's one of the more effective strategies to get some work done.

    I'm not saying there are magic pills. But most articles about procrastination seem to target regular people, for whom this is not that big of a problem.

    If you had low muscle mass, and weightlifting and diet didn't help, you'd sure be grateful if it turned out to be a recognized condition. Even if there was no effective remedy, you could at least tell the people saying "you're doing dieting/sports wrong" to shut up.

  4878. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 22:13:09 TeMPOraL
    The difference between his and mine viewpoints seem to be that Taleb thinks everything is fine with him/most procrastinators. I, on the other hand, believe my brain has buggy firmware and possibly even buggy hardware.

    Since we don't have the specs of a "correct" human brain, the distinction between buggy brain and a problematic environment may be in some areas a matter of perspective, but when you have problems dealing with things that are part of our environment since before civilization, and when you see most other people dealing well with those things, you have to seriously consider the option that it's a wetware fault.

  4879. Increased mindfulness is associated with reduced levels of procrastination 2019-05-22 22:38:38 NotSammyHagar
    Let me read this article before I work on my work. I think procrastination has always been associated with anxiety and fatigue. Besides the normal state that many people need more sleep, there is the problem of intellectual fatigue, which I have always felt I suffered from. Programming requires bringing your focus to that small screen in front of you and shutting out the awareness of the world, at least for me. And that is tiring.

  4880. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 23:16:58 inlined
    I’m grumpy about the aside that some medical conditions cause procrastination yet refusal to list them. They don’t need to diagnose readers to just list common issues for which the DSM lists procrastination. That might encourage more sympathy when we see others procrastinating.

  4881. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-22 23:26:36 inlined
    A quick search would suggest that ADHD would call this a sign and procrastination can be a side effect in major (clinical) depression, bipolar disorder, monotropism, Aspergers spectrum disorders, and non-categorized issues with shame and low self-esteem (at least that one is covered in the article).

  4882. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-23 00:09:16 EForEndeavour
    > Finally when I DO decide to start working on the task, often just as midnight hits, I feel like all the buildup and stress gives me a wave of energy to just plow through it no matter what.

    This speaks to me more closely than I'd like. I've pulled off some admittedly productive all-nighters (where "productive" means that the results satisfied the recipients), but at great personal cost. For years, I've yearned to harness the mental state of procrastination-induced late nights of solitary work.

  4883. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-23 00:15:45 johnnycab
    >Procrastination, and being with it, is a large part of my life. I find it incredibly interesting but if I could pay a large sum of money to take it away in an instant, I'd hand over the cash immediately.

    Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good ─ Søren Kirkegaard

    https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/01/14/kierkegaard-boredom...

  4884. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-23 01:50:17 beatgammit
    That works for some things, but I feel like it breaks down when others put tasks on your TODO list. For example, when I finish a task around the house, my wife adds more, so by procrastinating, I'm reducing the total amount of work I do.

    So there's always some element of prioritization, which means procrastinating on some things and not procrastinating on others. I think my trouble is properly prioritizing, and I'm sure that's similar for others as well.

  4885. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-23 07:11:59 jplayer01
    So have you largely managed to "fix" your chronic procrastination or is it something you still deal with on a day-to-day basis?

  4886. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-23 13:26:03 wallace_f
    >when people believe that their bad mood is unchangeable, they do not engage in frivolous procrastination or acting on other impulses to engage in other activities

    This is so simple, but also so enlightening.

    Unfortunately for me, it means removing most of the instant gratification from my life, such as video games, social media (incl. HN), etc.

  4887. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-23 14:30:37 atian
    Procrastination is against energy expenditure. Energy expenditure is degenerative in nature.

  4888. A new core playlist for VLC 4 2019-05-23 14:52:28 josteink
    > I personally would be more interested though if it would introduce some concept of an infinite queue

    So basically binge mode, and what online services use to maximise “engagement” and feed you into a never-ending procrastination loop.

    I realize people are different, but this is something I really don’t want in my local software.

  4889. Ask HN: Developers with ADHD/ADD, how do you cope? 2019-05-23 22:40:27 40acres
    Badly! Some days I have to write off as a loss, I wake up on the wrong side of the bed and cant control my attention. Other days I have great focus and creativity where my mind considers a million options at ever step of cognition. Adderall has not really helped in reducing procrastinating, but it does work well as a kindle when I try to manually trigger hyperfocus.

  4890. Ask HN: What tools/methods do you use to focus your time well? 2019-05-24 13:43:48 DoingIsLearning
    Your reply is a little bit facetious but it is a valid point, very often I find myself hiding behind 'optimizing my work' research as a very circunvented way of procrastinating on actual work.

  4891. Ask HN: What tools/methods do you use to focus your time well? 2019-05-24 15:26:22 eswat
    I’ve realized lately that I do most of my procrastination either in Firefox or on my phone since those are the places I’ve naturally bucketed my consumption/lizard-brain-behaviour to.

    So when I need to focus I’ll just start a Freedom (https://freedom.to/) session that prevents me from using Firefox (I use Firefox Dev Edition for work instead and don’t tend to use problematic websites in it anyway) and keep my phone far away from my field-of-view (it’s 80% of-the-time on silent mode).

    If I’m still managing to fritter my time away then it means whatever I’m tasked with isn’t very important to me and I should strongly consider doing another project, whether it’s a personal or professional one.

  4892. Procrastination is not a time management problem, it is an emotion 2019-05-24 20:15:10 stared
    > Please be careful about telling strangers they may have a mental disorder — just like a false positive on a medical test, it can induce anxiety and cost a lot of money to investigate.

    Thanks for someone telling me that I may have this problem, I felt relieved a lot. I am not a failure and some things that many people struggle with are harder for me.

    Later I got a diagnosis (I, well, procrastinated for 2 years with seeking professional help), at 33. I wish I knew that 15 years earlier, it would impact some of my career choices, and very likely - stress would have caused less harm.

  4893. Belly.io – Curated List of Programming Coding Streamers 2019-05-25 00:56:50 nbrochu
    I have done it for about 1.5 years straight, 24+ hours a week. Currently on an extended break to recharge my batteries but I'm definitely going back. It's slightly addictive and you come to miss it. The best part is you eventually end up knowing the other programming streamers which builds a sense of community.

    In my personal experience, the productivity hit is overstated. It's absolutely harder to focus because of chat and the discussions that come with it, yes, but at the same time you have a camera pointed at your face and your screen is shown to the world. Whatever you normally do to distract yourself and procrastinate... I can guarantee you don't.

    You also build a resistance to interruptions over time, which is an amazing skill for a programmer to have. I didn't believe it to be possible, but it eventually became so easy to pause what I was doing, interact with chat for a few minutes and instantly resume where I left off after.

    To go even further, it's a great way to put in consistent work and keep motivation up for large, long-term projects. I have built the entirety of the Serpent.AI Framework (https://github.com/SerpentAI/SerpentAI) while live on my Twitch channel and I'm not sure I would have ever shipped it otherwise. The interactive nature of live streaming can give you that nice push on days you don't quite feel like it.

    Streaming programming is not for everyone but I still recommend to give it a try. The experience is hard to put into words. I've had a blast and got to know great people.

  4894. What Happened to 'Miegakure,' the Game That Promised the 4th Dimension? (2018) 2019-05-25 03:17:07 IIAOPSW
    I'll hazard a guess as to what happened.

    The dev is terrified to release anything less than perfection and is insanely good at adding more content and can always justify to themselves procrastinating on release by working on more content.

    What? I'm not projecting. You're projecting. Shut up.

  4895. Smartphones Are Toys First, Tools Second 2019-05-26 03:10:23 spurgu
    Wouldn't you just constantly (always) disable it instead of typing a time consuming answer?

    Edit: The problem (at least for me) with all these kind of solutions is that you generally need a bypass method and that method usually becomes your standard way of bypassing your anti-procrastination mechanism.

  4896. Ask HN: Should I quit my job? 2019-05-28 12:15:24 eswat
    I see this excuse a lot. Maybe it’s a valid reason in some industries. But IMHO it’s likely just a convenient excuse someone plays to further procrastinate on making the though decision now so they don’t have to make a tougher, maybe-very-unlikely decision down the road if they want to re-enter the workforce.

  4897. How I made sure all 12 of my kids could pay for college themselves 2019-05-28 15:05:48 BigJono
    "We have helped them with contacts in corporations, but they have to do the interviews and “earn” the jobs."

    What?

    I'd bet there's way more "failures" (for whatever reasonable definition) out there that would have succeeded with a few good contacts than there are "failures" that would have blown it given the chance.

    There's a lot of other red flags in this article too. The section about how kids got to make their own rules sounds good, but the two examples they gave really don't sound like rational decisions that would be made by young children. Maybe they were subtlely encouraged to go in that direction by mum and dad, or maybe the children did naturally elect to go with those rules. Hopefully if they did, it was all 12 of them, because all I can think about is Paul Graham's article on good vs bad procrastination. If only 10 wanted to go along with it, what would the other 2 have accomplished instead if they didn't have to clean their room every single night of the first two decades of their lives? I haven't vacuumed my room in 6 weeks and I bet I earn more than at least half of these kids, if that's how we're measuring success. Maybe that half should have spent less time cleaning and more time playing puzzle games or manipulating the pokemon card market at school.

  4898. ‘I Thought I Was Lazy’: The Invisible Struggle for Autistic Women (2017) 2019-05-28 20:13:08 officemonkey
    Also, to add some more counterpoint...

    >I have projects that I am interested in, that I would like to work on, that I would be happier for having completed, that I am unable to complete.

    That sounds a lot like how depression treats me. I have these "impossible tasks" that sit there undone. And the "lazy procrastinator" in me (thanks, mom) does them at the last possible second.

    I think a lot of the "time management" self-help books out there is an honest effort at casting around at ANY way that can help a person become more productive. Whether it's values-based, or workflow-based, or something that just reduces the friction. Sadly, like most of the self-help genre, if you don't "become more productive," you're a bad person.

    Asking Neurodivergent people to compensate for executive functioning skills that don't come easy is bound to fail.

  4899. Ask HN: Do you think technology progress will flatten out 100 years from now 2019-05-29 18:17:35 lelima
    I think the ecological collapse will be avoided, I take as example South Africa and the water crisis [1]. They predict the day 0 (out of water). As the day get closer, everyone started to ratiocinate the water, everybody realized that the problem was just ahead of them that the entire community helped and "the day 0" was moved several times.

    It seems to me, but I might be wrong that we are procrastinating with global warming till the issue is really close, then the hair of everyone will stand and the entire population will help.

    [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/04/back-from-the-...

  4900. Smartphones Are Toys First, Tools Second 2019-05-31 09:03:18 PrototypeNM1
    Wouldn't you just constantly (always) disable it instead of typing a time consuming answer?

    I've had a couple false starts on doing a full write up answering this question but the quick answer is that it's not actually time consuming and that doing the puzzle feels like the easiest way to get to the page.

    A lot of procrastination blocking apps take an abstinence based approach which predictably leads to just disabling them. Another approach - the approach my extension takes - is attacking the instant gratification that you can get to through unconscious action.

    The unlock puzzle takes maybe 5-15 seconds to complete, I find that time switch of mental state is enough to cause a moment of pause and consideration for whether I want to continue browsing.

    As you mentioned a bypass is necessary and I added that in the extensions option page. I find that since the puzzles themselves aren't actually hard I usually feel like it's easier to do them then navigate away from the page and back.

    I think the important thing to note is this isn't intended to stop you from procrastinating when you want to procrastinate. The intent is to help you recognize when you're procrastinating unconsciously.

    The idea was largely inspired by this xkcd blag post - https://blog.xkcd.com/2011/02/18/distraction-affliction-corr.... One thing I took out it was the idea that doing this action is part of a contract with myself that I don't have to feel bad about browsing as long as I do this step. That's not encoded into the extension and I'm not sure how important it is for how successful it has been for me.

  4901. I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected 2019-05-31 19:52:49 easymodex
    This is very familiar to me. In college I often procrastinated until 3 days before an exam and only then opened the books. I didn't have the best grades because I made a conscious effort to get through with as little work as possible. I felt good about it as other classmates were studying for weeks before. Unfortunately I spent a lot of that free time playing video games. It was fun but i could've achieved way more.

    But in the end you have to ask yourself what actually matters to you in life. The end goal is to be happy. I knew I wanted to have kids and enjoy life with friends and have fun. I could have been one of the best in some field, but for what purpose? Scientific achievements are hard, im not ready to commit my life to working at some problem which I may or may not solve. It's not about what you achieve, it's about what you choose not to. Jack of all trades is a sensible choice even though it's sometimes frustrating.

  4902. I Grew Up Gifted, but My Life Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected 2019-06-01 04:23:33 cowpewter
    Yes, I coasted through school until college. Never studied, never had to, even in the gifted, honors, and AP classes. I especially did well on tests. Graduated 3rd in my class, only .001 GPA points from 2nd, with a handful of 5s (and a couple 4s) on my AP tests. Had undiagnosed ADHD (inattentive type) the whole time. Always procrastinated heavily, usually wrote papers/did projects the night before they were due. The closest I got to "studying" was re-reading the chapter I was going to be tested on the morning before the test, and even that was only for social studies classes where you had to remember names and dates. I did not need to study at all for math, science, or English courses. I got very lucky with a handful of exceptional teachers in high school. Teachers that actually cared about me and my success. I wanted to do well in school, because I got praised for it - both by my mom and by teachers. I craved that praise like nothing else as a child so I always did just enough to make sure my grades stayed high.

    Life fell apart in college. Huge class sizes with no personal connection to the teacher and being solely responsible for meeting deadlines and studying eventually ruined school for me. Your lecturer with over 3000 students doesn't give a shit about you or your performance in school. I lost the immediate feedback and praise that I used to get in grade/high school, and with it, my hyperfocus on doing well in school was gone.

    I fell into a deep depression, took a year off, took anti-depressants, tried school again but still just couldn't make myself go to classes anymore. Dropped out. Spent a few years working a dead-end call center tech support job. Wound up getting into software anyway (my failed degree was going to be in CISE) and I do well enough for myself now (especially after getting an ADHD diagnosis and getting medicated for it), but college/young adulthood was a disaster for me. I also had to declare bankruptcy in my mid-twenties - another consequence of depression and undiagnosed ADHD. Impulse purchases and the guilt/shame/avoidance spiral turned my credit into a mess.

    Most of my peers actually did far better than me (like, they actually finished their bachelors (some went as far as PhDs) and went on to good jobs in the fields they studied for), but I don't think any of them had ADHD. That was the other thing that kept me focused in high school. I was part of a decently sized group of "smart kids" - we would compete with each other on grades, and that competition helped keep me on track. Lost that in college too.

    Basically, yeah, giftedness and ADHD are a terrible combo. With ADHD, you need a lot of structure and work ethic to succeed in life, but if you're smart enough, you don't have to develop any of those skills to excel in grade/high school. Then you hit adulthood and everything falls apart.

  4903. Undervalued Engineering Skills: Writing Well 2019-06-01 08:00:28 cosmie
    I don't have that strong of a reaction, but realized fairly recently that I also get a lot of anxiety from writing on demand.

    What works for me is not starting from scratch. If I do, I'll either never get it done or procrastinate until the last minute (while building up an incredible amount of anxiety in the interim).

    Instead, I try one of two things:

    1) Repurpose something else I have. As long as I have a seed to build off of or skeleton to frame against, I'm able to tackle it fine. If I have no frame of reference, I'll try to find one. In your self-evaluation case, I'd ask for an anonymous example from your boss or HR to understand the expectations.

    Or, 2) Ask a trusted friend or colleague to check it over. My work context switches from C-level client management to architecture and analytics-related dev work. While I can articulate a matter to any audience, that also means I can completely miss the mark if I misjudge an audience/recipient I haven't addressed before. So I'll brain dump a bunch of stuff, then ask someone who's closer to the target audience or more familiar with them. They'll help act as a sanity check whether I'm on the right page, and I use their feedback to refine things.

    I'm not sure if either of those coping strategies will help for you, but I wanted to mention them just in case!

  4904. ‘Limbic Capitalism’ Preys on Our Addicted Brains 2019-06-01 18:59:50 iSnow
    >if it turns out people can know what WoW does to your studies, and they still end up doing this, how should we think about this? Easy answer is that their real desire is to play WoW all day, but that doesn't seem very satisfying.

    It's also wrong, as it makes people unhappy. The whole idea of a real free will breaks down if we are looking at substance abuse at the latest. The underlying machinery of our brains limits the rationality of our decisions, and ultimately the freedom of our will.

    I am afflicted with ADHD and know this first-hand. I still managed to get an education and a qualified job in software, but for years I hated myself for not being able to simply do tasks at hand. Libertarians would say I value goof-off time on reddit more than a steady job, but that's not true, in fact I would be a happier person if the internet just vanished or I finally got my procrastination under control.

  4905. Obsidian: A safer blockchain programming language 2019-06-02 02:42:38 Legogris
    Well color me ignorant. I am going to have to looker deeper into both (esp Polkadot), I have been procrastinating that for too long now.

  4906. ‘Limbic Capitalism’ Preys on Our Addicted Brains 2019-06-02 03:47:22 iSnow
    I will not lie, one of the important factors are that I hail from Europe, so getting treatment and seeking therapy was never a financial problem. ADHD, anxiety, and depression are frequent co-morbidities since ADHD sufferers have to face "you are smart, but you are wasting your potential" all their lives and are helpless to change it.

    Exercise helps, if I am able to do it regularly and frequently (which is currently not the case due to family and health). I tried medication but Ritalin would make me anxious and various SSRI/SNRI would nuke my sexuality. I am rather strict in not using my smartphone in bed, as that wrecks my sleep patterns.

    Apart from that, not much, I am afraid. I tried various systems to organise my work, from having a to-do list buddy (I would regularly tell them what I have to do and report back) to pomodoro, but in the end, my discipline is too lacking, and I get distracted too fast.

    I stopped working self-employed and am now working for one of the top 100 biggest companies. That helped a lot since I can sweep procrastination episodes under the carpet (the expected intensity of work is rather low), but is insanely frustrating because I have low leverage to improve our way of work.

    ADHD has the upside for many that they will absolutely rip into information and devour it as long as it is interesting. In my case, that means I am the "go-to" person in our department because I know more about software development, tools, languages than most, even if I am probably not the most productive coder. Currently trying to develop into some kind of internal consultant for digital transformation/disruptive business ideas - I seemingly have the right ideas, now hoping for someone higher up to notice them.

  4907. Mental illness: is there a global epidemic? 2019-06-03 23:55:54 geoelectric
    ADHD exists on a continuum, much like many other behavioral/mental disorders. The near side is probably what you describe--something that would be normal in the right circumstances, but is maladaptive in the real ones. That phenomenon probably partially explains people whose ADHD "disappears" in adulthood. As an adult you can choose your environment better. However, that's by no means the whole of it, and the farther sides are potentially quite disabling. Executive function covers an awful lot of your everyday behavior, and it's all potentially affected.

    The diagnosis for ADHD specifies multiple areas impaired. Just flunking class or getting fired won't do it. Unless we think maintaining basic friendships or relationships, suppressing destructive impulses, defeating procrastination, avoiding chronic disorganization (extreme clutter), staying away from addictive substances, etc., has also become significantly more sophisticated, I'd think the aspects that affect those types of activities would stand alone as an indicator.

    There have been epithets/cliches for many, many years that come down to pathologically spaced out, lazy, foolish to the point of not being "normal"; and we've had "minimal brain damage" and other pre-ADHD executive function impairment diagnoses for a long time as well. It's not just a modern thing.

  4908. Ask HN: How do you identify programmers who finish things? 2019-06-04 08:16:54 catherd
    Not sure I agree with the hire a younger dev and start persuading option. In my managerial experience, it's almost impossible to change someone's core personality or their value system, either through words or through money. And even a temporary change takes monumental effort on my part. Better to find someone who's natural mode of operation fits this type of role.

    I feel like the personal value system and personality are what drive long term performance. You can explain and cajole all you want, but inevitably a few months later the core personality starts coming back through. Establishing a culture around certain things will go a long way toward making those behaviors expected, but finding a person who has the appropriate temperament and skill level for a the types of activity needed for a role is so incredibly easier than doing everything the hard way.

    Maybe I've been spoiled... I have a few engineers in other roles who do naturally get things done and don't need constant hand-holding to get through anything boring, but so far the programmers mostly just want to work on whatever they think is cool and turn into procrastination machines if I push too hard or give them an uncool task. I do have one older guy who I can leave to his own devices and the result will mostly make sense and happen without lots of my time pushing to finish. The other engineering roles with 'finishers' are mostly young guys, though, so I'm still hopeful any age could be this type.

  4909. Ask HN: Is now the best time to be alive? 2019-06-04 16:34:09 gremlinsinc
    The higher the feeling of urgency the more people we can put on the problem, the faster we can solve it the more likely we are to solve it. The longer we wait the harder it becomes to solve because it creates a feedback loop.

    If we just procrastinate and say let our children worry about it and they do the same it'll definitely be too late. We can't always just pass the buck and hope someone else figures out a fix.

  4910. An update on last week's customer shutdown incident 2019-06-05 10:37:33 mdip
    I do a lot with cloud providers for my customer's products and have worked with Digital Ocean's products once before. I didn't have a particular opinion on them[0], and there's some things that seem off about the twitter thread when placed against the incident update report that this thread is linked to. So, all of that to say, I'm giving Digital Ocean the benefit of the doubt.

    There are, however, a few things that could be improved about this process:

    > Peer review of account terminations. For any account appealing a lock, two agents will be required to review the submission prior to issuing a final deny.

    The devil is in the details. Do this in a manner that the person confirming that the account is committing fraud is unaware that they are confirming another's denial; otherwise "dude, can you approve that termination I just did? I want it out of my queue/that guy was a dick." is a risk.

    Off the top of my head, I'd probably generate two support tickets (linked, but without that link presented to the account termination CSR team member), assigned directly to this person, hidden from others ("hiding", along with training/process improvements is likely enough). If one person disagrees with the termination, close out the other person's ticket. If the CSR sub-org for this is global, place them with staff in opposing time-zones to optimize unnecessary confirmations (though you use a valuable measurement on how consistent your staff is)

    > Services that result in the power down of resources will no longer automatically take action on any account, regardless of lack of payment history, for accounts that were engaged more than 90 days prior. These cases will be escalated for manual review.

    I can't count how many services I've deployed that started under 90-days ago where the customer failed to add their account information to the service. I can't count them because I don't know. Usually our customer creates their account with instructions from us, and creates an account for us to use which doesn't have permissions over payment details. I wouldn't be surprised if I've had an app go past production that the customer simply forgot to do that important step on Day-1, or if the customer procrastinated until production, etc. We ask, but I've been lied to about stupider things (thankfully rare, but surprising from people who otherwise look like "grown-ups").

    Minimally, it sounds like the whole process here is missing a "Hey, WTF is that thing you're running? Call us or we'll need to turn it all off" alert at least a little while before it ... turns it all off. At login, put a clear notice "We want you to love our services, so we let you try them without asking you for payment information. Unfortunately, we have to have monitoring in place to prevent hostile actors from loving us, too. Because of this, accounts newer than 90-days might have services shut off in error. If you want a notification an hour before action will be taken, provide your mobile phone number and we'll send you a text. Or you can enter credit card information/confirm your identity (not sure what options are available here) and we'll keep the bots from bothering you"

    Of course, all of this costs money. And based on the incident response times, an explanation other than "failure to prioritize correctly" might very well be "failure to staff properly/have the tooling in place to handle the volume". Considering the competition in this market, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if "we can't afford it" plays into some of that.

    [0] A little less awful than AWS in a lot of ways for the task I had to do.

  4911. Annotated Hacker News traffic since the beginning 2019-06-05 16:36:26 napsterbr
    Or maybe HN is a huge time sink for us procrastinators during the week :)

  4912. Ask HN: What tools do you use for note-taking, progress tracking and TODO lists? 2019-06-06 09:09:48 amirouche
    Nobody seems to do my technic, I used to do org-mode but then the TODO became too big and I could not remember exactly what happened. So instead, I use... one github private repository.

    I rely on (sometime big) issues and projects. I store documents and papers in the git repository.

    It also gives me more room to procrastinate, like add emojis, tags etc... on something that will be useful.

  4913. Why aren’t more companies remote-first? 2019-06-06 20:26:50 stakhanov
    Not at all: In my experience communication is 50% of the job as a software engineer. It's 100% of the job as a software engineering manager of sorts.

    And remote communication is way more efficient. Things like text chat, comments in ticket systems or project management systems like asana etc are "soft interrupts" that I find surprisingly frictionless. I can stay in concentration until I've reached a natural interrupt of sorts, then answer chat messages or read up on tickets, ask clarifying questions or loop in more people (sending out a soft interrupt, but not waiting for replies), get back into concentration, and restart the loop at the next interrupt.

    The alternative: It is now 9:35am. You know you have to leave at 9:55 to get to your 10:00 meeting in the meeting room that's 5 minutes away. But 20 minutes is not enough to get into concentration, so you spend that time procrastinating. At 10:00 you're there. At 10:10, the asshole who is always late shows up. The meeting takes 50 minutes, because the only reason to EVER end a meeting is getting kicked out of the meeting room. In this case it was booked for the 10:00-11:00 slot. You spend 5 more minutes walking back to your desk. Within the 50mins of meeting time, you were talking for 5 minutes. 10 minutes of the other speakers' time contained information you actually needed. You arrive at your desk at 11:05. That's 90 minutes flushed down the tube that could have been 15 minutes' worth of text chat, and the timing basically prevents deep work for maybe that first half of that workday.

  4914. Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning 2019-06-07 03:06:05 ende
    As biological organisms, notions of birth/death are hard wired into the lowest levels of our cerebral kernel which serves as the foundation for every higher level of consciousness. As such, we only have the fundamental architecture to perceive an existence that is (literally) grounded in a small gravity well, with all of our primary circuitry distinctly focused on what is in “front” of both in space and time. As organisms, we cannot directly experience time that preceded our own existence, we can only mentally model that experience through intuition. That works well enough for relating to the existence of other organisms and the physical world we share, but that relatability breaks down quickly at larger space/time scales.

    Incidentally, though our individual multicellular existences may follow a birth/death cycle, the molecular information flow (DNA) that transcends our organismal existences may perhaps provide the closest approximation to a model necessary to conceptualize possible relationships between multiple space-times.

    (I’m clumsily alluding to the blackhole/whitehole infinitely branching multiverse concept, with DNA playing the part of sub-atomic mass/energy primitives which encode the structure of new unidirectional space-times/universes in an endless phylogeny which ultimately still doesn’t get us anywhere closer to “where did it all begin?” but surely expands the scope of the investigation wide enough to buy us enough time to keep procrastinating... Ok, back to work.)

    disclaimer: I only got a B in undergrad physics and have absolutely no clue what I’m talking about.

  4915. Ask HN: Why doesn’t HN have notifications? 2019-06-08 02:30:51 RandomGuyDTB
    Yes, but HN is a zero-distraction distraction: It's a workplace procrastination tool that doesn't let the user veer too far from their work. You can see this in the anti-procrast settings and the lack of any advertising here (both of which are very nice features I use regularly). If HN had notifications it'd lead on a slippery slope to HN being a social network instead of a news aggregator, and I don't think anybody wants that.

  4916. Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications 2019-06-10 20:11:34 saagarjha
    I’m doing the research work for you, though it’ll be a while before I can stop procrastinating for long enough to write a whole thing about it. While you wait, https://github.com/overtake/TelegramSwift/issues/163 is probably a good start.

  4917. Sleep tweaks boost night owls' wellbeing 2019-06-11 01:23:57 Swizec
    > This, by the by, is also how I know what my natural sleep period is when unconstrained by scheduled obligations: nine hours.

    I think this is my one super power. When unconstrained by social obligations and only working on things I'm excited about, my natural sleep period falls down as low as 4 hours. Normally I sleep 6 hours and on the weekends it goes up to 8 because I'm tired from the week.

    But put me in vacation mode and after 2 days of rest I basically don't sleep anymore. It's weird.

    Maybe that's what helps me adjust. I'm essentially cheating by sleeping less.

    For me what causes schedule drift like you mentioned in the hermit situation is a combination of procrastination and excitement about interesting work. When it's time to go to bed, I say "Just 5 more minutes" and keep going. Suddenly it's 3am and then of course I'm not going to get up at 7am.

    The next day it's evening and well I got up late today so obviously I'm not tired yet ... aaand it's a self-reinforcing cycle.

    I have seen good results from forcefully cutting that cycle and enforcing a bed time. It takes discipline to stop what I'm doing and go to bed, but ultimately it's the only thing that seems to work. Usually once I'm in bed there's no problem falling asleep within 10 minutes or so. The hard part is convincing myself to get to bed.

  4918. Incentivizing healthy group dynamics in classes (2012) 2019-06-11 01:30:15 bashbjorn
    I'm currently studying a CS(-ish) bachelors degree (and I'm currently procrastinating on a group assignment) so I have some experience with this.

    Our uni gives us quite a lot of group assignments. The university-wide solution to this problem is to include a mandatory section in each group assignment, where we are supposed describe the specific contributions of individual groupmembers. This is a neat idea in theory, but it doesn't really work. Because we've almost always lied in this section.

    You'd think that the more productive student would want to claim their own work, but more often we've prioritized 'sticking together', and aimed for distributing the described workload as evenly as possible. The idea being that the highest grade wouldn't be higher anyway (the report doesn't magically become better), but it might give the grader incentive to give some group members a lower grade.

    It's not a zero-sum game. So we might as well sacrifice some pride to keep the group dynamic strong, and to help out weaker students (regardless of whether it's a work-ethic or an intelligence problem).

    That being said - we might be an unusual social group. We generally prioritize technical (and social) abilities way higher than grades (which aren't so important here anyway). We've all stuck together since the start of our studies, despite being a very wide span of academic ability - so theres a lot of teaching and learning within the group.

    A survey of our uni recently ranked our line of study #1 for "How motivating the social life is to performing academically". So it seems that our approach is working.

    EDIT: I should mention that it's by no means the case that the actual workloads are distributed evenly. They are of course very skewed, and often a single group member will do almost no work.

  4919. De-Googling My Life 2019-06-12 23:48:41 Aromasin
    I used to hold this view, until I went and bought myself a dumb device and ended up ditching it a month later. Some apps are just too integral to modern life to lose, and many unavoidable places only function using apps now (my library, parking, bike rental, work access and expenses claims etc).

    To counter this issue of distraction, I managed to get my app selection down to about 10-12 essentials, all heavily curated so there's nothing that will 'keep me scrolling'. It basically consists of Email, Messaging, Duolingo, edx, Instagram (only following about 200 close friends so my feed is at most 5-8 pictures a day), Uber, Spotify, MyFitnessPal, Audible, and the apps for the aforementioned uses.

    After removing the "continuous distraction" apps from my phone it's gone from a procrastination machine, back to being the worlds most valuable tool.

  4920. Observable’s Not JavaScript 2019-06-15 01:07:52 jacobolus
    Knuth has been doing literate programming for 35+ years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming

    I have really enjoyed Observable as a literate programming platform though. Being able to mix text, diagrams, data tables, multimedia output, interactive inputs, easily modified subroutine implementations, imports of external data and subroutine libraries, ... makes for a very expressive and reader-friendly (albeit with a bit of reading learning curve) platform for writing interactive documents and for doing research.

    For example, here’s a recent relatively literate-programming style notebook of mine (this one was mostly done in an afternoon for fun as a way of procrastinating from other work, not as a research project), https://observablehq.com/@jrus/munsell-spin

    It’s very low-friction to set up a new notebook and just start writing, or to open an existing draft notebook and work on it. I have found this to be extremely helpful in the past year or two trying to work during my 2-year-old’s nap time.

    Pen and paper and Observable notebooks are the two most important tools of my recent research efforts.

  4921. Why are we so pessimistic? 2019-06-18 15:39:15 js8
    We haven't because we are much more social than we realize. We don't want to break social conventions, if possible. We don't want to tell people who are talking with joy about having kids or exotic vacations or luxury cars that they should hold back. Even though we all know that these things are the cause of the problem.

    We are facing a collective procrastination of sorts. Just like when you procrastinate, you know very well that you should be doing something else, and you can even be pessimistic about it. Yet you don't.

    That's why the governments, people in charge, need to take action, at the very least, start talking about it openly. Then the rest will follow.

  4922. Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models 2019-06-18 21:32:06 mikorym
    Don't you think that by trading off complexity of the models you use general usefulness? For example, the 80-20 principle is not about the numbers 80 and 20, but it is just an x-y principle where 80 and 20 are areas of a (particular) curve. If you teach it as "the 80-20 principle" then maybe at best it's a mnemonic for some people in productivity.

    I'm sorry, but I'm not a fan of productivity tools based on improperly formulated "rules" or "hints".

    HNs anti-procrastinator is more precise and useful to me.

  4923. Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models 2019-06-18 21:39:32 fheld
    I have never heard of "HNs anti-procrastinator" - can you point me somewhere?

  4924. Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models 2019-06-19 15:22:59 roryokane
    Your profile is https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=therealdrag0. When you, the owner of that profile, visits it, you will see many settings. Among them are noprocrast (boolean), maxvisit (number of minutes), and minaway (number of minutes). When noprocrast is set to yes, Hacker News will refuse to load if you visit it too much, to help you avoid procrastination.

    For the details of what each of those three settings means, visit https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=814695.

  4925. Slack Is Going Public at a $16B Valuation 2019-06-20 15:44:10 gexla
    Communication tools don't create this issue, they only bring it closer to the surface. You have to learn to manage your emotions. If you don't then it's always going to something which holds you back. If it affects younger workers more than others, then that's because they haven't learned this skill yet. It's one of many things which people new to the workplace have to manage.

    Some of the other more obvious emotional issues include procrastination and imposter syndrome. Everyone experiences these emotional swings. Experienced workers learn how to manage them. The earlier the better.

    There are lots of things broken in the space of "work." Teaching younger workers how to deal with emotions is one of them.

  4926. One Day of Work a Week Is Most ‘Effective’ Dose for Mental Health 2019-06-21 04:07:11 toper-centage
    I started feeling burned out and asked for part time, just 3 days a week. Company refused - we don't do part time. Instead they tried to convince me to stay, give me perks, a raise, etc, because they really liked me. I told them I probably can find someone willing to hire a dev in this huge city.

    By the end of the day I had a part time offer and a raise. The market is in our favour at least for now.

    Interestingly, after 6 months I dialed back to 4 days a week. I felt too disconnected with the projects and the people, and procrastinated too much in the 4-day weekend. I found 4 days to be my personal sweet point.

  4927. Ask HN: Do you keep an engineering notebook? 2019-06-22 07:36:28 ElijahLynn
    I keep a Rubber Ducking notebook. I rubber duck every day. So amazing how much it creates _momentum_ and _progress_.

    I just write it down, typos and all. Just write it out, anything, I even right the next step repeatedly when I am procrastinating. e.g.

    Test out X, just do it, do it now. Okay, do it. Go do it already.

    It works!

    https://www.elijahlynn.net/blog/2019-01-04-write-it-out

  4928. Information is like snacks, money, and drugs to the brain 2019-06-22 09:41:28 arkades
    An honest question: do you think it’s the information-seeking behavior that is the problem, or that the information-seeking is a manifestation of a different behavior (e.g., procrastination)?

    I find that with a lot of people it’s procrastination. There’s no information block thorough enough to address procrastination; it finds a way. It has to be addressed directly.

  4929. Suicide Rates Among Adolescents and Young Adults in the United States, 2000-2017 2019-06-25 05:11:11 celrod
    On that note, it'd also be unwise to bet on the "ego depletion happens only to those who believe in it" finding from the paper I cited being replicate-able either -- it may be that the more broadly is no simple ego depletion effect effect at all.

    Psychology studies tend to be marred by the "piranha problem": you can't have a bunch of large effects determining behavior, without them eating each other.[1] We're immensely complicated, and make highly individual and nuanced decisions. There's just too much noise to try and boil things down to small patterns from simple studies.

    I believe (perhaps grounded weakly in largely anecdotal evidence) that people need to be able to fit their own behavior in some sort of personal narrative, or justify it in some way. Therefore, that the belief they "can't help" but do something they want to do (whether that be procrastinate or eat unhealthy food) will make it easier to justify, and thus the behaviors more likely. But there are as many different internal narratives, built on life experiences, as there are people. Making it hard to generalize surface level consequences between people.

    [1] https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2017/12/15/piranha-pr...

  4930. Floppycasts – 1.44MB Podcasts 2019-06-25 13:49:56 themodelplumber
    Right on, I love that you're paying attention to the space factor. I'm a casual podcaster, about 10 episodes in last I checked :) and I totally know what you mean about editing. I have to do it right after recording or I'll procrastinate for weeks!

  4931. Franz Kafka Agonized over Writer’s Block (2017) 2019-06-27 04:01:08 slowmovintarget
    Writer's block is a specialized case of procrastination. It is a problem of emotion management. Doubt and fear over ability cause a person to prefer avoiding the writing.

    "What if it's bad?"

    "What if I destroy this work that I so badly wanted to be beautiful?"

    "What if no one understands it?"

    "What if I over-explain it and ruin it?"

    "What if people understand it and hate it anyway?"

    You face the blank page (or blinking cursor) and these questions run through your mind. Often, rather than agonize over these questions, you do something else so that you don't face these doubts. If you're not staring at the page, or that cursor, you're not feeling what those doubts make you feel.

    You do things that are tangentially related to the writing, like cleaning the writing area, or fixing tea, or obsessing over the proper editing software that ought to be used to produce the work. You rationalize these things as preparation for the actual work.

    I've done this as programmer. I've done this as a writer. When writers do this, we call it writer's block.

  4932. YouTube Lets Users Override Recommendations After Criticism 2019-06-27 08:38:04 hombre_fatal
    Also helps to clear your viewing history (Youtube's "History" sidebar tab) every once in a while when you're tired of seeing the same recommendations.

    For example, I kept seeing Starcraft 2 replays on the homepage after watching the AI vs human tournament which kept helping me procrastinate. I don't even play the game nor subscribe to a single SC2 channel.

    Cleared history, started off strong watching some of my language-learning channels, and now my Youtube homepage is pretty productive.

  4933. Franz Kafka Agonized over Writer’s Block (2017) 2019-06-27 09:20:22 121789
    I don't agree with your premise that procrastination is based only on doubt or fear. I certainly didn't put off ironing my clothes for 3 days because I was nervous about my ironing performance. I think it's a combination of expected pain of the actual task (ironing sucks), ambiguity on the scope of the task, and potentially fear of how your output is perceived.

    That's why many times, the best suggested procrastination treatments for a task are just starting the task (where predicted pain of the task disappears and you get clarity on next steps) or breaking down the subtask into very small subtasks that are digestible.

  4934. Franz Kafka Agonized over Writer’s Block (2017) 2019-06-27 09:44:00 slowmovintarget
    It isn't based only on doubt and fear. Those happen to be predominant with writer's block, though.

    I might point out that ambiguity of scope may be summarized as doubt, and you do proceed to use fear as the third part of your list.

    But yes, procrastination in general is not only those things.

  4935. Real-world dynamic programming: seam carving 2019-06-27 11:46:08 marvy
    See this comment in this thread:

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20285242#unv_20290891

    (HN really should make it easier to make "anchor" links, so people don't have to load a new page just to see a sub-thread. That probably took me almost 5 minutes, which is like a quarter of the "anti-procrastination" budget with the default settings. It should have taken 10 seconds.)

  4936. Ask HN: Late start Monday and early dismissal Friday 2019-06-28 04:41:53 badrabbit
    That is what I am curious about. Would I be more productive if I start monday late where normally I would spend too much time coping with having to return from the weekend? Fridays too,I feel like i would be more productive and procrastinate less if I knew the weekend will start soon.

  4937. Mindfulness is associated with reduced levels of procrastination 2019-07-01 00:46:43 0-_-0
    I wanted to start meditating for a while but I keep putting it off. How can I stop procrastinating?

  4938. Mindfulness is associated with reduced levels of procrastination 2019-07-01 04:08:22 fbi-director
    Based on mroe than just this comment, have a serious talk with yourself

    Procrastination is often not about being lazy, but a deeply embedded or burried fear of failure. That being said, being overwhelmed can also stop you from taking action of any kind, and a part of fixing that pattern (which has usually already developed once you start to recognize procrastinating is a provlem for you) is indeed cutting everything into bite sized chunks.

  4939. Study finds that mindfulness is associated with reduced procrastination 2019-07-01 05:33:35 ultrablack
    Yet, I find that procrastination helps me perform better.

  4940. Study finds that mindfulness is associated with reduced procrastination 2019-07-01 05:42:58 testfoobar
    Assuming you're not making a joke regarding procrastination --- a way that worked for me was to take a mindfulness class that met regularly for a few months. The contents of the class was largely meaningless to me, but having it on my schedule every week and then attending the class, saying hello to the instructor and then spending at least 45minutes meditating helped get me started.

    Good luck.

  4941. Study finds that mindfulness is associated with reduced procrastination 2019-07-01 06:00:19 el_dev_hell
    Same here up until a certain point.

    If I'm working on a difficult problem and I've spent hours/days/weeks getting nowhere, I view constant procrastination as a signal that I need to step back and do something else. Once I step back and do something unrelated (even washing the dishes or ironing), I usually have a breakthrough on the issue.

    Procrastination also cripples me if I let it get out of control. Have you ever had a 2 hour work day between 7 hours of Reddit/HN?

  4942. Study finds that mindfulness is associated with reduced procrastination 2019-07-01 06:54:50 cgoecknerwald
    Well, procrastination can be pretty irrational, especially when combined with strong emotions.

  4943. Study finds that mindfulness is associated with reduced procrastination 2019-07-01 07:26:54 TimTheTinker
    It sounds like a joke but it’s actually a pretty serious conundrum. Those who need the most help with procrastination very well might be procrastinating getting that help.

    ... Which underscores again the fact that all of us need at least one kind, honest friend and a dose of humility to listen to their feedback.

  4944. You're Worthwhile, Even When You Make Mistakes 2019-07-01 08:00:22 ex3xu
    This article reminds me of the analogy made in the anti-procrastination book the Now Habit [0] called "raising the board". When you or your company culture tie the stakes of making a mistake into some kind of validation of your worth as an employee or as a human being, it's like taking the simple task of walking across a board on the ground, and transforming it into walking across a board 100 feet in the air with the building on your end also on fire. Obviously, it creates additional stress and anxiety that makes it significantly harder for you to get started, iterate, and bounce back from failures -- even though the actual difficulty of individual tasks hasn't changed.

    If this article's point appeals to anyone and they are looking for a modern researcher on the topic, I'll gently push them in the direction of Brene Brown's work on embracing vulnerability as a driver of personal growth: https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability?langu...

    [0]: https://hashref.com/summaries/TheNowHabit.pdf

  4945. Study finds that mindfulness is associated with reduced procrastination 2019-07-01 09:02:31 temporaryvector
    Several comments here have stated that they have trouble starting meditation/mindfulness due to procrastination.

    Rather than answering directly, I figured I'd share my own experience with procrastination. I've been a severe procrastinator, among other things, my whole life, as far as I can remember. Over time, I've tried to use various strategies to cope: breaking the work into smaller chunks, convincing myself to work for 10 minutes and that I'd stop if I felt like it, keeping to-do lists, asking other people to tell me to do stuff, among a bevy of other strategies. I've also tried to keep up exercise and eating well, finding fulfilling hobbies, etc., but could never keep doing it for long and as a result I grew progressively out of shape as I aged. I've also tried meditation and mindfulness at times, as suggested by various articles and books I'd read when trying to cope with getting work done.

    Despite finding it hard to get any work done, whether required or related to my hobbies, I could get by through all of my education with relatively good grades, mostly through studying and doing the work at the last possible moment and lots sleepless nights. I've also been lucky, I lost count of the times where events outside my control saved me from the consequences of my procrastination (professors missing classes, deadlines getting pushed back, weather, power or network outages, etc.) giving me an extra day or week to finish something I couldn't finish on time because I started too late. In general, I managed to maintain the illusion of competence at great cost to my physical and mental health. I had trouble going to sleep at night and waking up in the morning, I was constantly tired and stressed, as a consequence of which I couldn't keep up with any exercise routines and would regularly resort to unhealthy food for comfort.

    Things got progressively worse as I continued my education, because the work got considerably harder. I would catch myself regularly going to sleep at 6 a.m. or later because I was finishing something that should have realistically taken me a couple of hours to do and that I had an entire week to do.

    Sometime after (barely) finishing my doctorate thesis, I decided that this was not sustainable anymore and went to seek medical help. After doing a lot of tests ruling out physical causes like diabetes, which I am very glad I don't have (my lifestyle was very unhealthy), I was referred to a psychiatrist. I was diagnosed with adult ADD and after some trial and error we settled on lisdexamfetamine, along with some other drugs. I'd love to say that the medicine solved all my problems immediately, but that's not how it works. What did happen, almost immediately after I started taking lisdexamfetamine, is that all the strategies I had tried over time for dealing with procrastination actually started working. I could effectively start doing my to-do lists or working those first 10-minutes and then not stopping, I had the energy to cook healthier food and exercise. I can now fall asleep almost immediately after laying down, waking up is easier and I could easily take a nap during the day (despite the stimulant) and wake up refreshed. My doctor suggested mindfulness exercises and meditation could help, so I started again and found that I could actually do the 10 to 20 minutes of calm, collected thinking and resting.

    This got a bit longer than I planned, but the tl:dr is that none of the techniques worked for me until I got medical help. The medicine didn't provide a magic pill that solved all my problems like some people expect, but it did give me ability to use the tools I already knew about in order to solve my problems and improve my well-being.

    I am quite thankful that my doctor explained to me that the medicine wouldn't work by itself and that getting better is a process, and for working with me throughout. As I result I've been feeling better about myself than I ever remember feeling. I do regret not going to a doctor earlier, but in the past I was convinced I could power through, that I was one of those people that "work better under pressure" (when the truth was that under pressure was the only time I could get any work done at all), which combined with the fact that I come from a culture with a distrust of mental health professionals, I don't think anything could have convinced me to get help earlier. In effect, I procrastinated getting help.

    I'm not trying to say that taking medicine is right for everyone, and I'm fully convinced a lot of people can get through their procrastination by applying existing techniques like mindfulness/meditation or other coping strategies, maybe with help from other people. But my own experience has changed my view on seeking help with mental health and taking medicine, and if procrastination is interfering with your life and health, maybe do look into going to a doctor. My experience taught me that knowing how to solve a problem does not mean being able to apply the solution.

  4946. Study finds that mindfulness is associated with reduced procrastination 2019-07-01 11:13:40 baby
    I’ve noticed that too. But the hard part is to not procrastinate meditation itself. It’s still a chicken and egg problem.

  4947. Study finds that mindfulness is associated with reduced procrastination 2019-07-01 16:22:11 L_226
    I have done sessions on Focusmate [0] every day for about 3 weeks so far. I personally do other work, but a lot of people I match with use the sessions to meditate. I've found it to be a surprisingly effective anti-procrastination tool.

    [0] - https://www.focusmate.com

  4948. Study finds that mindfulness is associated with reduced procrastination 2019-07-01 19:08:39 marapuru
    At the start of this year, I got a subscription. I got through it for a few months and then stopped using it again.

    Now I procrastinate picking it up again.

  4949. Study finds that mindfulness is associated with reduced procrastination 2019-07-01 23:55:48 novaleaf
    I don't know about needing to be non-judgemental to be mindful. I tend to curse myself out (repeatedly) at self-infractions and it seems to help.

    Though i recently noticed that explaining my problems to others seems to help the most. Somehow just the act of of it makes me more capable of avoiding these procrastination activities.

  4950. Study finds that mindfulness is associated with reduced procrastination 2019-07-02 00:20:26 cr0sh
    I believe I am fairly "mindful" - but I am also a huge procrastinator, especially on tasks I don't really want to do. Maybe I'm not as mindful as I think?

    What's also interesting is that - for certain of these tasks - once I get involved in them I tend to find some pleasure in doing them. Usually things involving maintenance or repair of my home environment, or my automobile. But both are tasks that I will usually procrastinate on, or just pay for someone else to do it (especially if it's during the summertime; depending on the task, heatstroke here in Phoenix is a definite possibility for me).

    It would be interesting to take both of these tests, just to see where I would place on them. Hopefully this thread may have some tips on how to stop or reduce my procrastination tendency, something I've had all my life and has probably limited my potential at times.

  4951. The rise of remote working will continue 2019-07-02 01:52:27 stronglikedan
    I wish I was more productive working from home. I mean, I am, in the sense that I get more chores done than I do when I work from the office, since I seem to procrastinate by doing anything but actual work related tasks.

  4952. Ask HN: How do you retain motivation/knowledge over different projects/fields? 2019-07-02 22:19:15 davidscolgan
    For me, being a solopreneur is the ultimate challenge. Can you arrange your life in such a way to be able to juggle all of the balls you specified? I've been struggling with the same questions lately as someone doing part time freelance to fund ambitions of building a product.

    I recently read the book The E-Myth, which identified for me a serious problem I overlooked for a long time: A programmer is a technician who is an expert in a craft, along with writers, designers, etc. One day the technician is overcome by an "entrepreneurial seizure" and declares "I do all the work around here anyway, I could totally run a business better than my boss." And so the technician goes into business and runs themselves into the ground because they didn't realize there are actually three roles necessary for a business to work:

    1. The Entrepreneur, who sets the vision 2. The Manager, who organizes 3. The Technician, who does the implementation

    The E-Myth argues that the technician is actually the least important of the three, and even should eventually be replaced with employees if you actually want to run a business. As someone who wants to be a solopreneur and stay that way, my hope is that it's possible to still be the technician, as long as you can actually balance the other two roles.

    As someone with ADHD-like tendencies, I've recently realized that my life has been in relative chaos for years working for myself. There were no standard operating procedures since I wanted "freedom" to work how I wanted, but that's meant effectiveness is directly tied to my mood at the time. I neglected the Manager's role.

    I've also come to see that having a clear "why" for doing what I'm doing is vitally important at least for me. This is the role of the Entrepreneur. Otherwise I'll just sit thrashing about with various web frameworks and coding standards, forgetting that building a product people want is why I'm here.

    Working to balance my technician time with manager time and entrepreneur time has been really helpful for motivation. Procrastination for me seems to come from being unclear about what I need to do next, and "build product" is not a good todo list item.

    As far as forgetting, Sebastian Marshall wrote a piece called "Background Ops": https://medium.com/the-strategic-review/background-ops-1-str.... He makes the observation that otherwise intelligent people will just stop doing things that are good for them for no real reason. The E-Myth agrees with him here that as much as possible should be put on autopilot so you can use your limited willpower for creative purposes instead of deciding what to eat for breakfast today.

    I've been mulling on the idea that freedom is not the ability to do whatever you want to all the time, but rather the ability to decide what rules you will impose on yourself. I can use my creative energy to say "I have determined that I do my best work in the morning, so I will wake up at 6am" and then I'll make my lizard brain wake up at 6am whether it wants to or not in the moment. The lizard brain often will just go with whatever is in front of it if it can just get started!

    Hopefully this is useful, I'd love to know more about the specifics of what you've tried and what's worked and hasn't. Great question! I'd also be happy to chat more over email.

  4953. Ask HN: How do you retain motivation/knowledge over different projects/fields? 2019-07-03 02:42:27 tsar_nikolai
    David, thank you so much for writing such an extensive answer.

    It's very interesting to explicitly define those three main roles and applying them to your own work. I am with you on procrastination (and a lack of motivation in general) originating from a lack of clarity (or fear).

    I think I have implicitly applied the same differentiation by splitting up my time and work into different projects / categories and explicitly defining the roles I am fulfilling as described in OP. I often have stretches of the "now I'm getting my work/life back on track!" feeling where I try to setup the organisational systems.

      e.g.
  - Commenting and documenting code as I write it, so that I can get back to it later without any problems.
  - Creating sales and administration procedures.
  - Writing down the most important words from my vision on a sticky note and stick it on my laptop screen.
  - Create daily reflections on my work.
  - Write important notes to my journal 
  - etc. etc.
    This takes time. All basic things that should be as clearly defined, turned into processes, and automated as much as possible. This then goes well for a couple of days/weeks/months.

    Then, one of two things happens:

    1. Overall, the manager role seems to be the one that is the first to fail when -one way or another- the unavoidable shit hits the fan. This does not even necessarily have to be a bad thing (e.g. sometimes it happens over spending a weekend 'winding down' with friends or family), but most of the time it is (e.g. a freelance project deadline taking up 100% of time and resources, an unfortunate health event in the family, a financial setback from an expensive but necessary item breaking or a client not paying).

    For some reason, returning or recovering from such an (un)expected event that causes me to lose focus, makes me lose the sight on processes that were clear before. Trying to put it in your term; the manager is confused and loses clarity, as a result the technician does not know what to do and the entrepreneur starts doubting his existence.

    And then it's back to square one.

    2. As you continue to work on different projects/fields, technology moves forwards. And inadvertently, what happens when you spend 5-10% of your time in a field where 1m+ people spend most of their time, is that technology moves faster than me. I decide what processes should be, defined them, and applied them once or twice in a project. What happens next is either, I come across this great new technology that causes me to want to forget what I know and apply the greatest newest thing, or I start wondering "did I make the best choice?", that causes me to re-evaluate my current process.

      (Or I have been procrastinating the decision of a certain system so long that I eventually just pick one under time pressure. 
  And as I go along the implementation I start to regret it, but it's too late and I tell myself:
  "okay we're going to finish this project in this matter, but next time I REALLY have to make an informed decision!"
  and, of course, the next project it goes exactly the same way...)
    And then it's back to square one...

    I have now decided that this is not sustainable (duh) and I want to know how others tackle this problem (as I cannot imagine I would be the only one), and get new insights and/or build the skills and/or tools I need to solve this problem in a sustainable manner.

    I hope this provides a little context on what lead me to ask the question!

  4954. Ask HN: What are you working on? 2019-07-05 15:33:11 wiseleo
    When not procrastinating...

    * Doing some IT work through field service platforms like Fieldnation. About to start writing some software to auto-bid on some preferred assignments while I sleep. ;) This is a more involved task than you might think because it involves parsing free-form text and data mining email notifications. These sites have an annoying habit of not notifying when an offer is declined. Many projects post a ton of boilerplate with some relevant text in the middle. It also has to figure out if the city is close enough to other assignments so I don't wind up driving 30+ miles. * Working on my main software project, but really not. * Working on a new project related to helping people work on their cars.

    It feels like I am level capped at an RPG. I need to raise my programming skill, which I want to do right, so I want to raise my math skill.

  4955. Aussie ISP gets eye-watering IPv4 bill, shifts to IPv6 2019-07-05 15:45:01 Fnoord
    That seems like security through obscurity.

    I have other hopes to get IoT more secure. Open source firmware, for starters. Support contracts where you don't buy the hardware but buy a working (and insecure isn't working) device.

    The problem with IPv6 is that it is a chicken-egg problem. Those who get CGNAT plus native IPv6 are part of the unfortunate bunch who are not using native IPv4 (and therefore miss out on certain IPv4-only services). Meanwhile, the IPv4-only services are causing issues for CGNAT. The logical conclusion is that everyone who currently offers IPv4-only should (and should've been) focusing on adopting native IPv6 dual stack. The continuous procrastination, out of greed and egocentric thinking, is what caused the current situation in the first place.

    My ISP tried to shove CGNAT with native IPv6 through my throat. My modem was unstable. BitTorrent didn't work well anymore. I could not use services over LTE anymore (my LTE provider, actually same provider as my cable, used IPv4-only back then; don't know now). I relied on that to work. So they gave me what I had before: IPv4 only. Why not dual stack first?

  4956. Expecting programmers to problem solve for 8 hours is stupid 2019-07-05 23:36:47 sake
    Distractions are not really my problem, it's mental exhaustion. If anything I think I should probably have more breaks, when I'm at work I just work. I see majority of people procrastinating, reading news, social media or socializing with coworkers to take their mind off work from time to time.

    If you can work 8 hours straight with only a lunch break, I don't think you are doing very mentally intensive work.

  4957. So you think you know C? 2019-07-06 09:29:22 Sir_Cmpwn
    5/5 - but I came to Hacker News to procrastinate from the C parser I've been writing.

  4958. How much free time do you have? 2019-07-06 14:46:20 em-bee
    oh yes, burnout and depression, also procrastination can really eat up your time. and worst of all, you don't really know where the time is going. it just disappears.

  4959. Ask HN: How do you maintain balance between all the things you want to do? 2019-07-06 18:58:21 lm28469
    If you work full time You might not be able to manage all these things in a satisfactory way.

    First make sure you have sane foundations: enough sleep + exercise + proper diet.

    Then experiment and see what sticks. I find it easier to meditate right after I wake up and take a shower, I also manage to do 10-15 min of stretches/yoga.

    Reading is the perfect pre bed activity, dim the lights, make some tea, read until you're too tired to continue.

    I also found that some activities are just not a fit for me. Maybe you like the idea of, let's say, journaling, but in practice you don't like it = you procrastinate to avoid doing it. Focus on what you truly enjoy doing and build habits from here.

    > I'm kind of overwhelmed or I can't spend qualitative time in my relationship / don't have time to do other chores.

    It's also a matter of expectations, you can't do 10 things and excel in all of them. You can't watch all the new Netflix shows, meditate one hour a day, learn to be a professional guitar player, &c. while working full time and having a kid. Pick your battle(s).

  4960. Ask HN: How do you maintain balance between all the things you want to do? 2019-07-06 19:46:38 chris5745
    If you procrastinate because you feel overwhelmed, it may help to start with meditation and the bare essentials of the other items. That way you can work on aligning the part of your mind which seeks to accomplish these things (manager) with the part that actually does the work (laborer). You may find that the manager needs to lower its expectations while the laborer needs fewer tasks in order to do a good job at the tasks it is given.

    Anecdotally, I’ve found that intrinsic motivation is more effective than extrinsic motivation. If you’re trying to keep up with someone else, question or examine that.

  4961. Ask HN: How do you maintain balance between all the things you want to do? 2019-07-06 20:07:51 david-gpu
    Ask yourself why on the one hand you are "trying to do" those things, and yet at the same time you find excuses to procrastinate. Are these things you truly want to do, or things you believe you "should" be doing? In other words, are these passions or duties?

    If they are self-imposed duties, ask yourself how important are they, truly. What would happen if you didn't do each of them? How bad would it be? If it's really bad, that's your motivation for doing them, and next time you want to procrastinate you can remind yourself of that reason.

  4962. Ask HN: How do you maintain balance between all the things you want to do? 2019-07-06 21:08:28 kd5bjo
    I’ve found that tending to my emotional state will make the important stuff get done, because I naturally focus on it. Procrastination, for me, is usually either a mismatch between what my conscious and subconscious believe to be important or fear of doing something unfamiliar.

  4963. Ask HN: How do you maintain balance between all the things you want to do? 2019-07-06 23:05:59 fkdo
    I use to be hyper motivated and constantly working towards a goal. I worked full time, went to graduate school, ran a small business (~10k annual revenue), maintained an exercise routine (3hr/week) and did household chores like cleaning and cooking(4hr/week). My total scheduled time towards those goals every week was 110-120 hours and I slept 5-6 hours every night. I remember scheduling one meal a week to eat while not commuting/working and one night a month to see friends.

    I burnt out. At first the lesson I learned was that I can only do so many things, and I always get a full night sleep and I never let my schedule get near that full. Now, five years after I stopped that lifestyle I find that the things I do spend time on I do even better. I'm performing at a higher level. I think it's because I'm less stressed because I'm not constantly pushing myself. I work when it's time to work and play when it's time to play.

    You cannot do all of the things that you want to do. You're time is finite. Your energy and passion are finite. Accept this. Internalize this. My advice is to pick one or two things you really care about. Devote all your passion there, but don't devote all of your time. You need some time to relax and you need some unstructured time. If you don't give yourself unstructured time you'll take it by procrastination.

  4964. Raising the American Weakling (2017) 2019-07-07 02:09:45 ulisesrmzroche
    Yeah, lol, I’m like procrastinating on all the stuff people are flexing on here.

    Let’s not make it seem like mowing a lawn or doing some minor handiwork around the house is more than a little kids job.

  4965. Goodbye Aberration: Physicist Solves 2,000-Year-Old Optical Problem 2019-07-07 05:05:18 csomar
    Brain was doing the computing so that he can eat more Nutella bread. Bummer, he just left the Nutella bread and went programming the solution.

    Maybe it should have convinced him to procrastinate instead. Now, I know where all my inefficiency is coming from.

  4966. Ask HN: What are good YouTube channels on motivation? 2019-07-07 12:58:49 smt88
    Watching a YouTube channel about motivation sounds like a procrastination tactic, not a solution to low motivation...

  4967. Could This Be the End of Frankincense? 2019-07-07 21:20:11 delinka
    Can we get an option to filter stories from certain domains? I can't read stories from nytimes.com, so I'd just rather not have them listed on the front page.

    "You've read your three this month." "You're in private mode, please log in."

    Hey, I'm just curious why someone thought this was worthy of HN. (Maybe submitters could start commenting on their own posts about the content of their link?) If you don't let me read the article, that's OK - you've saved me from procrastination.

  4968. iMessage: Malformed Message Bricks iPhone 2019-07-08 18:47:30 acdha
    http://gs.statcounter.com/ios-version-market-share/mobile-ta... shows 12.3 at around 50%, so the question for me would be what percentage of that long tail would upgrade within any reasonable extension period. Public news might actually accelerate that since it gives people a reason not to procrastinate hitting that button.

  4969. It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done 2019-07-08 23:56:14 dgreensp
    I’m reminded of a similar online NY Times piece I read, years ago, I think by a woman named Gladys, which was entirely about the harrowing process of procrastinating on, and eventually writing, the piece. All I could think was, poor Gladys. Not, here’s an authority on procrastination. Heck, I’m more of an authority on procrastination, based on my high school and college years alone, not even counting that I’ve overcome it in my 30s.

    There is so much better advice than “just get it done” (isn’t that like telling a commitment-phobe, nobody’s perfect, so just pick someone and commit? I’m sure someone, somewhere, has given themselves that advice and taken it, with positive results, but it’s kind of questionable advice in general).

    For example, “meditate” is good advice. Let the anxiety come up; allow it to flow, and leave; see it without judging it or trying to figure it out. Even realizing your problem with starting is an anxiety problem, and feeling the feeling in your body, is a huge step. Maybe noting some beliefs that contribute to it. “Journal” is good advice. Practice writing in your voice, and the act of writing. Journal about your anxiety. Learn to enjoy your writing. Practice will improve the quality. Discounting quality will not help.

    Stories about how I procrastinated on something for a month and then late one night managed to forget my usual thought patterns for an hour and do it? I have hundreds of those from my past. There is some information in the thoughts I had when finally doing it (“I get it! You just do it!”), but not relative to the information you will get from going inwards and asking how to change your own patterns of feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.

  4970. It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done 2019-07-09 00:58:21 SPBesui
    There's a good TED talk on procrastination which might interest you: https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_mas...

  4971. It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done 2019-07-09 00:58:50 gowld
    That's barely a restatement of the question "how do I stop procrastinating", not an answer.

    Advice like "find a way to start, and finishing will come later" is at least a substantial step forward. (But still incomplete, as it doesn't solve the problems of distraction, meandering, prioritization, time management, perfectionism)

  4972. It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done 2019-07-09 02:07:31 dgreensp
    I love that guy, but I think the best use of this level of awareness into the mechanics of your procrastination — the elaborate story — is to realize it’s just a story. The moment you really realize this, the story changes.

  4973. It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done 2019-07-09 02:16:04 darkmighty
    There are several kinds of procrastination, so it's impossible to generalize.

    Some projects require very large time commitment to get right, reworking several times, etc. Some others reach a diminishing return stage very quickly and continued effort is wasted. You definitely shouldn't just take whatever you have in front of you and just rush it until it's barely workable.

    The critical skill is to be able to judge without anxiety and with some precision how much additional time is going to improve the outcome, and what is the rough global value (to you) of this improvement. Some projects have long ramps of effort and refinement, some are just not worth the time and can arrive at a good enough stage very quickly.

    I think the best advice I could come up with is that if you're having this sort of problem, recognize it, try to deal with the anxiety and get a perspective on the risks vs benefits, and improve. If possible find an environment/hobby /side occupation where you have to make a ton of such decisions to get a lot of practice. College/personal projects tend to be pretty sparse and give a lot of room for failure and delaying I guess.

    For me it's been a very slow, progressive realization that I'll never get things I wanted done by just leaving them to an arbitrary later date, or obsessing too much over details. In nothing vs something, something wins.

  4974. It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done 2019-07-09 02:28:51 temporaryvector
    >I can't say which way causality flows

    In my personal experience, it flows both ways. It's a positive feedback loop. When I'm productive, I'm happier, even if being productive means meditating or practicing mindfulness (as long as the dread that comes with "wasting time" is not there, all good), and when I'm happier, I can be more productive. The hard part, for me, was getting the loop started, pushing the rock down the mountain, so to say, getting past the first hurdles of procrastination. What helped me was getting professional help and medicine, but I was a pretty bad case.

    An analogy I have used to describe this to family before was an internal combustion engine. Normally, once you get an engine started and keep supplying it with fuel, it'll keep generating everything else it needs to keep running. But it still needs a battery and a starter motor to get it running in the first place. Sometimes just getting it running is good enough, and most engines start with one crank, but other times, something is not quite right and it takes a couple of cranks and maybe some starter fluid to get it started. Even once you get it started, maybe the alternator is faulty, so until you get that fixed, you have to keep supplying electricity some other way to keep it running.

  4975. It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done 2019-07-09 03:03:19 koolba
    I don’t think communication has anything to do with it. It’s just shame.

    I tested this out once with a friend who complained about procrastination issues. I suggested he have his wife sit by him while working from home. His wife has no programming background whatsoever but she knows that browsing Reddit or YouTube isn’t work. Apparently he got a lot done that day.

    Free Startup Idea: Supply “interns” to shadow employees to create the same effect. Logo could be a Peter Pan style comic of a programmer and his silhouette.

  4976. It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done 2019-07-09 03:09:32 SubiculumCode
    This is a difficult decision in science. If you are too perfectionist you will fail. If you are not, then your contributions can be bullshit. However, there is no such thing as a perfect experiment (at least in cognitive sciences), so we depend on converging evidence, so pretending it can be perfect is procrastination.

  4977. It’s Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done 2019-07-09 05:39:28 TeMPOraL
    It's not a restatement of the question; it's an algorithm.

    The problem with procrastination is that it has so many different potential causes and idiosyncrasies that a random advice from the Internet or self-help literature isn't likely to work long-term (once the novelty factor wears off, which for me is usually around a week). The solution really seems to be to keep trying all of the advice, one after another, in combinations and with personal modifications, until something sticks and you start to do better.

    For me personally, what seems to have stuck is, in order:

    - Doing a "mind dump" whenever I'm overwhelmed by anxiety or confused by what to do. It usually calms me down and clears my head.

    - Doing work in pomodoros to reduce the starting anxiety; setting a modest goal of pomodoros to achieve any given work day to consider it a win.

    - Most recently, a perverted form of Unschedule. I tried Unschedule and started failing after just 3 days, but I twisted it into the following form: I don't schedule/unschedule anything at all, but just reward myself with 1 point of "guilt-free play" per each 2 work pomodoros completed. I get to spend the points on whatever hobby project or videogame or other fun activity I want, without feeling any guilt or obligation or pressure to do something else. The ratio is somewhat arbitrary (like, e.g., 1 point = 1 flight in Kerbal Space Program), but that doesn't matter. What I realized is that I started to like raking in GFP points, and then spending them in bursts on some projects I previously kept in a "someday/maybe" list. I find myself thinking, "hey, let's work some more, gotta earn GFP points to burn in a couple of days on $project". It seems that I like accumulating them just in anticipation of spending them.

  4978. Ask HN: Should I part ways with my cofounder? 2019-07-09 23:42:55 nao360
    TL;DR - sleep properly, eat properly, exercise regularly, and learn to live in the present.

    I learned to calm my mind by reading, and following the exercises in a series of books called, 'The power of now', and 'Practicing the power of now' by Eckhart Tolle. Some people have difficulty in picking up these books, particularly 'The power of now', because it was featured on Opera. Or because it's a'new age' title. If this is you (dear reader): get over yourself, and this book will change your life. It's a tiny book that you can read, cover to cover, in a few hours. It's available in many languages, and also as an audio book.

    These books will teach you how to calm your mind by learning to be 'present'. You'll learn how to observe your mind -- how to accept the thoughts, obsessions, preoccupations about things that happened in the past; how to accept the worry, dread, and anxiety about things that may happen in the future. Past and future are important, but none truly affect you like the present. Right now, right this very moment as you read what I've typed, you are actually free of these burdens.

    Learning to be present was foundational to everything else I've done to break out of the cycle. I became self-aware in a way that made it impossible to reconcile the various negative character traits I had developed from early adolescence. I stopped procrastinating not because I developed some super-human will power or laser-like focus, but because I learned to spot the moment my mind wandered away from the task at hand. I stopped waiting for things to be 'perfect' before starting something because, in the present, nothing is perfect or imperfect -- it just is what it is and that's that. I stopped waiting for things to fall into my lap (to get lucky) because, for the first time that I can remember, things started happening because I made them happen.

    We'll call this Phase 1, from about 2012 to 2016. The problem is that over time I became complacent. I got used to the new 'normal'. I started using 'being present' as a band-aid, a life-hack that I could apply whenever I noticed I was going back to my old ways. I was also increasingly feeling tired and lacking mental and physical stamina; finding it difficult to stay sharp and focused in meetings, particularly in the afternoon. It got to the point where all those old problems -- procrastination, depression, anxiety -- were becoming more and more difficult to manage simply by being present. The problem: I was overweight, and likely suffering the effects of early type 2 diabetes; the effects of drinking soda with every meal, eating four or five meals a day, and limiting my physical exertions to getting on and off the bus to work.

    This is when I discovered intermittent fasting, the Keto diet and regular exercise.

    Phase 2, from about 2016 to the present. I bought a bicycle and started cycling to and from work (12 miles round trip). I stopped eating breakfast and lunch. I stopped drinking soda, and eating sweets. I reduced my carb intake to 5g a day. Within about a week, I had lost 3% weight. In the first month, I lost 8%. After three months, I was 15% lighter. I started sleeping better -- a LOT better -- and waking up effortlessly in the morning. I had never been a 'morning person', and used to set four or five alarms (and a dozen snoozes); now I don't even set an alarm. I can't help waking up early and feeling completely refreshed! I started wearing clothes that fit well -- this is an underrated, AMAZING feeling! At work, I stopped feeling tired at all; in fact, I was (and still am, almost to the annoyance of my colleagues) sharp and focused throughout the day.

    > Did I do anything in particular to break out of the cycle?

    If you're looking to begin, I would start all of the above at the same time. It's going to take a few months to really get going, but you'll feel the benefits almost immediately (certainly within the first week). After about a year, you will hardly recognise the person you used to be!

    Good luck, and godspeed.

  4979. It's Never Too Late to Be Successful and Happy 2019-07-10 02:03:39 boca
    What has helped me is talking in person to someone who is close. Realized that sometimes I just need to vent my inner confusion and at other times I need them to shake me because I am living too much in my head.

    Over time, I realized that this situation occurs because there's something that I must/need to do but I am procrastinating. That surfaces as anxiety and my mind ends up "translating" it into a spiritual discussion - all in my head - with questions like "is this life", "is this all"?

    Expectations of self can be hard and confusing.

  4980. I Can’t Stop Winning 2019-07-10 21:53:26 davidscolgan
    One thing that helped me recently - I realized that my work is not a reflection on my value as a human being.

    I grew up in a semistrict religious context, and regardless of whether it was intended, I internalized that everything I did was a reflection of my righteousness and value as a human and even to a degree my worthiness to be accepted into heaven.

    I've since stopped practicing that kind of religion, but I realized I have still been treating say my freelance work as a _moral_ question - if I do it right, I am good, if I mess up, or take too long, or there are bugs, my emotions still process that as if my eternal soul is at stake. Leading to, procrastination, stress, and withdrawing from communication because I'm afraid of punishment.

    I had some really good conversations with clients lately, just being upfront about my fears of blowing timelines and admitting to withdrawing, and they were very understanding and to hear them acknowledge that this stuff is hard and that I was doing a good job was massively motivating.

    Hopefully most people don't have this issue, but if you do, it was very relieving to even just realize this is what I was doing, and am working with a really good therapist and a business coach to process and work through it, and I'm already seeing a lot less stress as a result.

  4981. Breaching a “carbon threshold” could lead to mass extinction 2019-07-10 23:50:57 hombre_fatal
    Reminds me of the quote: "Procrastination only ensures that circumstance makes your decisions for you."

  4982. Show HN: Stein – Use Google Sheets as a No-Setup Database 2019-07-13 17:06:31 kristiandupont
    I have contemplated using google sheets as storage for parts of the data that I have. It would allow me to procrastinate on many admin UI things, and it would even feel much more transparent. It just feels too fragile somehow, which isn't really a rational assessment. Does anyone have experience with it in a SAAS context?

  4983. Ask HN: How do you personally learn? 2019-07-15 03:40:29 combatentropy
    I learn best when I make something as soon as possible, however basic. Then after a while I go back, find the best book on the subject I can find, and read it from start to finish.

    For example: JavaScript. I procrastinated learning JavaScript for years. It was intimidating. Then jQuery came along, which is not exactly JavaScript, but it was easier to pick up. After several months, I was ready for the next step. I bought David Flanagan's book, JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, and just started reading it from the beginning. I don't know if I actually finished it, because the second half is reference, but I at least skimmed that part.

    Copying snippets from the Internet will get you started but leave your knowledge patchy and even wrong. Eventually you need to read an organized and thorough tour. For example, I would never have understood JavaScript's prototypes by copying snippets.

    On the other hand, if I had tried to start on page 1 of a thick book, without hands-on experience, it would have been equally unfruitful. It would have been too abstract. With some practice under my belt, the advice in the book had something to adhere to, in my mind.

  4984. “10x engineers”: Stereotypes and research 2019-07-15 06:21:33 projektfu
    I personally think high individuality productivity is related to

    1. an ability to avoid screwing around, procrastinating, implementing things that are fun rather than things that are useful.

    2. innate ability to avoid yak shaving or dump it on others.

  4985. Being Bored Is Good 2019-07-15 23:06:38 topologie
    “Few understand that procrastination is our natural defense, letting things take care of themselves and exercise their antifragility; it results from some ecological or naturalistic wisdom, and is not always bad -- at an existential level, it is my body rebelling against its entrapment. It is my soul fighting the Procrustean bed of modernity.”

    ― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

  4986. Show HN: LessPhone – A minimal Android launcher to reduce phone use 2019-07-17 09:32:22 siphon22
    I don't know if it's the same, but KISS launcher has been amazing for me. I have only like 4 or 5 utility stuff on the small favorites bar and everything else is hidden. If I truly need something that isn't in my favorites, I need to actively think about it and search for it by swiping up on the homescreen to open the KISS search bar. I no longer open my phone and see a cluttered mess and procrastinate by opening random stuff that seems appealing at the time.

  4987. Ask HN: How does one overcome solo founder loneliness? 2019-07-20 22:29:19 muzani
    "useful distraction" can easily turn into a procrastination pit though, especially when it's a strong negative emotion like loneliness.

  4988. Imba – Create complex web apps with ease 2019-07-22 07:51:57 peteforde
    Are we allowed to make thinly veiled gestures towards the 2020 Democratic candidate lineup? I don't want to get hell-banned.

    Honestly, after React, Vue, Angular, Ember, Stimulus, Meteor and Backbone, how does anyone truly have time to learn learn about Svelte, Marko, Knockout, Aurelia, Riot, Omi, Foundation, Catberry, Composer, Yo-Yo, Vomit, Mithril, Polymer, Sencha... I'm not making a single one of these up. I know that I'm forgetting at least a half-dozen.

    Note: try Stimulus!

    Seriously though, if you're following every development on more than two JS frameworks, you are procrastinating, lying to yourself and not achieving your full human potential.

  4989. Do-Nothing Scripts 2019-07-22 20:37:58 alexanderdmitri
    Reminds me of the time I decided to try kanban to start moving forward on tasks I procrastinate on or have trouble starting.

    Of course, to make sure it was efficient enough to be helpful it had to be a configurable terminal app I could quickly update and review via cli and abundant io flags/options.

    It also made sense to write it in Scheme because I had been thinking I wanted to try Lisp earlier that day.

    Fast-forward three weeks and I find myself hopelessly trying to refactor this strangely ugly-beautiful ascii-art themed effort tracker run by an abomination of labrynthine "functional" source and realize (maybe just finally admit to myself) it was all an excuse to avoid all that shit I'd convinced myself I was going to acheive by kanbanning in the first place.

    The best part is I regret nothing!

  4990. Airlines are finally fixing the middle seat 2019-07-22 21:59:35 mikeash
    Sounds like your best option is to stop procrastinating so badly that you have to get work done in one of the least work-friendly environments out there.

  4991. Ask HN: What people skills do you wish you learned earlier in your career? 2019-07-23 13:04:45 anonymous5133
    Soft skills - how to deal with anxiety, stress and how to stop procrastinating such that is causes problems down the road.

  4992. Show HN: Tiger Boss – Real Humans Get You Get Stuff Done 2019-07-24 17:59:43 PanosXan
    Nice job keeping up the fight against procrastination.

  4993. Ask HN: Apps, websites, or social media: which work best for side projects? 2019-07-26 16:39:41 nexuist
    It depends on what you are looking for. Of course you want money, but if this is a side project, how much time can you put in?

    Time dictates results, not the other way around. If you want something that's cheap on time, mobile is not the way to go. Even the most basic "Hello World" app still takes at least several hours to get past the App Store publishing step (figuring out a good description, keywords, screenshots, icons, etc...) And even then, you'll still probably need to make a website for it so you can point users to your privacy policy and online support.

    Websites are far easier. All you have to do is nab a domain and upload some HTML to a provider. I can make a website from scratch and have it running on Netlify in probably ten minutes. Backend is where everything gets complicated, but depending on your concept, it may not take that long. Not to mention that your app most likely also needs a backend so, might as well bite the bullet. I made https://bongocat.io in a single weekend while procrastinating studying for midterms. I don't think I could have gotten a better turnaround even if I used the magic cross-platform mobile alternatives (Flutter, React Native). I've used both at this point and while they are a dozen times better than the native Swift/Java experience, at the end of the day it still just takes time to take the idea from your head and put it on a screen.

    But if you want money, it's clear mobile is where it's at. Especially gaming. The only sustainable way to make money off a website is to build some kind of SaaS platform or...sell ads. It's really, really hard to build a user base large enough to the point where you can begin to sustain yourself off of subscriptions or single time purchases. You almost always have to offer some other software that piggybacks off the website (think game clients, business tools, etc) for users to justify spending money. On the other hand, IAPs are a way of life in the App Store, and monthly subscriptions are gaining traction ever so quickly. I can lock in to a $59.99/mo subscription in under one minute from an iOS app - if I had to do that on a website, I'd have to trust my credit card information with the site owner and I most likely would not do that. Even if I did trust them, I'd still need to put in my card, and that's a big hassle too.

    So, if you want an easy side hustle where your goal is to get attention first and then maybe profit later: site

    If you want big money and are willing to put in the effort for a few months before anything comes from it: mobile

    If you want a serious business: you have to do both. There's no way around it, every mobile-first business needs a site to have a presence to people who don't have the app yet. Otherwise you let your entire business's brand rely on App Store algorithms to show it high up in rankings.

    If you think you're good enough for social media: I mean, just do it already. The effort you have to put in to think of a good Tweet is minuscule compared to publishing an app. Podcasts, Instagram photography pages, funny Twitter accounts - it's never been easier to put yourself out there and get positive feedback. You definitely need an audience before you can even think of making more than a few cents off your fame, but the money is there, and if you just stay consistent and post often, you can probably make it. But that's the important part: stay consistent and post often. I'm of the opinion that the content you post doesn't really matter, as long as it engages your followers. So don't worry about being perfect from the get go. Just start.

  4994. Fast Software, the Best Software 2019-07-27 23:12:17 jccalhoun
    I totally relate. I am a college prof and most of my grading is online. I have noticed myself procrastinating while grading because after grading each paper it takes a few seconds for the web page to load the next student's assignment. In those 20 seconds or so I will switch tabs and get distracted. So grading that should take less than an hour ends up taking 3-4 hours.

  4995. The Problem of Mindfulness 2019-07-28 11:58:35 prebrov
    Mediation is exercise for the mind. One exercises the body to better control their bodily functions, like movements, breathing, heartbeat, etc. One meditates to develop better control of their thinking processes.

    Mindfulness, concentration - these are just techniques to help you focus for extended periods of time, and make better decisions.

    You can meditate to understand your way to escape samsara, to build a better software architecture, or to kill all humans.

    Given enough practice, your mind functions in a permanently altered state, becoming more alert, focused, open, and elastic whenever you’re awake (though lucid dreaming is another potential kick some people chase). Now you can set goals, prioritise better, procrastinate less, rather than just cruising along. This gives you significant competitive edge over the rest of the population.

    That’s what all the fuss is about.

    Meditation can be exhausting, especially at the beginning - steering your thoughts is hard. So, importance of sleep is often one of the first things people very clearly realise when they try to consciously control their thought process.

  4996. Burnout 2019-07-29 03:07:37 kirstenbirgit
    Something I think that has helped me avoid burnout is to stop at 16.00 (or whenever your regular working day ends) and leave work, physically and mentally.

    On the weekends, I don't think about work ever (unless something happens to the system and I'm on-call, which very rarely happens. I realise I'm lucky in this regard.)

    I just can't work more than 6-7 hours on a given day. Working more won't make me more productive, on the other hand I'll waste more time on reddit since I can't stay focused and I can "catch up" my pre-noon procrastination later.

    A part of this, of course, is to insist on not working outside work hours from the beginning of joining a company. In doing so, your colleagues will learn to know not to disturb you outside of work unless it's really necessary.

    I feel like that's the mistake the author of this article is committing: not doing anything else than work. Everyone needs time off to recoup no matter what business they're in.

  4997. Emacs Users Are Like Terry Pratchett’s Igors 2019-07-29 11:47:51 andrewstuart
    It sounds, from this description, like Lisp is similar to Perl - "There's more than one way to do it". i.e. extremely flexible, and the outcome is a lack of coherence, such that my Lisp code might look substantially different from yours, making it a nightmare to maintain.

    I'm pretty sure that if I found myself doing development on my editor then this would be a form of procrastination because modifying the editor certainly ain't developing product related functionality. For me it's more effective to ignore or work around failings in my editor, or better yet, invest some time in trying to learn in more depth the functionality that is already present in my IDE that might approximately meet my need.

  4998. The art of interrupting software engineers 2019-07-30 13:23:01 jasim
    The Art of Micromanaging Software Engineers!

    Here's the thing: as programmers we sometimes have a bad day. Sometimes a bad week or two. Sometimes there is unresolved ambiguity in how something needs to be done that we tend to procrastinate on it until it becomes clear. When you're working through an agile/XP backlog - a never-ending backlog mind you - you're expected to produce at a consistent cadence, not much different from laying brick after brick, but unlike construction, this one is an infinite pool of uninteresting work.

    This is common in consulting work. Agile and XP were created by consultants to create predictability in delivery. It makes sense for that context - clients are often far removed from the consultants, there is no intrinsic alignment between their incentives, and being external people there is always an information gap in what is best for the company and whether the contractors are making actual progress.

    So you need a way to smoothen this out. Transparency, constant communication, a structured process, consistent cadence, measurable metrics, and most importantly number of hours with your bum on the seat.

    When consulting companies start out, there is a distinct messaging on their websites: "we don't want to be just consultants, we want to be an integral part of your team" or suchlike. See, we also want meaningful work, we want to truly participate in your business. But as consulting companies mature they realize this is not a feasible approach at scale. While external messaging might not change, internally they realize the business is about selling X number of hours in a year per consultant, with a percentage of their earnings as your profit margin. To make this work, you need Agile/XP. You need to bring Taylorism back into the world of programming. That is just the systemic incentive of this sort of business. Companies that fail to realize this and change accordingly (the idealists) go out of business very fast. Others thrive.

    Within this system it is still possible to have meaningful work for developers (I've worked in such companies, and I've enjoyed it). But if you have a micro-managing PM like in this article, then better run for the hills or you'll find out hating IT and fully burnt out in a few years.

  4999. Google reveals fistful of flaws in Apple's iMessage app 2019-07-31 04:01:33 jakelazaroff
    FWIW, I am much less likely to procrastinate on an update if I know it fixes a vulnerability.

  5000. Ask HN: What's Your Default Browser? 2019-08-01 16:54:18 666lumberjack
    Currently Opera, because of inertia and laziness. Originally I started using it for the free VPN and internet hipsteryness of using a less popular browser (much as I'd like to pretend otherwise, the latter is something my brain finds very appealing). I have a proper VPN setup now, but I've procrastinated switching to Firefox because of the general inconvenience associated with any browser switch and the need to for a minor rewrite on a browser extension I wrote/use.

  5001. Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009) 2019-08-03 03:38:04 Stratoscope
    > You'll never do that update right?

    I resemble that remark! Yes, procrastinator here. ;-)

    The thing is, his code is plenty good for now. Even if I never make that update, the code works and people are getting useful results from it. There's nothing overly complicated about it either; I or anyone else could pick it up and easily make any simplifications and improvements whenever needed.

    And this developer is working on far more important things for the company, mostly in C++. I made the call that it would be better for our business to let him get back to that, since any improvements to the JavaScript code style on this internal tool simply weren't that urgent.

    But I do appreciate the reminder and I will get to that update soon!

  5002. Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems (2015) 2019-08-05 21:18:24 mellosouls
    For anybody reading the comments here without reading the article, and assuming some toxic-management-friendly nudge to burn-out style working (as implied by some of the comments); it's actually a very useful and thought-provoking self-help essay that may help as a tool against procrastination.

  5003. Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems (2015) 2019-08-06 00:00:02 rconti
    This post wasn't written for people who don't suffer from procrastination and perfectionism. As I sit here being anxious about what to work on next, holding onto tasks that aren't quite done YET, nothing could feel more like a breath of fresh air than this blog post.

  5004. How I finally won my name from domain resellers after nine years of waiting 2019-08-07 00:23:26 sireat
    Curious on what experienced domain buyers would suggest in my case.

    After many years of procrastination I decided to see how much would it cost to purchase myfirstname.com (about 5k people in the world have this name).

    Turns out it is impossible to even enquire on purchasing this domain.

    The domain is not being used.

    Archive.org shows 3 hits in the last 15 years, all minimal parked pages, last hit being 2013.

    Domain registration is private. My whois-fu is rather weak.

    So what can I do to contact the owner?

    Some big name reseller is just sitting on this name for 10+ years and waiting for who knows what.

  5005. It’s worth spending weeks on research before wasting years on a hopeless project 2019-08-07 02:46:26 zarkov99
    Yes, but sometimes research is just safe procrastination and more can be learned, more quickly, by jumping into the unknown and trying to figure it out.

  5006. It’s worth spending weeks on research before wasting years on a hopeless project 2019-08-07 02:56:10 mannykannot
    If the fact that something could be done badly is a reason for not doing it, nothing would be done - that's the ultimate procrastination.

  5007. Speaking to yourself in the third person makes you wiser 2019-08-12 02:57:54 madaxe_again
    I’m not convinced that it is bad - at least, in moderation.

    I am pathologically lazy. I, like a certain student wizard, will go to extreme lengths and effort to be able to be lazy.

    I am a procrastinator. I am often afraid to act.

    I have a tool, however, and it’s the drill sergeant in my head. He’s an absolute sonofabitch, and on so many occasions has been the voice that has told me to step forward, to pick up the phone, to pull myself together and go face the music. He’s an amped-up version of a drill sergeant I had, crossbred with the gunnery sergeant from FMJ.

    He did, however, push me too damn far, and I found myself slowly falling apart from exhaustion and stress - so, like you suggest, I manifested another voice - this one more conciliatory, kinder, more understanding.

    I made the second voice the drill sergeant’s wife - when he’s being a total dick, she intervenes, and importantly, he respects her opinion, even if I side with him - I have internalised a lot of his vim and vigour - but if he backs down, I’ll take it - if he doesn’t, then I’ll do as he damn well says.

    So, now I’m the puppet of two self-invented alters, but I find they manage me pretty well. When I was building the business, just having sergeant dickhead was perfect - when I started running into the ground, I evolved my pantheon.

    Anyway. I’m probably as mad as a bag of cats.

    I wonder what proportion of people who do this had absent or disengaged parents.

  5008. Ask HN: Configuration Management for Personal Computer? 2019-08-12 06:21:56 dorfsmay
    I went through this, again, a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18300976

    tl;dr: bash scripts lasts longer than everything else, are easy to maintain, and anybody with basic IT skills can make sense of them. Keep in mind that in an enterprise context, the build system is used and therefore maintained, constantly, and that there's typically a team doing it. At a personal/family level, it's typically you using it, and modifying it if needed, once every other year or so, with literally nobody looking at it in between. Chances are you've done and are doing enough bash that you rarely look up its syntax. When was the last time you used terraform/ansible?

    Lindy Effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect) says bash will outlive all other recent solution.

    Full story I went through this phases:

    - full crazy pxe install + Debian/Ubuntu preseed, etc... But still needed some bash scripts. It required a lot of work from one OS version to the next. There were enough changes between versions of the pxe server that I had to revisit its config every time!

    - I eventually bought a laptop for one of my kid that didn't support pxe. I installed the base OS with a USB key, and realised how easy it was, and that it was significantly less painful to install half a dozen laptops this way, than fighting my pxe server. My install became USB OS install + well, my good old bash scripts!

    - I got involved with ansible very early on and decided to solve both world hunger and global warming with it, but more importantly, my laptop installs. I spent many hours on this. Got it fully automated, and felt great!

    - one of my kids' laptop got destroyed, buy a new one, install from USB stick, fumble to install ansible, and realise that ansible has by now changed significantly and my scripts need a lot of work. This is in the middle of the school year, while super busy at work, I just don't have time to deal with this. But, there's a great news: I still have my old bash scripts, and guess what, they still work.

    - last upgrade: I went from from my old dozen of bash scripts to this: https://github.com/dorfsmay/laptop-setup-ubuntu-18.04

    It is slow-ish, especially some of the manual steps, but not painful enough to make me procrastinate that I delay an upgrade by six months. More significant: I sat down with my kids and get them to upgrade their laptops (which helped a lot to fix my documentation)!

    PS: I have zero local files, everything is either on a cloud drive (pCloud), or on github if I want to keep history/share it (eg: my dot files).

  5009. Social exclusion fuels extremism in young men 2019-08-13 03:40:15 johnchristopher
    Thanks for your comment, I plan to chew a bit on it while commuting.

    Reminds me of that cartoon about procrastination https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrasti... (the mind has a captain and a monkey).

  5010. Show HN: Procrastinating? Take a 5min break without leaving your computer 2019-08-13 20:03:46 deanstag
    I love the idea! Gives us the false promise of Procrastination and gives us a failure to train our brains slowly against Procrastination. Brilliant!

    Jokes aside. Excited to see what it will show when it is back up :)

  5011. Show HN: Procrastinating? Take a 5min break without leaving your computer 2019-08-13 20:26:13 swalsh
    I noticed a lot of my procrastination came from habit. Opening Reddit, or Hacker News was the path to a surge of dopamine. Where as getting down to work didn't have the same surge. So I tried to just block "bad sites". That helped, but I still found myself occasionally opening a new tab, than out of habbit going to one of the sites. What I needed to do was remove the root cause. So I wrote this script (https://gist.github.com/steven-p-walsh/9b7c0ffd2fe4817d67459...) it's like a shock-collar for social media.

  5012. Show HN: Procrastinating? Take a 5min break without leaving your computer 2019-08-13 20:33:55 self_awareness
    Whoops, it failed. -- My procrastination succeeded though

  5013. Show HN: Procrastinating? Take a 5min break without leaving your computer 2019-08-13 22:00:18 donkeyd
    This is exactly what happens to me. If I do work that I enjoy, I don't procrastinate. I don't even mind doing the shitty stuff if most of the work is fun, but when I'm not enjoying the majority of my work, I procrastinate... Which is what I'm doing right now.

  5014. Show HN: Procrastinating? Take a 5min break without leaving your computer 2019-08-13 22:14:38 neotokio
    Optimal time for breaks vary. You should figure it out yourself. When it comes to productivity it's 52 minutes work time vs 17 minutes break[1]. There is also 'pomodoro technique'[2]. There is also kind of interesting work (which can be extended to topic of procrastination) done by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [3], namely - idea of 'Flow'.

    From personal perspective I would say to also look at how do you eat, sleep, spend your free time and take any substances (alcohol, drugs, cigarettes...). Even if this is not an ongoing thing but occasional it has tremendous effect on ability to concentrate for long periods of time. Excessive carbon based (or worse, sugar based) diet can make you hyperactive (same as excessive fat based diet can make you dull btw). Again, that's a personal perspective.

    As last resort, there are some supplements which could help you with concentration, not pharmaceuticals, there are a lot of natural nootropics[4] you can get anywhere.

    Bottom line, if you waste time on Internet - just stop. There is no other way. Blocking websites can help, but in the end, you need to choose not to visit those. It's addiction as any other. And don't treat this post as advice, everybody needs to figure it out himself.

    [1]https://lifehacker.com/52-minute-work-17-minute-break-is-the... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi [4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nootropic#Herbs

  5015. Social exclusion fuels extremism in young men 2019-08-13 22:16:56 yummypaint
    "3) The Have-To-Dos may happen, but not the Want-To-Dos. Even if the procrastinator is in the type of career where the Panic Monster is regularly present and he’s able to be fulfilled at work, the other things in life that are important to him—getting in shape, cooking elaborate meals, learning to play the guitar, writing a book, reading, or even making a bold career switch—never happen because the Panic Monster doesn’t usually get involved with those things. Undertakings like those expand our experiences, make our lives richer, and bring us a lot of happiness—and for most procrastinators, they get left in the dust."

    This is too real

  5016. Major Technological Changes Are Coming More Slowly Than They Once Did 2019-08-13 23:53:36 makerofspoons
    That really depends- if we get on war footing to address the problem like we confronted WW2 perhaps. If we procrastinate hunger, water scarcity, and conflict have a tendency to be destructive to knowledge.

  5017. Show HN: Procrastinating? Take a 5min break without leaving your computer 2019-08-14 00:50:52 mettamage
    I have that too. I have a small suggestion. It doesn't solve the problem, but it makes it slightly more bearable.

    Find the least damaging form of procrastination and use that. For me these are:

    1. Reading fiction books (currently reading "The Humans")

    2. Exercise

    3. Hacker News

    In that order (I'm protecting myself against YouTube which is way worse than HN).

  5018. Show HN: Yack – Community Browser for Hacker News, Reddit, YouTube and More 2019-08-14 01:21:24 1023bytes
    That makes my procrastination so efficient you can't even call it procrastinating

  5019. Show HN: Yack – Community Browser for Hacker News, Reddit, YouTube and More 2019-08-14 03:58:42 ghostbrainalpha
    I like it. All of my procrastination sites in one app so my browser history doesn't get cluttered by non work stuff.

    One of my biggest fears is when I start to type in a URL during a screen share with a client who's website is REGEX.COM, and they will see my auto fill trying to take us to Reddit.com/SEXY_TOE_PARTY

  5020. Yield Curves Invert in U.S., U.K 2019-08-14 23:24:27 criddell
    I missed the big downturn twelve years ago because I procrastinated. My 401k money was in some fund that was no longer being offered, so the money was transferred into a currency fund (I don't recall what it was). I kept meaning to move it to an index fund, but never got around to it and then the market dropped. A year later I did the transfer and as a result I did very well.

    I haven't touched it since but now with yield curve warnings popping up, I'm starting to think I should.

  5021. Anxiety Looks Different in Men 2019-08-15 23:07:59 dkarl
    I originally glossed over your comment pretty quickly, but the more I think about it, the more I realize this is true in practice for me as well. I know what it feels like to feel joy or sadness, but for me anxiety is more often a collection of things I observe about myself than something I feel. This is partly because my anxiety is so often coupled with depression, and partly because anxiety pushes your brain into a fight/freeze/flee trichotomy, and the "freeze" and "flee" responses can feel pretty emotionally blank when the fear is distant or ill-defined (like a deadline or social rejection as opposed to a grizzly bear.)

    Again depending on the fight/freeze/flee response, my anxiety can manifest as stiffness in my body, requiring special concentration to force myself to do normal things, or it can manifest as a jitteriness, like when you drive a car with a lot more power than you're used to and every time you touch the accelerator it surges forward in an alarming way. It can be accompanied by elevated body temperature, even sweating.

    The way I differentiate the paralyzing kind of anxiety from depression is that depression paralyzes with lack of energy and an inability to believe that anything you do will come out well. Anxiety paralyzes with stiffness and a blank mind that is too twitchy to make plans.

    Paralysis is the flight/freeze response to anxiety, but it also has a fight response, where I single-mindedly execute the next thing to do. I can get a lot of things done this way, and sometimes this is the only thing that snaps me out of procrastination, but sometimes the "clear next step" I'm unthinkingly executing is not the right thing. And when it becomes unclear what the next thing is, I'm back to being paralyzed.

    Likewise, in social situations, anxiety can make me talk a lot (for me) and become much more open and engaging, and it can be a great thing to get me over the hump to knowing someone well, but more often it just makes my mind blank and makes me so slow to say the things I want to say that the moment passes. From the point of view of my social anxiety, I guess that's a win, preventing me from engaging more than superficially.

  5022. Google Employee Writes Memo About ‘The Burden of Being Black at Google’ 2019-08-17 01:38:24 tryitnow
    I honestly don't understand your comment.

    It's pretty clear that the author is bringing these issues up precisely because other employees at Google did not heed the advice you give: "“Over the last 5 years I’ve heard co-workers spew hateful words about immigrants, boast unabashedly about gentrifying neighborhoods, mockingly imitate people who speak different languages, reject candidates of color without evidence because of ‘fit’ and so much more,”"

    In other words, there were many Googlers who did in fact discuss these issues at work.

    Sure, it's nice to say, "I would prefer...", but honestly, we would all prefer things to be different than they are. But they're not.

    And this is where I really don't understand your comment. Your comment seems to totally ignore the very issue that is explicitly mentioned sub-headline of the article: Apparently, some people at Google not only felt free to discuss these issues in the work place, they did so in a profoundly unprofessional manner thereby creating a hostile workplace.

    So stating that "I would prefer...not discussing these things..." doesn't really address the issue that these things were in fact discussed.

    That's sort of like saying, "I would really prefer it if my code always worked the way I wanted it to..."

    or.."I'd really prefer not to procrastinate so much on HN..."

    Don't we all? Alas, that's not the world we live in. The crux of life is what do we do when things happen that we prefer would not happen?

    Controversial issues were discussed at work, the author of the memo highlighted the problem and gave solutions, some of which I agree with, some of which I don't, but I think it's important to move beyond just stating our preferences.

  5023. Show HN: Procrastinating? Take a 5min break without leaving your computer 2019-08-18 22:07:47 lunchables
    If you are a procrastinator, I can't recommend The Now Habit enough. It's totally changed my life.

  5024. Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible 2019-08-19 22:10:28 thomas
    Serious question: Is anything less productive than reading other people's productivity thoughts? It's a combination of procrastination and finding out what works for someone who is presumably more productive than you (ie: guilt).

  5025. Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible 2019-08-19 22:16:55 vadansky
    I was procrastinating and read about the Pomedoro technique and it worked pretty well for me. Sometimes you need a trick I guess.

  5026. Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible 2019-08-19 22:33:41 CPLX
    This is actually a pretty good list. Obviously it's personal and specific to him but it gives food for thought.

    With that said I've read a million posts like this and the only thing that's ever made me feel like I had genuinely changed my perspective and understood what was happening more clearly was reading the Getting Things Done book.

    The key insight for me is that so much of procrastination results from a lack of clarity about what exactly should be done next, and keeping a mental load of trying to keep track of everything. Separating the three basic concepts of planning, making decisions, and actually doing the work, into discrete sessions, has been a life changer.

    I still fuck off constantly and hate myself for procrastination from time to time, obviously, but using the core GTD framework and returning to it when I stray has really helped.

  5027. Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible 2019-08-19 22:36:25 freediver
    The simplest productivity hack is finding passion. I never seen a windsurfer procrastinate. If you are truly enjoying your work and can't wait to do it, there is nothing going to stop you.

  5028. Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible 2019-08-19 22:48:30 Scarblac
    I need just one thing: a way to get rid of a bad habit that doesn't involve changing the circumstances in which I have that habit.

    I'm a Web developer with a mindless tic-like habit of opening sites like Reddit and HN all the time. Even a second after closing it. I can't very well get rid of Web browsers.

    Edit: ohh, but the tip of going to a place where I've never procrastinated before and sitting down to think what I actually want to do next, that doesn't involve a Web browser. Nice.

  5029. Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible 2019-08-19 22:49:43 frlnc_throwaway
    I highly recommend Jean Moroney's blog. She digs deep into the psychology behind productivity and goal-setting. I found many unique insights in her articles. Thanks to her writing I've come to believe that procrastination often stems from deeper emotional issues or an unacknowledged clash of priorities (for example, when you try to force yourself to do something that you don't, in fact, want to do, the deeper issue is that you haven't resolved the clash between your short-time desires and your long-term goals).

    E.g:

    https://www.thinkingdirections.com/dont-motivate-yourself-le...

    https://www.thinkingdirections.com/three-steps-to-following-...

    General list here:

    https://www.thinkingdirections.com/category/time-management/

  5030. Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible 2019-08-19 22:54:39 CPLX
    Find someone who has to windsurf for a living and you'll find one who procrastinates.

  5031. Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible 2019-08-19 22:55:09 vinceguidry
    Personal productivity deals in the hoary space between defining who you are as a person and figuring out the best way to move reality towards the vision.

    If you're not treating subconscious input with as much seriousness as humanly possible, (i.e. you're procrastinating for a good reason, one that probably relates to why you think this thing you're procrastinating doing is the best way to move the needle on that vision) then you will forever be living in a hell of your own making.

    Making yourself is an artistic pursuit and should be treated with every bit as much care and nurturing as making a painting.

  5032. Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible 2019-08-19 22:58:17 taurath
    Number 1 and 2 are.... incredibly validating for me, in a way that I'm not sure I could believe when talking about procrastination.

  5033. Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible 2019-08-19 23:05:13 Scarblac
    That explains a lot. I'm 45, and while all of this is very recognizable, it's also very incompatible with my life.

    But the reasons for procrastinating, those are spot on.

  5034. Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible 2019-08-19 23:06:00 freediver
    If you know one that procrastinates ask them if they still have passion for it?

  5035. Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible 2019-08-19 23:10:50 vadansky
    Edit: ohh, but the tip of going to a place where I've never procrastinated before and sitting down to think what I actually want to do next, that doesn't involve a Web browser. Nice.

    That is a great idea, but what do you call it when I do not want to do it because I start thinking about all the awesome things I could have done in my life if I started doing that earlier?

  5036. Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible 2019-08-19 23:12:34 Reedx
    If they are windsurfing for someone else, probably...

    But it doesn't seem like top pro athletes and olympians procrastinate. They are intrinsically driven.

  5037. Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible 2019-08-19 23:26:42 mrieck
    More and more research is showing procrastination to be an emotion management problem. [1]

    That's why it's been really helpful for me to start keeping a journal. It helps increase self-awareness and helps when I get off-track on my side projects. I can can realign my goals and ease back into being productive again.

    [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90357248/procrastination-is-an-e...

  5038. Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible 2019-08-19 23:43:36 ghostbrainalpha
    Have you guys ever read the "War of Art"? It comes from a place that understands Procrastination as an emotional problem, and has a fully developed solution for dealing with it in that way.

    At the end it gets REALLY artsy and religious in a way that made me very uncomfortable. But its still the most helpful book I've ever read on productivity.

  5039. Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible 2019-08-20 00:06:31 quickthrower2
    Some selection bias there. People who procrastinate at stuff don’t become olympians, I’d guess.

  5040. Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible 2019-08-20 00:10:30 suprfnk
    > But it doesn't seem like top pro athletes and olympians procrastinate.

    I don't think you can become a top pro athlete or olympian if you're not the fraction of a fraction of the world's population with immense intrinsic motivation, passion, ambition, and drive -- so this seems like survivorship bias.

  5041. Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible 2019-08-20 00:47:58 stared
    The worst productivity advice I am hearing over and over.

    I ensure you that there are many passionate writers, graphic designers and... programmers, who procrastinate a lot.

    One of a big finding for me was that it is NOT nearly as much if I like something or not[1]. Is about knowing the next step and maintaining focus (especially with keeping the time "now" not "not now"). (However, I speak from ADHD perspective; maybe for non-ADHD people passion is sufficient.)

    [1] For a stark comparison: I procrastinate on open-ended side-projects I love (sometimes for years), but when there is some accounting issue I solve it ASAP.

  5042. Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible 2019-08-20 02:21:18 debt
    I think the biggest realization I've ever had is that things take time away. The sensation of procrastination happens when you feel the "thing you need to do" should take some smaller constrained amount of time, usually in days or weeks or sometimes months.

    But if you can stomach that the thing may take years or even a decade, you'd feel much less like you were procrastinating.

    In addition, if you assume that the thing will always be done piecemeal, here and there, or when you can remember to do it say like cleaning a room or organizing a thing, then that can also alleviate the sensation of procrastination.

    The sensation tends to occur when you maintain a false belief that the things you need to get done should take hours or days instead of weeks or years.

  5043. Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible 2019-08-20 02:39:50 toxik
    I have this observation as well. Many lifestyle ideologies fall apart like this in practice, I think. The one I’ve found work for me the best is Eckart Tolle’s “The Power of Now.” If you forgive its aloofness and smirkiness, I really do believe finding a sense of joy in doing what you do, even mundane things, can really help your mood and stave off procrastination.

  5044. Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible 2019-08-20 02:55:10 Draiken
    I often get surprised how deep we got hooked into the system. We tell ourselves unless we're doing something (no matter how useless that is) we're worthless. Everything becomes a different kind of procrastination.

    We feel productive creating yet another CRUD app, idle game or advertisement optimization tool that ultimately does nothing for anyone but the capitalists on the top of the chain. Only to feel bad about doing anything that doesn't generate profit to someone.

    It saddens me that I don't see a way out of this hole. The system has won and everyone either follows it willingly or is forced to by society.

    If only I could be like the OP who seems to live happily in this productivity cycle without gazing into the abyss that is the meaninglessness of it all.

  5045. Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible 2019-08-20 03:28:45 avip
    If you actually spent your entire days gardening, you'd soon feel an irresistible urge to bake a working docker-compose file. You'll procrastinate and dream about YAML files instead of paying attention to your plants.

    This is why some advanced communities have a weekly/monthly duty cycle where people switch activities.

  5046. Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible 2019-08-20 05:42:08 jodrellblank
    Then play guitar for the rest of your life. It might be a short life.

    "Productivity" techniques are inherently flawed by the way they put capitalist "productivity" at the top of the most important things in life. Check the blogpost where the author describes playing a computer game as "life down the drain" and how their productivity tips have to tightly control that.

    If your life is to be commercially productive and own a multi-hundred-thousand-dollar house and get paid for docker-compose, then you can't switch to playing the guitar and have the same life.

    But if you consider your deathbed and think a life of fighting Docker was a total waste, what was the point? The "resolution" to the discrepancy doesn't come from a productivity technique, it comes from a enlightenment; losing the desires to control particular life outcomes and desiring "good" outcomes and fearing "bad" outcomes.

    Go far enough down that and you'll unpack the fears and anxieties about not being good enough, not being perfect, making mistakes, being inferior, etc. which cause procrastination in the first place, and be more able to work on Docker without feeling bad. And more able to turn away from it and play guitar without the anxiety of "what if my boss says I wasn't productive enough".

  5047. Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible 2019-08-20 15:54:29 Scarblac
    I do that too! But then of course there also the moments when I am really procrastinating and I remove them again... but that's a dumb excuse as it's much easier to solve than the subconscious problem, thanks for reminding me.

  5048. Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible 2019-08-20 20:11:00 captainbland
    That's more than likely because the moment you do start procrastinating as a professional wind surfer, like in any sport, you immediately get ousted by every hopeful who's willing to put in the hours to get access to an extremely limited pool of things that pay in that field.

  5049. Why do synthetic chemicals seem more toxic than natural ones? 2019-08-21 07:29:21 anewguy9000
    this article is disingenuous, esp for the hn crowd. it explains the difference between causality and causation (ok kids), and talks about how we need to understand probability, without actually talking about probability. utlimately though the problem with the article is that its vacuous: the question it purports to address, 'why do synthetic chemicals seem more toxic'? is not actually addressed, other than to say that "toxicity depends on dose" (a comprehensive comparison is impossible). so a casual reading of it implies the assumption is wrong (ie, natural chemicals are equally or more toxic. it does remind us that the top toxic substances are natural). sure, but is that useful? on a supercial level, yes even the word "chemical" sounds "toxic" to a layperson. add another "sciency" word like "synthetic" on top (vs the beautiful imagery a word like "nature-al" evokes) and of course the synthetic "seems more toxic". i summed it up in two sentences. yes, the layperson would be wrong. but why an article? the significant reality to those with some education on the subject, which was alluded to, but not addressed, has to do with doses. where are most humans actually exposed to toxins? via agriculture? so is there a difference between organic and non organic practises? this is left to the reader. there is, but its not what you think. i cant help but think there is an ulterior motive for publishing this scientific-sounding article in a business magazine, or perhaps the student who wrote it is just.. well.. procrastinating on a paper.

  5050. The Most Dangerous Writing App 2019-08-22 19:25:47 vaillancourtmax
    I like the "no bullshit, just do it" approach. Great for preventing analysis paralysis, and generally curbing off procrastination.

  5051. Productivity and the Workweek 2019-08-22 19:34:11 probablybroken
    I find I tend to write bugs after around 7 hour's work, and during the first four, I can throw myself at a new task in a way that at the end of the day I'd be utterly incapable. I think shorter office days would benefit most mature developers. ( I say mature here because I've worked with people who only manage to get things done through many hours extended foot dragging and procrastination. If you can focus, short days can be beneficial. )

  5052. Productivity and the Workweek (2000) 2019-08-22 23:58:55 twodave
    My work/life balance has changed a lot in the last 5 or so years. I've done all of the above (in chronological order):

    FTE 100% in the office FTE 100% remote (same company, living in the same city) FT Contract on-site plus consulting FT Contract on-site minus consulting FTE 100% remote (HQ 4-5 hour drive away, quarterly-ish visits) FTE 100% on-site FTE* "wherever" plus 10-15 hours/wk consulting

    Right now I'm a FTE at one place where I probably _actually_ spend about 35 hours/week working and then I am on monthly retainer for my old employer (through my consulting corp).

    I wake up before 6 most mornings and either put in a few consulting hours or go do crossfit. Then 9-noonish I try and be productive at my full-time job. I usually a long lunch/run errands after that, and then a couple more hours for the full-time job in the afternoon. I'm usually done working by 4:30 or 5pm and then it's time to either cook or go to the in-laws or order food depending on how I feel (I'm the cook and we're a family of 6).

    I have found the variety of doing multiple jobs keeps me much more productive in general, because I can basically work on what I want whenever I'm motivated to. The end of the month/sprint can be rough sometimes if I have procrastinated (or just not felt motivated at one job or the other), but every month when I get a check in the mail I feel freshly motivated haha.

  5053. Levenshtein Distance 2019-08-23 09:02:33 Cogito
    Historically, at least to my eyes, this seems to derive from how mathematics has been cited by mathematicians.

    Before a thing is called 'Levenshtein Distance' it will be used by someone saying 'calculating distance between these two strings the way Levenshtein did in [0]'. Eventually, when enough people do this, or someone gets particularly bold, the method will instead be given its name (occasionally, the original author will be so bold, but that seems rare). If I were looking to procrastinate more than I already am I would go find some examples of this, examples that unfortunately don't spring immediately to mind though I'm sure I remember their shadows.

    As to why they are not named for what they represent - it's only after the thing has been invented, tested, and named that we realise that it is the correct or best way to do a thing. Often there are multiple ways of doing things (this is Levenshteins edit distance) and so they are named to distinguish them from each other. The survivor is not renamed just because the others are forgotten.

    [0] not a real reference

  5054. Productivity and the Workweek (2000) 2019-08-23 11:02:20 tidenly
    I think they're on the money with the dedicating a few hours a day to study/productivity outside of work - I just can't imagine doing it for the same thing I'm already getting paid for anymore. If they're really into programming/dev studies though it's totally fine but it feels like a recipe for burnout.

    A lot of people do feel bad if they waste their days just looking at Youtube or social media all night after work - I think a lot of people feel the guilt after the fact but never work to execute on it because its so easy to procrastinate/skip small commitments of studying.

    When I was at a shitty job I hated that meant most of that study time went to side hustles and learning the local language to build my CV, but now that I'm free and in a good job it mostly goes toward trying out completely unconnected things like Piano or Chinese - as long as it's productive I'm fine. Playing around in new things that interest you half for fun is the best approach to not burn out I think.

  5055. I Visited 49 Sites. Hundreds of Trackers Followed Me 2019-08-23 22:44:41 AlanSE
    I think that most people, if offered $17/year for Facebook, would quit. I don't think the value to the user is that great. That's not a problem for the company as it exists today. It feels like a flawed assumption that users have a committed interest in sites where they share content. People have a passing interest, and different parts on their brain conflict. Their lizard brain might want cat gifs, while the planning part of their brain knows they should stop procrastinating and get to work. The planning part is the one who gets out the credit card. The last thing that Facebook or ANY content-oriented site is to deal with the responsible parent, as opposed to the distracted child. Having the parent make the decisions is better for us. Much of the internet depends on that never happening.

  5056. Google Doesn’t Want Staff Debating Politics at Work Anymore 2019-08-24 06:10:57 elefanten
    I love that suggestion and I've borderline fantasized about initiatives like that. I always wonder why debate-focused activities aren't more popular. A few obstacles usually come to mind:

    1) Top-down, it's hard to convince people of the value of this who don't already see the value. It's hard to attach a KPI to it, hard to attribute changes. Or at least, from some POVs.

    2) It's hard to be sure there will be participation. It's easy to pop off via text when you're procrastinating or got (self-)baited into a conversation. Scheduling discussion time / debate club or whatever feels like a chore.

    3) It takes work. Like, to actually have a good debate about something takes time to think, engage, research, reflect and iterate the conversation. Not to mention the willingness. As above, it's easier to engage in junk food discourse than it is to challenge yourself, patiently tune your message over time or advance a dialectic.

    But that said, those all feel like workable problems. I'm not sure if I'm missing something or if this is one of those cases where nobody has mustered enough will and attention to give it a real shot.

  5057. Speeding Up Our Build Pipelines 2019-08-26 07:28:02 jillesvangurp
    I'm usually really obsessed by build speeds because I know how long build times can suck the life out of a team. Slow builds cause a lot of negative behavior and frustration. People sit on their hands waiting for builds to finish; many times per day. It breaks their flow and leads to procrastination. If your build takes half an hour, it's a blocker for doing CI or CD because it's not really continuous if you need to take 30 minutes breaks every time you commit something.

    Here are a few tricks I use.

    - Use a fast build server. This sounds obvious but people try to cut cost for the wrong reasons. CPU matters when you are running a build. This is the reason I never liked travis CI because you could not pay them to give you faster servers; only to give you more servers and they used quite slow instances. When your laptop outperforms your CI server, something is deeply wrong.

    - Run your CI/CD tooling in the same data center that your production and staging environments live in and avoid long network delays to move e.g. docker containers or other dependencies around the planet. Amazon is great for this as it has local mirrors for a lot of things that you probably need (e.g. ubuntu and red hat mirrors).

    - Use build tools that do things concurrently. If you have multiple CPU cores and all but one of them are idling, that's lost time.

    - Run tests in parallel. If you do this right, you can max out most of your CPU while your tests are running

    - Learn to test asynchronously and avoid using sleep or other stop gap solutions where your tests is basically waiting for something else to catch up while blocking a thread for many seconds where it does absolutely nothing useful whatsoever. People set timeouts conservatively so most of that time is wasted. Consider polling instead.

    - Avoid expensive cleanups in your integration test. I've seen completely trivial database applications take twenty minutes to run a few integration tests because somebody decided it was a good idea to rebuild the database schema in between tests. If your tests are dropping and recreating tables tables, you are going to increase your build time by many seconds for every test you add.

    - Randomize test data to avoid tests interacting with each other. So, never re-use the same database ids or other identifiers and avoid having magical names. This helps you skip deleting data in between tests and can save a lot of time. Also, your real world system is likely to have more than 1 user and the point of integration tests is also finding issues related to broken assumptions related to people doing things at the same time.

    - Dockerize your builds and use docker layers to your advantage. E.g. dependency resolving is only needed if the file that lists the dependencies actually changed. If you are merging pull requests, you can avoid double work because right after merge the branches are identical and the docker will be able to make use of that.

    For reference, I have a kotlin project that builds and compiles in about 3 minutes on my laptop. This includes running a over 500 API integration tests running against Elasticsearch (running as an ephemeral docker container). None of the tests delete data (unless that is what we are testing). Our schema initializes just once.

    A cold Docker build for this project on our CI server can take 15 minutes because it just takes that long to download remote docker layers, bootstrap all the stuff we need, download dependencies etc. However, most of our builds don't run cold and typically from commit to finished deploy takes around 6 minutes and it jumps straight into compiling and running tests. Our master branch deploys to a staging environment. When we merge master to our production branch to update production, the docker images start deploying almost immediately because it already built most of the layers it needs for the master branch and the branches are at this point identical. So a typical warm production push would jump straight to pushing out artifacts and be done in 2 minutes.

  5058. Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer 2019-08-26 18:47:00 TeMPOraL
    Pair programming is an anti-procrastination trick that works by setting two people in a situation where both are afraid to lose face by trying to goof off. This works, but builds up anxiety.

  5059. Apple’s Watch Is Smarter, but My Casio Keeps Getting the Job Done 2019-08-27 15:32:55 Obsnold
    I think this is why I like my dumb watch. I already spend too much time on my phone and checking the time on it just triggers further procrastination.

  5060. Time anxiety: is it too late? 2019-08-28 07:31:40 meowface
    People often find themselves entering cycles which they're not really happy about, though. They may become especially unhappy long after the fact when they reflect back on how they spent so much of their time. For example, someone may intend to work on a startup, but instead they spend a whole year basically smoking weed and watching Netflix every day, or whatever, with no startup and almost no work to show for it by year's end. They may feel quite bad and ashamed about how they spent their time during the past year.

    Not to say there aren't people who do truly want to do that and find that a good use of their time (like if they work a stressful job and only want to relax and zone out during their free time). But a lot of people find themselves endlessly procrastinating or doing things which brings them very little joy and yet which they can't seem to break away from. Same goes for drug addiction, and any other addiction, really.

  5061. Show HN: Iamfeelinganxious.com – Fast and easy stress relief 2019-08-29 02:26:19 crookshanked
    Thanks for sharing this. I enjoyed the line of discussion regarding procrastination. Helped get my mind organized so reckon it worked... Couldn't access the play store link. Scrolling up/down wasn't as easy as I'd like.

  5062. Feds ordered Google location dragnet to solve Wisconsin bank robbery 2019-08-29 10:12:39 doodliego
    "If you do the crime, leave the phone behind."

    Criminals will adapt, they always do.

    Because this was a bank robbery, it's a Federal warrant which is harder for Google to fight or procrastinate on (if for some reason they chose to).

  5063. Ask HN: Looking back, what have you wasted lots of time on? 2019-08-31 04:57:10 tjansen
    * using public transport / not having drivers license: I got a driver's license only in my mid 30s and I really regret not doing it earlier. So many beautiful days wasted at home, lost touch with friends etc because getting out of town was too much trouble.

    * related to that: staying at home too often instead of finding a SO. While I am very happy today, sometimes I wish I'd have found my wife and I had my children earlier. And maybe more children.

    * procrastinating and eventually giving up on too many side projects. I have a history of starting awesome side projects and not finishing them for whatever reason, starting as a teenager. If I had finished even one of them, I may be able to live without a day job.

  5064. Tell HN: Thank you for not redesigning Hacker News 2019-09-02 10:45:47 joeevans1000
    Yes. I agree. HN speed and simplicity is probably a big reason it's one of the sites I go to first when procrastinating.

  5065. Ask HN: How do you handle logging? 2019-09-03 04:47:51 ElFitz
    I really didn't expect to get this many passionate opinions on the matter.

    It took me some time to... build up the courage to read through all of your answers, and you have been of tremendous help. I've learned quite a lot. Thank you very much! I deeply appreciate it!

    I'll steer clear of self-hosted ELK, for now, mostly because being the only backend, I can't really take the risk of holding the whole team back while getting it up and running or maintaining it.

    I'll look into Splunk, Sumo Logic, Sentry & a few others, while keeping in mind the more general guidelines that were laid down here.

    Also, thank you for the terminology! It's much easier to find the proper resources know that I know what to look for!

    Edit: I'll also take some time to answer to the different comments; but it really felt rude of me to be procrastinating while you all had taken the time to properly answer

  5066. Show HN: Simple tool to make a habit of exercising 2019-09-03 10:32:01 andrewstuart
    Having said that - I think it's a great business to make apps for this stuff and there is big money in it.

    The reason is simply because people don't want to take action. They want to procrastinate and avoid and find ways of almost exercising and there's absolutely no better way to do that than to delegate all your emotional energy on the subject to some sort of app.

    Apps to encourage you to exercise are awesome business - they just aren't a way to actually become an exercising person but who really cares about that.

  5067. Show HN: Simple tool to make a habit of exercising 2019-09-03 15:13:13 MperorM
    I started regularly excercising every day, after I realized I could use it as a means of procrastination.

    I can seriously recommend it. Go for a run, if you're finding yourself putting off something with the intention of working when you get back.

  5068. Show HN: Simple tool to make a habit of exercising 2019-09-05 00:38:18 oht
    Huh. Reading this made me realize I also use it to procrastinate. But I also find myself way more ready to be productive afterwards and some of my best thinking is done at the gym.

  5069. Whatever happened to Six Sigma? 2019-09-05 06:47:29 projektfu
    Even Deming said that you can be focused on eliminating defects and fail to keep the market share, fail to delight with your product development. "The most important figures for management of any organization are unknown and unknowable."

    A lot of times, management fads are a procrastinating activity for the organization. The real problem is they are lacking direction. Imagine Apple, circa 1998, going 6 Sigma instead of becoming product-focused. They would get more and more effective at producing a computer fewer people want to buy every month.

    Look at what Juran writes about the development of the Ford Taurus, the car that really pulled Ford out of a slump in the early 80s. How much of it is focused on preventing defects? No, it's about designing quality into the car, defining quality as the things that make the car something people want to buy over another car. Doors fitting tightly by having low variation in size is just one aspect, important but not enough.

    For Tesla, quality is a 200+ mile range, but also a bunch of other things, without which people wouldn't pay for the battery. I assume that Tesla has quality control but the stories of disorganization in the plant suggest that it's not running at a similar level to the Japanese plants, which also produce millions of cars people want to buy. Nevertheless, they are focused on what makes demand for the car.

  5070. Ask HN: Good Remote Work Literature? 2019-09-05 20:31:09 whsheet
    I agree but this might be already useful. The biggest challenge for most when they work from home is lacking social pressure leading to procrastination. When I read about Tandem's take on this, I thought that’s a smart, subtle solution. You could still game the system by just using your phone but still: Any cheating results in odd behavior on Tandem and probably to more discipline. Maybe I am wrong but I need just people who tried Tandem and share their experiences.

  5071. Ask HN: What are you creating now? 2019-09-06 22:13:54 krapp
    Apparently I'm writing an interface for Racket's DB functions in Arc because I'm procrastinating on actual productive things like learning Unity and Godot.

  5072. Sunsetting Python 2 2019-09-09 21:44:23 antoineMoPa
    This should have been done in 2010. People will procrastinate 12 years if you give them a 12 years deadline.

  5073. Swedish scientist advocates eating humans to combat climate change 2019-09-09 23:40:52 alistproducer2
    I put stuff like this up there with the "debate" over plastic straw bans: just fodder for industries to use in muddying the waters until the last minute.

    With climate change, it's clear we're past the point of no return, but we would still do well to ignore stuff like this which is self-indulgently provocative to no end. Just because disaster is baked in doesn't mean stuff like this needs to be pumped up - allowing for further procrastination and denial, when we could be trying to prepare for the fallout.

  5074. Sunsetting Python 2 2019-09-10 10:37:47 acdha
    If you think that’s true, you haven’t supported enough legacy C code. Yes, the core language hasn’t changed much - like Python - but the includes, libraries, operating system APIs, etc. have - and that’s before you learn how vague compatibility was for code written before sometime in the 90s. Similarly, I’ve seen large Java projects take years to upgrade while comparability issues are sorted out.

    In all cases, the real problem is technical debt management: rather than attacking people who gave you something for free, ask whether it’s possible that the experience has more to do with procrastinating on upgrades until many large changes have to be made at once with inadequate test automation.

  5075. Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up? 2019-09-11 02:53:33 gdubs
    The author of “Feeling Good”, Dr David Burns, who popularized cognitive behavioral therapy, believes we have motivation backwards. That in reality, motivation comes from taking action. To overcome procrastination, you commit to doing some ridiculously small task — e.g., launching your code editor. Typically this snowballs into doing meaningful work. The trick is to only mentally commit to a few minutes and most of the time you’ll far surpass that.

    But more generally, interesting side-projects are a good “saw sharpening” exercise. I’ve found that most of the valuable skills I’ve learned in life came from projects I was passionate about, and in turn those skills have benefited my career. Another side effect of these passion projects is that they leave me feeling energized and inspired, which has a spillover effect into my “work work”.

  5076. Ask HN: How do you keep your programming motivation up? 2019-09-11 02:54:21 halfjoking
    My hatred of the dayjob is what motivates me on side projects. (The goal is to make enough money to quit)

    I also find it useful to keep a journal. Recent research shows procrastination to be an emotional management problem.[1] If you can work through the reasons why you're feeling unmotivated, you'll be to turn things around.

    [1]https://www.fastcompany.com/90357248/procrastination-is-an-e...

  5077. Can genetics explain why some people thrive on less sleep? 2019-09-11 18:58:28 mping
    I do agree with you, whenever I meditate more often I sleep less. Also, I end up "gaining" time because I pay less attention to distractions/time wasters/procrastination.

    However, in my experience it takes years before you may comfortably spend all day meditating. I'm pretty sure most of meditators, teachers or otherwise, are not able to do this. It's extremely demanding, it is only boring if you don't focus properly.

    I've participated in retreats that start at 2h30AM and end at 00H00 every day, with 1h sits and 20m breaks in between (same routine over 3-7 weeks), and only a handful of people are able to follow this schedule. Even meditation "only" on a 9-5 schedule is hard.

  5078. Wunderlist founder wants to buy his app back from Microsoft 2019-09-11 23:57:19 satvikpendem
    Not to plug my own product here, but I'm working on a todo list + calendar app (https://getartemis.app) because I think I am the same way as you (even though I don't have diagnosed ADHD specifically) with regards to todo list apps. I want to know exactly what I'm doing at all times, as it's too easy to procrastinate with a todo list ("I can just do it later..."). Google Calendar doesn't have the same advantages of tracking even though it works well for knowing what to do when; it can't for example, track that you're working in a specific project with its own subtasks, as each event/task in GCal is discrete and has no semantic connection to another.

    Additonally, why can't I say, for example, that I want to work on a project for 10 hours a week, and my calendar automatically schedules it for me, to work on an hour and a half each day, based on some preferences like morning, afternoon, evening time periods? These are some of the things I want to address with my app.

  5079. Ask HN: R U OK? 2019-09-13 00:01:31 bick_nyers
    Kind of. I'm feeling a lot of pressure to perform, but I don't have much urgency (which usually helps me and my procrastinating self). I am in my last year as a Math Undergrad, studying for GRE/Putnam, am running a Game Development startup (only programmer of 4 people), and I do Computer Architecture research (I haven't spoken with my advisor for 3 weeks because I fell behind and felt embarrassed, I'm writing a paper, have all of the relevant data, but hitting a wall in the analysis since I have never formally learned Comp. Arch. in the first place. I have very little context and only surface level understanding). I know I can pass my classes, GRE, etc. by letting things fall by the wayside so that I have more time for other things, but I want to perform well at everything which feeds into an anxiety-driven analysis/planning/shifting gears/paralysis cycle. I've since realized that I only like doing 1 or 2 main things at once in my life, but since I'm not established/behind the curve yet, I feel a need to have a good GPA, good test scores, publications, etc., and I don't have forever to do it when it would best work for my happiness levels. I've been in better places, but also worse ones too.

  5080. Ask HN: Are you ok? 2019-09-13 04:06:03 aasasd
    Can't help noticing that you don't mention your own perception of purpose of the work in that list. Which is pretty obvious from the overall description anyway.

    Sounds like you could use some rotation of occupations until you find anything that's of interest to you. Intrinsic interest trumps external motivation every time, just ask a procrastinator.

    Personally I stumbled upon work that interests me purely by chance, only because the web was taking off back then. I don't even need to know I'm serving the humanity or building the future, just give me some scripting to fiddle with and I'll fiddle it into perfect shape. Have no idea how I'd function otherwise—would probably rot my brains off and drink myself to death as a janitor or something.

    In fact, I'm getting serious dread from the thought that I should be switching occupations for the reasons of both health and money, and because youngsters are mashing keyboards faster.

  5081. Greta Thunberg has done her science homework 2019-09-14 05:04:21 atoav
    Tbh I think the truth is somewhere in between and much more complicated than it is usally painted especially in the anglosphere (which has turned extremely tribal in the UK and US over the past decade).

    She apparently got her first contact with climate groups through a writing contest where she wrote on climate change/climate politics, so her motivation was prexisting. Whether they use her or she used them (or it was some kind of symbiosis or a cold blooded deal) would be hard to quantify objectively, especially if she has similar political goals than her, so I'd be careful with assumptions, especially if they make you sound like you go for an ad hominem attack. I remember myself als a 16 year old, I was definitly not unpolitical, quite the opposite and manipulating me into supporting something I didn't like would have been quite hard back then, maybe harder even harder than now.

    Of course viewing her as a lone wolf is completely nuts and I am quite sure neither herself nor the people who started the school protests in her wake would subscribe to that notion (at least I heard it beeing discussed by some Fridays for Future kids in Germany). This is obviously a media narrative by journalists who got carried away. On the other hand claiming that she is "pushed around by faceless actors" is also a bit bland. Firstly if these actors weren't faceless but well known they wouldn't have to rely on somebody else to push messages out, secondly I'd argue that this symbolic action is far better than the alternative (something like flying drones over Heathrow Airport to get media attention), thirdly if "faceless actors" in the background worry you, there are much much better targets to attack (e.g. the UK prime minister, industry lobbyists in the US, etc.)

    The topics she is speaking onare certainly not the ones that have a incredibly powerful lobby behind it (in terms on lobbying money spent), so if we speak of "creepy faceless actors" behind her, you can assume the actors on the opposite site are tenfold as creepy and faceless, certainly profit from discrediting the person and there is historical evidence that they exist, profit from it and use their influence.

    All that aside. The future generations have a valid moral argument. We have known about global warming since half a century and did nothing – the opposite, in the wake of neoliberalism that followed the fall of the soviet union we made everything even more about profits than before. And now we are like that procrastinating kid that pushed homework away and tries to do it while the steps of the approaching teacher echo through the hallway: the only way to get out of this seems to break our own hand to be sent of to the nurse. From an outside perspective this is totally irrational behaviour unless there is proof that the reality looks different altogether. But there is no such proof, which is why the persons are attacked instead of their ideas. Not liking somebodies moral standpoint is a very weak defense when they stand for the wellbeing of many future generations and the survival of mankind.

  5082. The Case for Doing Nothing 2019-09-14 09:02:03 universalxtreme
    There's no need to make a case. Procrastination is my middle name. However I have rarely found it to be a useful things

  5083. The Case for Doing Nothing 2019-09-14 10:08:47 stOneskull
    procrastination > concrastination

  5084. The Case for Doing Nothing 2019-09-14 11:19:43 tbyehl
    Never put off 'til tomorrow that which can be forgotten about entirely.

    In the workplace, priorities shift, projects get cancelled... procrastination can be an effective strategy for minimizing wasted effort.

  5085. The Case for Doing Nothing 2019-09-14 15:41:06 anigbrowl
    There's only a paragraph's worth of information in many stories, or there's just a cutesy headline and a momentary desire to find out what the story is about. Here it's 'procrastination is kinda good actually.' Big whoop.

    Yes to both of your other questions.

  5086. Being ‘Indistractable’ Will Be the Skill of the Future 2019-09-16 17:33:32 gexla
    Self discipline is one of the psychology things which might not actually be a thing though. Often cited in this sort of discussion is the "marshmallow test" which has been found to be BS. Maybe there's something to willpower, but the discussion is stinky right now because of the replication issues. Same for "flow" which is another smell this article and related discussions have.

    I find that I can be incredibly self disciplined when I setup my environment so that I don't have to fight myself. How do I fight distractions from my phone when I'm out with friends? I don't bring my phone. And yet somehow I always manage to meet with people at the time and place we decide on. I know not everyone can do this, I'm just using it as an example.

    A feeling of a lack of self discipline is a symptom, much like procrastination. It's a mess of things all clumped together like a rats nest of wires. Everyone has their answer to procrastination (the book is in progress!) but beating procrastination isn't a skill because it isn't the root problem. Much like a headache could mean that you are going to die from cancer or you might just need some rest. If you feel you have procrastination problems, it's because something broke upstream and now you are blaming it on procrastination.

    ETA: Herding my own actions is about preparation and personal story telling. If I setup a clear path for the next day and get good sleep, then it will work. If I get a bad night of sleep and I'm unorganized, then it's going to be a disaster and I'm going to complain about procrastination. If I see a cake which looks good and I have a weak reason not to eat it, I'm going to eat the thing. If I manage to convince myself to join the cult of low-carbs, then I wouldn't be caught dead with a piece of cake. If I'm working with people who are laid back, then I become laid back. If I'm working with people who are ultra-competitive, then I become competitive. It's all about pouring the kool-aid and then convincing myself to drink it. ;)

  5087. Being ‘Indistractable’ Will Be the Skill of the Future 2019-09-16 17:47:22 raverbashing
    I think you summed it up pretty nicely, I might have even used the same words.

    But in a sense, procrastination is "natural" as much as the taste of sugar is natural, but if you allow yourself to be carried out by it then it becomes a problem.

  5088. Being ‘Indistractable’ Will Be the Skill of the Future 2019-09-16 18:50:14 tonyedgecombe
    Yet hear you are, procrastinating with all of us.

  5089. Being ‘Indistractable’ Will Be the Skill of the Future 2019-09-16 19:09:10 playing_colours
    You comment actually touches some interesting points.

    First, one procrastinates only if they decided they should be doing something else at this moment. I am now relaxed and interested in spending some time on HN - you can actually learn something here as well.

    Second, being constantly busy, optimising, and improving is a new fashion and decease. It's an unrealistic demand that causes anxiety. You also need to relax, reflect, play, do nothing. https://youtu.be/3qHkcs3kG44?t=1102

    Third, it also depends on what is your life goal - be happy, be super successful. I am happy to spend some time on HN, and I do not stress myself over it.

  5090. Being ‘Indistractable’ 2019-09-16 21:28:14 lunchables
    >much like procrastination. It's a mess of things all clumped together like a rats nest of wires.

    This is such an important point. I struggle with procrastination and learning the underlying causes are what helped me make huge progress. I cannot recommend "The Now Habit" enough to anyone who struggles with procrastination and guilt that surrounds it. It really was life changing for me. One of, if not the, most important books I've read.

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/95708.The_Now_Habit

  5091. Being ‘Indistractable’ 2019-09-16 22:06:02 bigredhdl
    Thank you so much for the recommendation. I had checked this audio book out this summer, but procrastinated ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ on listening to it. Just checked it out again.

  5092. Ask HN: What things do you wish you discovered earlier? 2019-09-17 03:41:56 stunt
    Sorry I meant "down"! I write everything down. Purchase decision, budget planning, daily goals, or even meeting agenda.

    It is so simple that it's hard to believe how much impact it has.

    I believe it takes away all the mental energy you have to put to process things in your mind. And somehow it gives some sort of value and priority to your plan when you write it down. It quickly becomes a discipline and works against procrastination.

    One of those things that you always hear it, yet you can't believe it until you try it.

  5093. A Love Letter to Personal Websites 2019-09-18 06:18:24 qubyte
    Don't worry about the design. That can come later. Just get a single, well formed HTML page up there with a few words. Once you have that the design and content problems will seem less insurmountable.

    I spent years agonising. I even wrote my own Node.js framework before I finally realised it was all procrastination, and put together a static site and deployed it in a few minutes. Over the years I've added features and improved the static site generator, but the design is still a bit rubbish!

  5094. Ask HN: How you dealt with YouTube/social media addiction? 2019-09-20 00:04:03 muzani
    It's a kind of FOMO - you want to keep reading more posts or watch until the end of the video. Rarely you'll find something wonderful, often you get nothing out of it. That's how Skinner boxes work: if you got a reward 100% of the time, it's less addictive, and even with diminishing gains, people still stay addicted.

    Going cold turkey works very well. It's about as easy as quitting caffeine. And because the gains are, in reality, really low, it's hard to get back in.

    Another option is to simply break impulse. Allow yourself social media on certain periods of the day, or if it's really urgent, force yourself to wait about 10 minutes. That makes it a bit harder to build up a habit of browsing when you want to procrastinate. This is also similar to why the Pomodoro technique works.

  5095. Books on Burnout 2019-09-20 17:11:00 pbasista
    Related: I have recently watched a video by Louis Rossmann whose title suggests that it is about eliminating procrastination: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UwOdFzPTH4

    In the video he analyzes why people procrastinate and mentions that it is a natural response against oppression. He suggests that the first step against it is to realize that you are a free person and can do whatever you want. He adds a lot of context and examples.

    It seems to me that procrastination is one of the symptoms of burnout and that the suggestions Louis mentions in the video may also be helpful when dealing with burnout.

  5096. Ask HN: How to Keep Yourself Accountable? 2019-09-20 21:29:51 hevi_jos
    Now Thyself

    The first thing you have to do is to identify what is the real problem.

    I don't know you, most of the people here do not know you personally so even if someone here is an expert on human behavior and productivity, is is way easier to identify the real problem if you are face to face with an expert.

    Odds are that the problem(usually they are several problems) that you have is different to what you see as a problem(the consequence of the real problem).

    This expert will read your body language, your voice nuances, your attitude much better than through plain text. This person could ask you about your life habits, that are super important(do you sleep , eat well, exercise, make love with your partner? Do you play and enjoy life?) and tell you what to do.

    You probably are doing several things wrong, like working too much, not exercising, isolating yourself, judging yourself too harshly.

    Over this you will probably feel anxiety that makes you procrastinate and do no work at all.

    It takes a lot of reading, watching videos and practice over years in order to master productivity on your own. Just raw ideas and techniques are not enough, you need to whatch them in action, being applied to really understand. Specially watching masters.

    And most important, you need to apply those techniques in your life, not just understand them. A mentor would be your external feedback if you apply the techniques or not.

    Would you learn judo reading blogs? Or books? That would help, but a master will skyrocket your learning.

    There are programs like "wake up productive"(from Eben Pagan) that you can watch as videos. There are torrents of it if you just want to know what is all about before buying.

    A good psychologist could also help you a lot with any issues that you have while working on your own.

    There are experts in programming that know the best techniques. Just ask them, make them your mentors if you can.

    There are experts in human behavior. Ask them or make them your mentors.

    There are experts in productivity...

    Find people that are in the same place that you are, a support group. You can create it if it does not exist.

  5097. Show HN: I made a visual technical interview course 2019-09-23 21:00:14 sciencewolf
    I first posted a Show HN about AlgoDaily six months ago when it was just a daily coding challenges platform. Since then, it's pivoted to a complete solution for devs looking to break into software engineering, solving problems that still afflict non-traditional developers (bootcamp grads, self taught developers, career transitioners) when preparing for interviews:

    - Lack of Guidance - for non-traditional developers, there's so many resources but few that are well curated and provide adequate hand-holding.

    - Lack of Visuals - I have never been able to sit down and read a programming book for long stretches due to how dense and dry they are. The goal of our lessons is to make them as easy to follow and visual as possible.

    - Procrastination - a daily email keeps you in check by giving you exactly what to read or do each day.

    Open to all feedback!

  5098. We are clueless about how long things should take 2019-09-26 01:55:51 hinkley
    Sometimes the manager just doesn't believe you at all.

    Learned that the hard way on my first lead role.

    Him: How long will this work take? Me: A year with this team. Him: A year? How is that possible? I was thinking six months. <starts going down the entire list line item by line item dickering on every little thing> Me: <after 15 minutes completely checked out of this conversation.>

    When you don't have time to do something right you have time to do it over. It ended up taking us 18 months. To this day I firmly believe that because we tried to do it in half the time, it ended up taking us 50% longer. Accounting for our tendency to procrastinate, I believe if we'd gone in saying 12 it would have taken 14 at the outside.

  5099. Match.com Used Fake Ads to Swindle Users, F.T.C. Says 2019-09-26 19:15:29 Eli_P
    Dating apps today are more like gambling with your time. Its mechanics is pretty same as for lottery game, so it will generate profits for the same reason all scams do with our primate brain. Monkey gives a banana now and expects 10^6 bananas later.

    Last time I used Tinder they seemed to make a right move towards video chats. If I were to develop a dating app, I'd incorporate vid chat as the only way to communicate. Ain't streaming video of yourself atm -- you don't exist at all, can't be found or swiped on. Procrastination & waste of time -> 0.

    Also real-time video basically renders any account validation unnecessary because all Photoshop guys/gals went to learn neural networks and how to implement DeepFake face replace.

  5100. Open offices are a dead end 2019-09-26 23:45:29 NewsAware
    Same for me. See the point of the sibling comments though. So maybe I prefer an open office because I don't procrastinate (which would leave me with a feeling of unproductive guilt in the evening) to a private office, even though the latter might be actually more productive.

  5101. Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009) 2019-09-26 23:59:09 JohnFen
    I'm exactly opposite of that. If I announce plans, that adds an additional cost (embarrassment) to failing to accomplish them, which makes it less likely that I'll procrastinate or abandon the effort.

  5102. Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009) 2019-09-27 03:20:22 mindgam3
    This very much depends on how motivated you are by external validation. For some people, the fear of losing social capital by not following through on a public commitment is motivating enough to accomplish stretch goals.

    Source: used this technique to overcome my own procrastination trying to launch my first app as a solo founder. It worked, and I went on to raised a million VC to see if I could scale up the vision of a social goals app.

    The downside of relying on external validation, as I learned the hard way, is when your self improvement startup goes down in flames, you really feel like a fuckup.

  5103. Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009) 2019-09-27 03:59:48 kyllo
    I always think this way, but once I make a commitment, now I basically have a deadline, which for me, causes the procrastination impulse to kick in, and it takes effort to fight it.

    I think that telling someone I'm going to do something makes me want to do it a little bit less because now I'm doing it for them, not for myself.

  5104. How Firebase Interviewed Software Engineers 2019-09-27 13:57:09 username90
    It isn't intentional usually, you just procrastinate the rejection until it has gone so long that it would feel weird to respond.

  5105. Show HN: Assistant to help you fight social media addiction and do smth useful 2019-09-28 13:18:18 pogorsky
    Hi, I'm Eduard, and over the last few years I've been enrolled on many online courses to strengthen my research skills, broaden my career prospects, and to simply learn something new. Some of these courses were free, and others I paid to take part in. However, I haven't completed all of them. Often, I tried to find excuses, telling myself that “this week I'm too busy with my work”, or “this week I’ve a lot on socially, so I don't have the time to submit an assignment…”. This led me to the idea that I needed something that could help me fight procrastination. I needed regular pushes, or gentle advice from some as yet unknown source. As I tried to explore how a tool could be developed to solve this problem, I attended the summer school on behaviour change at University College London. The puzzle has developed. Why not use behaviour change techniques applied effectively to change behaviour in healthcare settings and help others to learn something new instead of wasting their time online.

  5106. I Used to Fear Being a Nobody. Then I Left Social Media 2019-10-02 00:51:34 moosey
    Just turn on the procrastination monitor. I did it and with my reading habits, I can only post something like one or two comments a day.

  5107. The Founder Dating Playbook 2019-10-02 02:10:46 opportune
    I find it strange to not just use your personal network to find somebody. I feel like this whole “detached cofounder” thing is for people making an implicit agreement that you both intend to screw each other over if you ever get the opportunity.

    But if you’re a “product person” I suppose you need someone to actually build the MVP for you so you can’t really do that part alone.

    Personally I’d rather do it alone than make a huge decision like this with some random. Passing an interview is easy if you know what to say, would be too hard to trust someone to not just try to get a free ride. And it takes a really long time to truly know someone, but it also seems crazy to me to spend up to half a year “cofounder dating” before you get to work; that seems like pseudo-productive procrastination more than anything

  5108. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: 40 years of parody and predictions 2019-10-02 22:49:21 HONEST_ANNIE
    Adams was extreme procrastinator.

    He could not self-manage his work once he had wealth and had no need to write for living. Once his editor rented cheap hotel room, removed all distractions and hovered over him until the book was done. Adams worked with Salmon of Doubt 10 years and didn't even manage the first draft.

  5109. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: 40 years of parody and predictions 2019-10-02 23:08:37 sirn
    My favorite Douglas Adams' procrastination story is when he was offered £50,000 to write Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy calendar. He then procrastinate it until the deal fallen through and got paid £25,000 for doing nothing.[1]

    [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntsham_Court#Notable_guests

  5110. Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired? 2019-10-03 08:25:53 reificator
    Listen. If not using version control is a problem for you, you're already more hirable than a lot of developers I've seen. Learning is always important but don't use that to procrastinate.

    You don't have to go straight to the best job in the world. Just find something better (and do your homework to verify) and take it.

  5111. Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired? 2019-10-03 13:55:58 reificator
    Taken out of context, I agree with you.

    But this conversation has been about them saying they need to learn more before they can get a new job, and me replying that they shouldn't use that as an excuse to procrastinate. Thus the `need to pad my resume` comment.

  5112. Ask HN: Who Wants to Be Fired? 2019-10-04 05:54:46 unnouinceput
    It all started with Brainbench in around 2000, when I did some testing on them, when they were still free and even sent you hard copy certificates for free. So I had fun with testing myself online and got those certificates. Fast forward to 2007 when out of boring I wanted to do some more test and I found out that Brainbench was now a paid platform for tests and the hard copies were actually around $50 to get, so I wanted to find something else that had free tests. And I stumbled upon oDesk this way - back then they were called that, now they are Upwork. So I made an account with them, filled all the fields there with my mind wandering around, including all the fields that were not required - and this was actually crucial later, out of pure luck. Then I started to do tests to see how I grew meanwhile vs. Brainbench. Then I forget all about for half an year, when in September a notification from oDesk came into my e-mail about a potential client wanting me to work on some component but for very little money - he figured I was good enough but without history of jobs and wanted to take advantage of it. I outright refused the job but this opened my eyes to what oDesk really was - a freelancing platform. So I started to tinker with this idea to have some side projects and do them on my free time. At that time I was over an year employed by a German company and I was support/programmer for anything the technicians of said company was need it. Their main job was carpentry repairs and the technicians were using laptops to record the entire job at client site. It was a successful company hiring hundreds of technicians but was having only us 3 as IT support/programmers. So one day the leader quit, he found a way better lucrative job in Switzerland, the other guy was never good enough in the eyes of the company owner and when he asked for a salary raise was denied and he quit too. So I was solo and I started to not care at all about the job anymore. I was just like in "Office Space", coming at 11 or even noon, leaving after 2 or 3 hours, during this time I was completely only browsing internet and procrastinating heavily. 3 months later, in February 2008 I was like at already 3rd client from oDesk and this one was a heavy project with long term relationship, so I just started to actually work via encrypted VPN from work for those projects at home as well. I believe that was the final straw for them and they kinda fired me. I mean, was not a firing per se, but more of a situation where they asked my resignation and I just stopped going to work. My contract was bullet proof and anything less then actually committing murder or arson (like in Office Space) could not fire me from work. So no bug in software to steal money or arson like in Office Space, but everything else was point on - coming at my own hours, heave(n)ly procrastinating at work, leave early, got promoted (sic!) also, even had sex at office with a girl I picked-up one day on my way to work and she was a screamer, the entire lower floor where some paper pushers were working heard everything despite multiple attempts on my side to quiet her by putting my hand on her mouth. Yeah, not even that was good enough to get me fired, the owner when called me later that day didn't said a single word about this and he definitely was informed about it by the paper pushers. Oh yeah, we had a table tennis in the yard, I started to get kids from street to play with them, for hours and I was still promoted. So totally Office Space. Hope you enjoyed ScottFree - have a nice day

  5113. Report: Young adults more likely to live with parents than spouses 2019-10-04 08:09:11 usepgp
    Like the parent comment said, there is a noticeable difference even in states like Washington. We have close to two weeks to fill out the ballots and mail it back or drop it off. There is a huge difference between "having a lot going on" and "procrastinating for two weeks". the ballots take ~5 minutes to fill out, and ~10 minutes to drop off.

  5114. Caddy Proposal: Permanently change all proprietary licensing to open source 2019-10-04 20:22:52 atonse
    My guess is they’re doing this since maybe Caddy’s growth may have slowed down since they did that confusing commercial use licensing?

    I went from “I’m going to use this everywhere” to “I’ll switch back to nginx the next time I have time to transition back” Because it was too expensive to host little sites on. I’m relieved that I procrastinated. Now i can continue to use it in many places since Caddy is awesome.

  5115. College Students Just Want Normal Libraries 2019-10-05 04:53:11 idealstingray
    I'm at a school where most classes have all of their materials online for free. Usually a professor will post lecture notes and/or slides online and recommend an optional reference textbook.

    When I do need textbooks, I generally buy them instead of checking them out from the library, and most of the reason is that the library isn't open 24 hours a day. 90% of the time I can get by with only using books for class during the day, but if I end up having to pull an all-nighter to finish a paper or a pset, or if I've been procrastinating and need to do the readings for a class after midnight, I'm screwed. It's valuable to me to have the mental overhead free, instead of needing to plan when I'll be able to access the books I need. (As a bonus, it's a good start for building up a reference library, and I can mark up my personal copies however I want, but these are secondary reasons.)

    I still use the library for studying, finding materials that I only need once and don't want to buy, and checking out items like USB CD drives. (You can also check out soldering irons and small power tools from our campus libraries.) I also made frequent use of the piano in the music library when studying music theory. But I'd probably use the library a lot more if it were staffed between midnight and 6 am.

  5116. Thoughts on Cocoa 2019-10-06 00:48:51 plorkyeran
    Carbon continued to work for 13 years after it was officially deprecated. Waiting over a decade to get started on a transition doesn't mean that the transition was abrupt; it just means that you procrastinated until you got a hard deadline and so caused scheduling problems for yourself.

  5117. Neil Gaiman: My friend told me a story he hadn't told anyone 2019-10-08 01:47:49 jerf
    The ultimate "hack" is to hack your own brain. It's how the metaphorical man riding the elephant [1] gets the most mileage out of his efforts, figuring out how to manipulate the elephant any way necessary.

    The intelligent, rational part of the brain sneers derisively at the invisible mask. It's obviously not there. It obviously can't do anything. It is, in its own way, entirely correct. Yet the elephant does not think that way, and to it, the mask is there and effective, and in its own way, it too is entirely correct.

    This is how you break bad habits, make good habits, deal with procrastination, and any number of other life goals the rider may find desirable. You don't just sit there futilely trying to kick the elephant harder directly in the direction you want to go; you figure out how to lead it to want what you want it to want. The rider has an immense amount of control, once the rider embraces how little control the rider has.

    (At least for a while, one of the YCombinator entrance questions was to describe a time you hacked a system or something. I think if I were ever to apply, I'd pull my answer from this. One of my biggest personal ones is just telling myself "Look, literally millions of other people have done this (in some cases billions), surely I can manage too?" Is, for example, the first day of college scary in some ways? Sure. But how hard can it really be? An awful lot of people make it through the first day.)

    [1]: http://sourcesofinsight.com/the-elephant-and-the-rider/

  5118. macOS Catalina 2019-10-08 06:28:44 dkonofalski
    >new frameworks like AVAudioEngine on OS X

    AVAudioEngine is not a new framework on macOS. It was first available on macOS Yosemite which was in beta in 2013 and released in 2014. Developers have had 6+ years to develop and test using these frameworks.

    This literally just boils down to developers complaining that Apple isn't further letting them procrastinate.

  5119. macOS Catalina 2019-10-08 06:31:56 dkonofalski
    >the new ones are apparently not well documented

    The low-level interfaces in question were changed almost 4 major versions back. There aren't any new interfaces or APIs that haven't existed for 6+ years already. The only people complaining are the ones that procrastinated because Apple continued to support their outdated apps.

  5120. Supreme Court allows blind people to sue retailers if websites aren't accessible 2019-10-08 13:02:33 miki123211
    I wanted to work on it, I even have a domain for it bought already, though other things in life, procrastination among them, stopped me for now. I will do it someday, though.

  5121. macOS Catalina 2019-10-08 19:44:49 renaudg
    You're right, users absolutely should not have to debug computers and live performance is especially sensitive to realtime constraints.

    It's the developers job to do so, and they're basically procrastinating for as long as they can, not heeding Apple's deprecation warnings for _years_ and then trying to blame them in front of users when st finally hits the fan, pretending they couldn't possibly have known. That's simply dishonest.

  5122. Why you should have a side project 2019-10-09 09:17:05 melvinroest
    I'm currently full-time on my side project as I'm done with graduating, tired from searching for the right job (it has been months) and I just need to do some actual coding, to get it out my system or something.

    It is a code vacation, because when job hunting, I'm not coding that much.

    I'll try to be brief:

    1. I am passionate about digital creation again

    What I find really cool is that learning to program has been worth it. It has taken one bachelor and 2 masters, but it has been worth it. Studying computer science has been worth it. I'm capable of deep diving if I have to, and otherwise just stay on a web stack flying on a high level zipping code together by gluing npm packages but creating my own ones if I have to.

    2. Passion has downsides

    I'm seeing my friends less, I'm seeing my girlfriend less. I feel that everyone around me tolerates my behavior, but I don't suspect they like it too much as I'm thinking 24/7 about this thing. It also makes me a bit mentally absent when I'm with them. The issue is, I can't help it. IMO, it's a good lesson on how passion is overrated as the downsides of pure passion are not being discussed. My sleep (and code quality) is terrible as I'm too excited to get up again, and the problem is: I can sustain this a lot longer than I thought I could.

    3. It allows me to do some much needed self exploration

    Why do I like this? Why am I now procrastinating on creating the backend but am neck deep in learning how to rearchitect the backend to a p2p architecture (easy: because p2p web apps are more unusual ;-) ). I'm getting a lot of questions and answers that I need.

    4. It feels like a game

    I think the reason it feels like a game is because I have my own agency. I get to decide to solve a problem that I think is worth solving for whatever reason. That type of agency is quite common in games: you're in a big world with tons of quests and you can decide what to do (even abandon the whole quest line!).

    ---

    All in all: doing your own side project on a full-time basis is a much needed and interesting exploration for me. For 9 years people told me what I should do. It's interesting to see what I do when I tell myself what to do. It's a much needed break from just doing what other people want.

  5123. Why you should have a side project 2019-10-09 14:15:46 hailk
    Yes actually. Based on some of the Quora answers I've read, they don't enjoy cooking after coming home. But since cooking is an unavoidable activity (unlike a side project, you can't procrastinate with hunger) they might have to.

    https://www.quora.com/How-often-do-chefs-cook-at-home

  5124. Changing Your Diet Can Help Tamp Down Depression, Boost Mood 2019-10-10 21:11:17 NL807
    I also have positive experience by changing diet. Especially the mental fog part. Better concentration and i can do work without procrastinating too much.

  5125. Zettelkästen? 2019-10-11 18:20:49 Cladode
    I've been using a system like that successfully as an academic (for some interpretation of successful). Started when I was a PhD student 25 years ago, and have been maintaining it ever since. I was inspired by Niklas Luhmann's Zettelkasten, whom I read voraciously as a teenager. I started as an undergraduate with hand-written index cards, but the obvious advantages of electronic files (fast search, cut/paste, easy backup, doesn't need physical space) were immediately clear to me, so I moved to a computer-based system. As I had already been burned by proprietary formats before, I use html as format from day one, every index card is html file in a separate directory. This has various advantages, including

    - Easy consistent styling through css

    - No WYSIWYG, separation of content and styling

    - Easy to include code, which sits in the directory associated with the index card

    - Easy to cross link

    - Easy to backup

    - Everything is under git control

    - Easy to write shell scripts / programs that automate various tasks related to my notes

    - Search with standard tools like grep

    - Edit in my favourite text editor (Org-mode for quick drafting is especially useful I find)

    - High quality rendering through modern browsers

    - Easy to cut and paste into emails, whatsapp skype discord etc which is how I communicate with students and colleagues

    - Easy to include other formats like images sound video etc

    - Since the emergence of MathJax I can use LaTeX markup which means I can cut-and-paste between my index cards, scientific papers and lecture notes/slides

    In summary, I'm super glad I didn't go super-hi-tech and stuck with marked-up text. It was the right choice! As Graydon Hoare once wrote: "[A]lways bet on text." How much work is it? I spend 1-2 hours on average every day on writing. Is it worth my time? What are the advantages for me that keep me using such a system?

    - Structured, easily accessible 'idea store' / second-memory for later refinement and reuse. Refinement is maybe even the core: when I come back to a subject years later I come back from a different angle

    - Helps writing introductory sections in papers, because I will have sketched my understanding of a subject already on an index card

    - Helps writing related work sections in papers, because I accumulate work related to any particular index card's subjects over years

    - Makes reviewing papers much easier, because I can cut-and-paste missing related work (most scientific papers are written by PhD students and post-docs who lack a historical perspective)

    - Communicating with students: as an academic I get new students every year, and since they got through similar stages and problems, it has become easy to reuse what I wrote in paste years

    - The most important: cultivating a habit of writing down ideas, writing about ideas in a structured way, breaking them down into smaller parts etc, all of which helps me to understand things better, and to communicate them more clearly to others

    Is it worth it? I ask myself this question every day. I found that in the first few years, I could always remember what I had written, so my system was of limited use. That changed after about 8 years, when I could no longer recall most of what I had written down, and then it became rather useful, since I got 'new' and already pre-digested ideas.

    For me the biggest problem is that it has also become a procrastination device: I love writing. Whenever I am stuck with a work problem (and that happens a lot), I have a tendency to procrastinate by writing long entries on obscure subjects, unrelated to my work. It feels like work, in some sense it is work, but it lets me avoid confronting high-priority tasks head on.

  5126. Show HN: You will die in X weeks 2019-10-12 03:16:08 shahahmed
    I built an interactive visualization that shows you how many weeks of life you have left. Seeing the finiteness of life definitely helps me stop procrastinating!

  5127. NASA aims for first manned SpaceX mission in first-quarter 2020 2019-10-12 03:31:57 papito
    I agree. Give me one year for a software project, and I will procrastinate. Give me 4 months, and I will get my shit together, I will be frugal with my time and resources.

    In the same fashion, I would get the same or MORE work done in less than an 8 hour work day, because I would just not have time to be on HackerNews.

    Smaller, achievable goals are more productive.

  5128. Show HN: You will die in X weeks 2019-10-12 03:54:29 d--b
    > There's nothing quite like contemplating the finiteness of life to help you to stop procrastinating.

    I had the total opposite thought. Seeing this makes me realize how stupid it is to toil one's life away for a career

  5129. Show HN: You will die in X weeks 2019-10-12 03:58:52 ninju
    I believe they are implying that 'procrastinating' is the same thing as 'toiling one's life' away

  5130. Show HN: You will die in X weeks 2019-10-12 04:14:23 wbrando
    The section at the end displaying famous figures and their milestones seems a little bit counterintuitive, at least from a certain perspective. If the goal is to get visitors to stop procrastinating, it's pretty disheartening to display that information and make the visitor realize they've likely done nothing in their life by comparison.

  5131. Ask HN: How do you move up in professional status as a remote worker? 2019-10-13 04:03:35 anon_lead_dev
    Fully remote worker (from another country) on a leadership position here.

    Hard work and exceptional availability and communication skills. I was the guy who would work weekends, be the first the show up online etc. Never procrastinate. Keep track of other people's work and make your efforts in moving things forward crystal clear to your boss. Deliver.

    People are not going to bet on a remote worker for displaying exceptional commitment or leadership skills. You have to actively display them yourself, but not in a pushy manner. Just be the absolute most useful and reliable person you can be. Soon enough you'll have enough responsibilities and involvement in projects that a leadership role will emerge naturally.

  5132. ‘This Did Not Go Well’: Inside PG&E’s Blackout Control Room 2019-10-14 01:10:21 l_t
    Many new developments in the US do use buried wires. But a lot also still use poles. It's hit and miss.

    From what I remember, PG&E is notorious for "procrastinating" on maintenance of its wires, as well. Wires need to be regularly checked and have nearby foliage trimmed to a safe distance. Keeping up on this maintenance would reduce the risk of fires, but California is big and the utility has decided it doesn't want to do that. So the poles are more dangerous than they should be.

  5133. Superior IQs are associated with mental and physical disorders 2019-10-15 08:58:43 lliamander
    > executive functioning points (is there such a thing?)

    Conscientiousness, a factor in the Five Factor Model of personality, measures something like this. Specifically, the aspect of Industriousness.

    However, it's very hard to measure, because virtually any test that measures a person's planning ability almost invariably ends up measuring IQ instead. Basically, the best way to test this right now is to ask a bunch of people around you how "hard working" you are and average the results. Still, it's accurate enough to be reasonably predictive of a lot of interesting phenomena.

    I've tried a lot of things to improve my level of organization and productivity with...modest success. Some things that (I think) have helped me:

    - Seek out and take on responsibility (work, family, community, etc.) It's painful adjusting at first, but I get used to it and the satisfaction of being depended upon is motivating.

    - When faced with a stressful level of responsibility, remember that you will live through it. I used to procrastinate like mad because of a fear of failure. Keeping that thought in mind ("I will live through this") calmed my nerves somewhat. Now I still worry, and still procrastinate, but it's not as bad.

    - Write down what you want your life to be like in 1, 3, 5, and maybe even 10 years. Come back to it every now and then. I did this 5 years ago, and while I haven't achieved everything, I've achieved some of what I wanted. I'll take it as a victory.

  5134. YouTube Regrets 2019-10-16 05:37:20 Keloo
    This and some comments below is the extreme to one or the other end. The situation is as almost always grey (not white or black). If you are procrastinating on youtube or buy junk there is something you can do (you have some degree of control) also there is something Youtube can do (they also have some degree of control), why do we involve so much extremism into discussions around (ads, privacy, etc..)

    P.S. I spend <2h/day on youtube mostly on the shows or tutorials I wanted in advance. I spend <20min/day on fb (90% messenger, 10% groups that I "have to" follow). Very close to 0 social media activity for more than 2 years now. So it's definitely possible.

  5135. Interested in improving your relationships? Try Nonviolent Communication 2019-10-16 19:45:28 Mirioron
    >It's basically a way to be both non-passive-aggressive and compassionate

    But the examples given as "observation" read as passive-aggressive to me. Whether you say "Eleanor procrastinates" or "Eleanor wait to do all her studying the night before the exam" it's still the same thing. If you hear this type of comment regularly (eg you have ADHD) then it'll still affect you negatively.

  5136. Interested in improving your relationships? Try Nonviolent Communication 2019-10-16 20:08:52 vanderZwan
    > Whether you say "Eleanor procrastinates" or "Eleanor wait to do all her studying the night before the exam" it's still the same thing.

    It is not. The latter is a fact. The former is an interpretation of that fact showing how the person saying it judges this fact. If you perceive the former while someone says the latter, then that is a result of your own expectation of judgement.

    I have ADD and had to unlearn this myself.

  5137. Interested in improving your relationships? Try Nonviolent Communication 2019-10-16 22:03:20 gimboland
    My understanding of this:

    "Eleanor waited to do all her studying the night before the exam" — that's data: it would show up on a video recording of the scene.

    "Eleanor procrastinates" — that's a judgement/interpretation/opinion: it exists in someone's mind (i.e. the person making the judgement).

    This isn't to say "judgements bad, don't make judgements". That would be nonsensical. We all make judgements/interpretations all the time, they're a necessary part of the human experience.

    But (in my experience) it's really _really_ helpful to differentiate between these two categories. It opens the whole thing up and allows things to proceed more smoothly and effectively (in conjunction with other tools in the toolset - but this is core).

    To expand on the example: if, as Eleanor, I hear the judgement I'm probably, yes, more likely to shut down and get defensive - which gets none of us anywhere. OTOH if I hear the data, there is then perhaps more room to have a conversation about what's going on. It might be that my ADHD is contributing to this behaviour, and perhaps if I get that it has a negative impact on someone else, I might decide to ask them (or someone else) for support in working out a better way to deal with this. Or I might simply be asking for more understanding, different structures. I don't know. But the kind of mutual acknowledgement of experience, feelings and wants that I'm talking about tends to be shut down by unowned judgements presented as fact.

  5138. Interested in improving your relationships? Try Nonviolent Communication 2019-10-16 22:59:55 everdev
    Exactly. "Eleanor wait to do all her studying the night before the exam" doesn't attempt to insert the part of the story we don't know.

    Maybe she waited because she's lazy, maybe because she was waiting for her anxiety to decrease, maybe because she was working two jobs.

    When we make a judgement and say that she procrastinates, we shut ourselves out from the rest of the story and insert our own.

  5139. Interested in improving your relationships? Try Nonviolent Communication 2019-10-17 00:04:20 lmeyerov
    "Waited" is interpretation and "all" is generalization, both to avoid in basic nvc.

    NVC would be more like: "I saw Eleanor study the night before and I did not see her study before then. I interpreted this as procrastination, which makes me anxious because something similar happened at time X, you want her to succeed, fear a pattern will prevent that, and feel powerless to change it."

    Maybe Eleanor did study secretly. Or knew the stuff. Or had a death in the family. Or it is unimportant. Maybe she forgot and could use reminders.

    ADHD was a great tool for me + team. Basically autopilot and a low bar. One downside is people mistake things like this and blameless.postmortems as you cannot confront people and publicly, or do not bc of the work... While in reality, it provides a baseline framework for it when you have nothing better.

  5140. TurboTax’s 20-Year Fight to Stop Americans from Filing Taxes for Free 2019-10-17 21:20:04 danso
    I'm a TurboTax user myself (b/c I almost always procrastinate to the last day/week), but my guess is because tax forms and rules change every year. Maybe the general situation for free filers is easy enough to code for, though? Though one of Turbotax's purported features is that it'll tell you how easy/complex your taxes can or should be, depending on your situation.

    Also, one of TurboTax's features is e-filing. Maybe there are free e-file alternatives (as in free, with no upsell or strings-attached whatsoever), but it seems you have to be an "authorized IRS e-file provider" to do this, i.e. there's not a developer API: https://www.irs.gov/filing/e-file-options

  5141. Rejected from YC (Again) 2019-10-18 01:22:38 agota
    I remember someone mentioning that one of the dark secrets of the SaaS world is reliance on people procrastinating on cancelling the subscription, forgetting to cancel it, etc.

    I think if I had a SaaS company, I'd try to avoid doing that, and encourage people who are clearly not using the product to unsubscribe.

  5142. Rejected from YC (Again) 2019-10-18 01:58:11 unlinked_dll
    Most SaaS is enterprise facing, not consumer, so I don't know how much procrastination fits into it as the momentum behind decision making in a business.

  5143. Ask HN: How much time do you think you waste on Cookie prompts? 2019-10-18 03:50:49 imhoguy
    Not enough to build a startup to remove them. Actually sometimes they help me to stop procrastinating. These occupying entire page or with some usability issues are effective dopamine circuit breakers.

  5144. Rejected from YC (Again) 2019-10-18 05:16:13 glangdale
    Their willingness to make the change may reflect the fact that deep down, they had been thinking that they should monetize, and having YC tell them to do it may just have been the kick in the ass they needed.

    It's not like YC told them "put on a chicken suit and dance in front of our headquarters and we might consider you".

    Monetizing and finding out whether there's anyone willing to actually pay for the product is a straightforward move. They weren't building a social network or something with a massive network effect. Putting off the terrifying discovery ("hey, will anyone pay for this?") in their case may just have been procrastination - and YC's rejection may have been a useful trigger to end it.

  5145. Which Way Do You Run? 2019-10-18 11:42:23 amoitnga
    this strike a chord with me. I am facing a bit of procrastination, that pretty much caused by fear. Fear of interviewing. I'm pretty unhappy with how things are but absolutely afraid to apply and interview for other jobs. Fairly pathetic state. I should definitely face this fear.

  5146. Writing Great Mystery Plots 2019-10-18 14:31:25 potta_coffee
    Benjamin also used a similar process to learn writing. I've been meaning to try it, but I'm a huge procrastinator.

  5147. What nobody tells you about documentation 2019-10-19 01:13:33 afarrell
    Writing comments doesn't feel like "writing" to me; It feels like talking.

    I've actually written some pretty long comments on reddit. Yesterday, I talked with one of my coaches and put some thought into why:

    1) I don't have any memories of feeling anxiousness from commenting on reddit. This is unsurprising since it has never been assigned to me by a teacher/parent. If I ever feel like "Its unclear why I would respond to this or what I would say to this", I just choose not to comment.

    2) I have memories of writing a comment and other people upvoting it or telling me that it was helpful. I don't have this for essays. I driven by making people happy, so that is a meaningful reward.

    3) Because of those positive memories, as I am writing, I can imagine that a sentence I am about to write is going to be helpful. That imagining is a bit of positive re-enforcement that I can chase, inherent to the task. It is like when I was a kid and I would do math homework and I would solve a problem and see that I'd solved it. It is one of the tricks of TDD.

    So, my plan this Saturday is to seek out the things that could possibly be intrinsically rewarding about writing:

    A) Look for interesting phrases that I can craft to clearly explain something.

    B) When I start on a section, write a question that someone could ask on a reddit thread, which this section answers.

    C) When I write a section, imagine myself saying this as an explanation in response to that question and imagine someone else expressing gratitude for that explanation.

    D) To avoid procrastination, mentally rehearse the act of starting and getting into the task. Simulate the trigger-response-reward in my mind so I can build the neural pathway. The reward I imagine should not be tied to completion, but come from the "I've just gotten started" state.

  5148. Facebook is removing opinions about Israel as being against Community Standards 2019-10-20 21:51:52 jstewartmobile
    I'd posit that the reason everything gets jammmed through HTTP/HTTPS/SMTP/POP/IMAP/DNS now is that those are the only things we can reliably get through every firewall.

    Home firewalls are easy. Most already have UPNP or NAT-PMP enabled, so the app can easily poke holes--even in TCP! Corporate ones (people procrastinating at work is a fat chunk of internet traffic) will have all kinds of ad-hoc rules that struck the network guy's fancy at the time.

    For a truly P2P net (grandma-to-grandma), one side isn't enough.

  5149. Yes, Estimate Software Projects 2019-10-21 06:10:27 spoondan
    You don’t need a deadline to establish priorities and ensure the team is focused on those priorities. Nor does a deadline actually prevent procrastination. We all have had homework due that we have rushed to finish because we were watching TV, playing games, out with friends, or whatever. So too with software engineering.

    Anyway, if you are using sprints, there actually are due dates. It’s just there are a lot of them occurring in rapid succession, and we don’t commit to what we’ll finish in the following due date until after the impending one.

  5150. Research continues to show health benefits of coffee, tea, and chocolate 2019-10-21 06:40:04 lorriman
    Low-level anxiety, procrastination, jittery energy useless for humdrum work, bad overall energy levels if you consume alot of strong coffee, painful wakeup in the morning, adrenalised brain geared to snap decisions rather than measured reasoning.

    Or

    Bounce out of bed at 100% energy, fluid easy reasoning, easier learning, relaxed, enjoy slow movies, good overall energy, fine with humdrum activities, far less procrastination. Less impatient with people.

    The caffeine-energy thing is pretty bogus. The problem for me is that I find it fun.

    Just realise that giving up caffine means tapering for many people as the migrained a heavy coffee drinker can get form cold-turkey can be the worst, worse than anything I;ve ever had before. Also, even decaf and cocoa have too much caffeine, and with the reduction in tolerance as you come down in dose, so you become more sensitive. You really have to give it up completely, which is a shame. But the upside is massive.

  5151. If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance 2019-10-22 01:26:23 Udik
    The whole argument seems naively flawed to me: given a certain individual, with some defined IQ and personality, there are problems that they won't ever solve, no matter how much time they live. I'll never write a single novel, Georges Simenon wrote 200 of them. The average person wouldn't discover relativity, or write Mozart's music, in any amount of time.

    It's not true that abilities scale linearly. Not even the difference in the amount if work people can perform is linear: there are people that can start successful companies in the time it takes me to set up an appointment with the dentist (weeks of procrastination).

    Frankly it doesn't surprise me at all that this research comes from my country: a country that is deeply suspicious of success and, especially in the public sector, of any form of reward based on results. In fact the study finds exactly what most Italian public employees (such as university researchers) ask for: indistinct financing for everyone without the need to show anything for it.

  5152. Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? 2019-10-23 16:08:25 Famara7
    To be successful as an one person online business maker you need loads of self motivation & some self control over procrastination.

    If you're spending alot of time on your own, managing & building up your start up without alot of actual human engagement you need strong will power...& good ambient music on in the background ;-]

  5153. Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? 2019-10-23 17:31:05 madsbuch
    These kind of comments are very interesting, and I bump into them now and then when I express aspirations to do something.

    On the other hand driven people comment the same way on people "just" taking a job working 9 to 5 and appreciating being able to not work hard (well, procrastinate, not motivating one-self, etc.).

    I guess this is an area where empathy is really hard.

  5154. Show HN: Badgerton, the proactive reminder app for people with ADHD 2019-10-24 00:23:21 SithTactician
    Top of the morning, HN.

    I was having a bit of trouble trying to figure out how to introduce Badgerton here, but then procrastinating and reading reddit for a few minutes magically resolved that problem.

    Specifically, I just saw a thread on the /r/ADHD subreddit titled "ADHD is being prepared for the unusual and not prepared for the daily.”

    And I don’t think I could put it more concisely myself.

    We’ve just launched Badgerton in its first iteration to help people with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, like myself, manage all the non-critical things in life that just can’t be scheduled with precise deadlines ahead of time.

    Because those of us with ADHD are walking paradoxes. We excel in adversity, when we need to hyperfocus and achieve the impossible, yet we’re overwhelmed by everything else in everyday life that other people manage through a functional working memory and proper sense of time.

    And while I’m sure there must be a considerable number of people with ADHD brains on HN, Badgerton isn’t strictly limited to us. It’s designed to help reduce cognitive friction and minimize decision-making energy expense — both challenges that entrepreneurs, consultants, digital nomads, and other folks with flexible, self-defined schedules tackle all the time.

    So try it out, or don’t. I’m a HN poster, not a cop. But any and all feedback is welcome.

  5155. We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems 2019-10-24 00:28:55 jjtheblunt
    genuine question:

    How is a developer, complaining about "The Catalina Disaster", not an attempt to distract attention, along with other developers, from years-long procrastination?

  5156. Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? 2019-10-24 01:14:10 binarysolo
    My former one-person online biz (2013) is now 10 people - we run Amazon end-to-end ops for a few large brands and manage ~100k SKUs -- basically the work is all operations research + grunt work. We do mid eight digits in revenue.

    A friend of a friend was the COO of a brand, spent a couple mil to position themselves online strategically, but that team couldn't deliver results. As a grad student in ML I spent a disproportional time procrastinating on Craigslist and Slickdeals and flipping inventory between those venues, SUPost (school-centric CL basically), and eBay, so I ended up being rather saavy at ecommerce. I offered to help out their store, then took it over when I got some initial results.

    Ironically I think from a pure EV standpoint I shoulda stayed with my ML degree - my friends in the same cohort are averaging a mil a year in combined salary + bigcorp options. There were a lot of heartache and sleepless nights associated with running a company, and looking back honestly I would've had a more peaceful life toeing the 9-5.

    =====

    I have a few one-person side projects right now concurrently that are providing five-digit revenue that are hard for me to scale, but are enjoyable for me to do:

    1. Domain expert in a hobbyist niche with high gatekeeping (skill and/or money) - I create a couple high quality content a year and make residuals off affiliate fees.

    2. I flip small businesses in a very specific niche of ecommerce when they don't layer into my big business.

    Note: this seems mildly prolific but honestly I have between 2-5 ideas a year of which I try to execute on 1-2 of them. I think of them as cognitive surplus, "Art projects for Fun and Profit-TM". Most ideas end up not working out, so the payoff really has to be about the process, not the result.

  5157. Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? 2019-10-24 01:45:24 ezekg
    I procrastinate like nobody's business and I still run my own SaaS business just fine. Just gotta ride those "productivity waves." ;)

  5158. Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? 2019-10-24 02:22:34 noobly
    >I spent a disproportional time procrastinating on Craigslist and Slickdeals and flipping inventory between those venues Did you do this manually, or did you have some automation to help you out (finding deals, relisting, etc)? If so, what did that look like?

    And, out of curiosity, what's the hobbyist niche?

  5159. US Constitution – A Git repo with history of edits 2019-10-24 06:13:25 pault
    This is especially troublesome when you need to cover up those 50 years of procrastination on a project.

  5160. US Constitution – A Git repo with history of edits 2019-10-24 10:53:45 smitty1e
    You say 'procrastination' I say 'The means IS the end, yo!'.

  5161. US Constitution – A Git repo with history of edits 2019-10-24 13:48:39 shpx
    The fact that GitHub marks the initial commits as 2016, and says 48 years ago when you click on one, even though it clearly says 1787 in the commit message makes me sad.

    All these 6 figure salaries and we still can't write code that handles dates.

    How does someone look at a date and think it should only have two digits? How's it possible that someone could look at a system that only stores enough time for 68 years in future and think that's fine? Why is so much code written with the assumption that a year is a four digit number?

    The passage of time is guaranteed and yet programmers are somehow constantly surprised that it happens. The world is 14 billion years old and will exist for much much longer. Someone might need to write code dealing with any of those time periods, why do we make them expend mental effort on (what should be) such a reasonable, trivial task?

    We have the bits to spare. It's a strange form of collective procrastination.

  5162. Why Aren’t We Curious About the Things We Want to Be Curious About? 2019-10-24 18:52:20 vfinn
    One idea is that population competes for positions, and that restricts your choices early on. You could imagine that you're either pushed away or drawn into some position. Another point of view is to see your actions through constraints, which is an inter-related point of view to competition. You're bound by money, time, energy (you can do just so much), and other resources. You can see your situation also trough psychology. You have fears, traumas, addictions, etc. Then there's intelligence that translates into how good you're at creating goals, how good you're at seeing yourself, how good you're at listening yourself, how good you're at solving problems, and how aware you're of your current condition, etc. in addition to having the ability to become better at such matters.

    It's clear that all these things define how well you're in control what you're doing. There are a lot of outside sources of influences that you need to be aware of. All kind of distractions, commercials, games, noise, propaganda (manufacturing consent?). Your society wants you to do this, your employer wants you to do that, and often times you feel you have to give in, which means that you're fighting for control on a psychological level.

    Creating your life so that you're 100% in control all time is very difficult, if not possible, but you can become aware of what's happening in yourself as you click mindlessly trough the internet, or when you do things/tasks you don't really want to do. You can change yourself to overcome procrastination in order to become a person that knows what he's doing, not just because you have to, but because you want to. You want to take part in society, you want to work for good causes, etc. You want to study in university to get into a certain position. And all this will that you're aware of diminishes the amount of random choices you make, I claim.

  5163. Army War College paper predicts possible collapse of US military within 20 years 2019-10-25 04:21:00 throwaway5752
    The people that wrote this are serious people, and the person that commissioned it is a Trump appointee. It's bad that so many crises are happening at once. This can't be procrastinated on even one more year. This article links to a pdf report. The report is just as dire as the article. Your life is directly or indirectly in danger. This is no exaggeration.

    Fight against climate change and the interests that minimize it like your life and the life of your children depend on it.

  5164. Army War College paper predicts possible collapse of US military within 20 years 2019-10-25 04:46:49 WaltPurvis
    >This can't be procrastinated on even one more year.

    Wanna bet?

    I'm not trying to be snarky, but I wish there was any grounds to believe there will be significant action taken over the course of one more year, or one more decade, or...

  5165. Army War College paper predicts possible collapse of US military within 20 years 2019-10-25 04:49:43 throwaway5752
    That is a pedantic but valid point. We should not procrastinate. It would be terrible.

  5166. Focusmate – Virtual Coworking Helps You Get Things Done 2019-10-26 01:27:43 mellosouls
    Wrt your tldr solution to procrastination: You are possibly self-disciplined enough not to be their target market. It's not that easy for everybody.

    Different strokes...

  5167. Ask HN: What are unintended consequences of new tech you've noticed? 2019-10-26 09:35:16 vharuck
    In my college days, I played World of Warcraft too much. It got in the way of attending classes. Then my graphics card broke. So I started reading psychology textbooks totally unrelated to my classes.

    Procrastinators gonna procrastinate. And time-wasters gonna waste time.

  5168. Ask HN: What are your biggest roadblocks when building a new project/SaaS? 2019-10-26 12:52:46 break_the_bank
    My biggest hurdle is what Steven Pressfield calls the resistance. I come up with project ideas, get started and then start procrastinating. Coming back from the working and getting to work on my side project tops the list of hurdles, UI/UX is at the second place but far from the top.

  5169. Ask HN: Does anyone else struggle with procrastination when learning something? 2019-10-27 10:27:59 PopeDotNinja
    I think it's okay to procrastinate through something that's s really boring. For the last week I've been wrestling with Webpack because I've told myself that I should really be better at frontend stuff, and Webpack has been blocking me in just including stylesheets, JavaScript, fonts, and including a third party theme. It's not that hard, but it's really boring & frustrating to figure out, and the documentation for static assets in the web framework is quite stale. When. I do start working on it, my attention span wants to go elsewhere pretty fast.

    After a week of chipping away at it as I had time and interest, today it clicked and I started to get it. Sticking with it was key. You have to decide for yourself whether whatever you want to learn is worth the pain, but I think it is useful to learn to stick with things long enough to figure them out.

  5170. Law firm mistakes number of days in month, files appeal 1 day after deadline 2019-10-28 06:48:47 throwaway07Ju19
    IIRC a Ronco YC talk where he declared "procrastination is the devil".

    Except for unusual circumstances, waiting until the last day on a legal matter is unprofessional. I feel like I am misunderstanding this post.

  5171. Law firm mistakes number of days in month, files appeal 1 day after deadline 2019-10-28 07:21:14 patentatt
    Yeah, it’s usually not procrastination when it comes to legal deadlines. It is very common in many practices to purposely file on the deadline for a variety of reasons. Ripe for mistakes.

  5172. We May Not Have to Age So Fast 2019-10-28 18:09:50 jacobush
    I got you, I just cheekily tried to note that people are also excellent at procrastinating what they can.

  5173. Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work? 2019-10-28 18:23:00 majewsky
    [Not really automation, but I'm hijacking the opportunity to tell the story.]

    I'm a terrible morning person and I noticed that I need much longer to get up and dressed and everything than it reasonably should take. On the order of "taking 1 hour to do stuff that can be done in 15 minutes". I seem to have ADHD (disclaimer: not formally diagnosed, just going off of symptom lists and descriptions from other people), and that in combination with morning drowsiness seems to make me really ineffective at this point.

    So I wrote down a list of all the things that I need to do in the morning, together with an upper estimate of how long this is going to take. Think something like this:

      { "tasks": [
    { "label": "Make the bed", "duration": "60s" },
    { "label": "Morning wash", "duration": "3m" },
    { "label": "Get dressed", "duration": "2m" },
    ...
  ]}
    I built an application for my desktop PC that just runs down this playbook and always shows the current task, together with a timer for the current task as well as the overall playbook, in comically large fonts to fill the screen:

      PREPARE BREAKFAST

  Current: 04:45/05:00
  Total: 16:45/59:30
    There is no "Pause" button, only "Skip" for when a task is shorted than the alloted time. Also, the application can beep to signal "3-2-1-Over" at the end of each task, and each task can have a configurable beeping interval. The whole point of the system is to be breathing down my neck to stop me from procrastinating, and it works perfectly in that regard.

    Since starting with this tool a few weeks ago, my morning routine has gotten a bit shorter, but I also get more stuff done at the same time. I have a slot for meditation, so I'm now doing that semi-regularly in the morning. (I still skip it too often. Maybe I should make that task unskippable.) I have a slot for preparing a packed lunch, so I don't have to eat out as much and save some money in the process. With the time saved, I've switched my commute from tram to walking. I'm still tweaking the playbook here and there, but it already feels great to arrive at work in the morning knowing that I've already done several positive things for my well-being, rather than the bare minimum as it used to be.

  5174. Teens are spending nearly half their waking hours on screens 2019-10-29 21:56:11 rlv-dan
    Screen time really needs to be sorted into meaningful, productive usage, and recreation and procrastination.

  5175. Working from Home a Guide to Successfully Working from Home as a Engineer 2019-10-30 11:31:23 kemayo
    Something I find useful, related to the "have a home office" point, is to shuffle up my working location occasionally even though I have that dedicated office -- work at a coffee shop for a week, or at the dining room table, or rearrange my office so the desk is in a different orientation, or whatever.

    I find that this breaks up any accumulated association of a given work-space being a place where I've gotten distracted or procrastinated.

    I pretty much agree with the rest of the points, though I'm sure some are a matter of taste.

  5176. Is Stack Exchange in Violation of New York Labor Law? 2019-10-30 23:02:46 hombre_fatal
    I run a forum and there's no shortage of people who would happily volunteer for a mod role.

    You have it wrong though: they get plenty of compensation through reputation, clout, and a feeling of power over their peers and being heard and helping out in a community that they love (or some combo of these). That's why they do it. Why is that not a fair trade without money exchanging hands?

    Growing up, I used to mow an aging neighbor's lawn because he was basically couch-ridden. It made me feel good to help someone else out. Was I being exploited and should I have demanded payment, or was that just a fair trade that I volunteered for and could quit at any time?

    Or look no further than HN. Participating on this forum writing content and enriching YC's coffers is "labor". And our compensation is procrastination and venting and feeling some satisfaction for scrawling our opinions online. If we didn't like that deal, we wouldn't be here.

  5177. Thank You, Guido 2019-10-30 23:25:46 peterwwillis
    There has to be a term for when the business builds something with one tech stack, and then later, as if it was totally by surprise, realizes it needs to replace the whole thing, for basically no added business-value, and this happens every few years. I mean, everyone has known they would have to do this eventually, but it just kept being put off, like the business is a bad procrastinator. And they all do this.

  5178. Feeling stuck? Write a poem 2019-10-31 04:25:23 hiccuphippo
    Procrastination

        There's so much to do but I don't want to
    Such a bore to do but someone has to
    Browsing HN the clock's ticking
    Maybe the task will go away but it doesn't

  5179. Y Combinator for Non-Programmers 2019-11-01 03:53:29 procrastinatus
    This is superb!

  5180. Is Death Reversible? 2019-11-01 06:08:45 jodrellblank
    So let's assume that the universe is infinite in extent, and everything which can happen, does happen, infinite times. That means you are not the only "you" in the Universe.

    You may now commit suicide, safe in the knowledge that it doesn't matter, because there's no difference between the current you and the distant you.

    Unless you're now going to change tack and say it only counts if you're in each other's Light cone, and have seen each other, and understand the cloning machine's workings, and trust it was built correctly, and an endless amount of other procrastinating which proves that it does matter to you which one dies, and no matter what words you type, your behavior will show that you recognize a stark difference between "you" and "someone else".

    Clearly a condition "I know they exist" doesn't change whether you two are the same person or not, so that can't be an important part of it.

  5181. Can You Overdose on Happiness? 2019-11-02 03:16:08 zackmorris
    I'm intrigued by the idea that electrical brain stimulation might somehow take the place of damaged or disconnected parts of the brain. I stumbled onto these links the other day while researching concussion and depression:

    https://www.myrighttime.com/concussions-depression

    https://msktc.org/tbi/factsheets/depression-after-traumatic-...

    https://www.brainline.org/article/depression-after-brain-inj...

    http://healthland.time.com/2013/01/17/study-reveals-how-conc...

    In my case, I was a rambunctious kid who bumped his noggin dozens of times and I always wondered if that had an effect on my mood. I've struggled with depression off and on since my late teens, although I think that most of it was environmental. It can be difficult sometimes as creative people to find satisfaction in the workaday world when it's so far removed from the life of invention and fulfillment that we might imagine for ourselves.

    The interesting thing about concussion is that it doesn't always show up on brain scans because it can be microscopic tears in the white matter connecting different regions, rather than acute damage to a specific area. So maybe everything is working, but there is a delay or diminishment in inner monolog that makes everything feel like a struggle or seem like tasks require additional motivation that is difficult to maintain.

    It could manifest differently for everyone though, and the damage may or may not be permanent. I think that some of the trouble comes because we might rewire ourselves to cope with temporary damage, and then find ourselves caught in dysfunctional habits after the brain repairs itself via neuroplasticity. Similar things happen in the body with referred pain, where nerves report pain months or years after a muscle strain heals, for example. I’ve been experimenting with a TENS machine and after just 3 half-hour sessions, the pain in one of my shoulder blades is about 1/3 less than before.

    I also think there might be a connection with the limbic system, or whichever centers connect thought with external action. I’ve noticed that I can brainstorm like no tomorrow, or perform physical tasks like lifting weights, but combining the two to adapt physically under changing mental requirements and do things like home improvement projects can be taxing sometimes. The end result being that I’m not quite the self-motivator I once was, because it’s easier to procrastinate reading/writing about my interests or take direct orders from a boss than start my own project.

    So I’ve been experimenting with separating my goals and performing them temporally, using a to-do list. Maybe list what to do in the morning, then perform the steps in the afternoon or the next day. The idea being that any of us can write an outline of how to achieve our dreams, hopefully incorporating mindfulness meditation practices (aka The Secret), then diligently follow those steps by reporting to ourselves as our own boss and achieve some level of spiritual independence and satisfaction in our lives.

    Some keywords that helped me research this are SSRI, SNRI and adult crawling. YMMV though as I’m a bit of a mind hacker (certainly not a doctor) and have never been on antidepressants.

  5182. Ask HN: How is your mental health? 2019-11-06 06:04:53 jshowa3
    Horrible as always. Constantly stressed out. Pulled in 3 different directions at work. Can't get meaningful work done. Procrastinating. Etc.

  5183. Ask HN: How is your mental health? 2019-11-06 14:30:40 sanzomebe
    I start off in a new job feeling pretty ok, but quickly it just devolves into procrastination and anxiety. I feel to anxious to open my emails so I don't reply to anything and don't get anything done.

    I actually took a remote job (hah) thinking that maybe getting out of the office environment would help. Nope, now all communication was online it felt even more stressful. They thought I'd been hit by a car or something when I just stopped contacting them.

    Now my resume looks like swiss cheese and it's hard to even get interviews now. I mean, why would you hired someone who has so many short stints at so many different jobs.

    I went to a top school as well, so I have to put up seeing my schoolmates making their millions and living lavish lifestyles. I just want a simple life and a job that I can do for more than a year.

  5184. South Koreans fake their funerals for life lessons 2019-11-06 21:09:12 icebraining
    "Carpe diem" is just misunderstood. It's more an advice against procrastination than a suggestion to ignore the future.

  5185. Start before you think you’re ready 2019-11-07 08:01:57 ergothus
    Some people need a push to dive in, because they'll never feel ready. That's whom the article uses as examples.

    OTHER people though, they know that, from where they are at now, they'll be past the "challenged" stage and be put into the "fear" response - overwhelmed, unable to make progress forward because the anxiety is crippling. The constant pushing from those who have been in the first group just makes the people in the second group feel worse.

    We should all consider if we're delaying for good/effective/self-helping reasons, or if we're doing so for bad/ineffective/procrastination reasons, and then we should act appropriately.

    And no one should shame anyone for their choices. Maybe the choice is wrong, maybe we're identifying ourselves as having the wrong quality of reasoning...but who would know better than ourselves?

    Imposter Syndrome sucks - but the reality of it is no reason to cripple yourself by diving into situations you know you aren't ready for, and then flailing and validating the feelings you had.

  5186. Start before you think you’re ready 2019-11-07 09:32:39 chipotle_coyote
    It's perhaps worth keeping in mind that Kleon is giving this advice about writing books, and that in context, this isn't "you can do it" pithy advice of the sort that DayDollar's comment is mocking. The quote from David McCullough seems to be at the heart of his point:

    "When I began, I thought that the way one should work was to do all the research and then write the book. In time I began to understand that it’s when you start writing that you really find out what you don’t know and need to know."

    You do have to do some research; you don't charge into your project with no plan. But not only does trying to make the Most Bestest Completest Plan Ever end up being a form of procrastination (see all those folks who've spent years doing worldbuilding for their great epic fantasy novel but still can't tell you what the protagonist's character arc is, or possibly even who the protagonist is, period), it turns out that once you start actually working on the project you get a much, much better sense of what the plan needs to be. You figure out what to write in that part of your outline that says "subplot about Gail's past starts here". You start figuring out more about what the Thing your [Insert Thing] as a Service startup actually needs to insert and so on.

  5187. Why it took 12 weeks to ship an MVP I thought would take 3 2019-11-08 07:36:27 m0zg
    That's why, when people ask me to estimate work, I tell them that if they need a hard deadline things will (counterintuitively) take much longer, and try to convince them that hard deadlines are bullshit. If you want a hard deadline, I have no choice but to allocate a huge amount of buffer time, at least twice the "aggressive" estimate so that if shit doesn't go as planned (which is what usually happens) I don't miss the deadline. And I have to plan for the worst possible kind of excrement hitting the fan, which is not realistic. And then, in spite of that, people are still under more stress, because procrastination being in human nature, hard shit gets done last, and there's more in it that can go wrong.

    Consider instead shipping stuff incrementally, feature by feature, when features are done, without any hard deadlines. Both the speed of delivery and quality will be improved compared to hard deadline driven development.

    Plans are worthless. Planning is indispensable.

  5188. Falling Back to an Older MacBook Pro 2019-11-08 07:53:08 peterburkimsher
    I use a MacBook Pro 15" Retina mid-2014 as my main laptop. The screen is beautiful. I upgraded it with a 2TB SSD (Apple OEM from a Mac Pro, but Intel 660P works with an adaptor), and an Adam mDrive SD adaptor (currently 400GB, but hopefully 1 TB or 2TB eventually).

    Recently I bought some more Thunderbolt 2 adaptors (they're getting hard to find). A dual USB and Ethernet adaptor has been very useful, I didn't realise how often I need 3 USB ports. The Transcend JetDrive 855 is also great for using the old SSD over Thunderbolt, and also supports M.2 using an adaptor.

    Earlier this year my spare laptop was a 2013 MacBook Air 13". My dad's MacBook Pro 13" mid-2015 had a swollen battery, so he bought a new laptop and told me I could inherit his old one if I repair it. So I gave the Air to my girlfriend. The reflective coating is peeling off the 2015 Pro's screen, and that makes it look worse. But the battery life is still much better than my 15", for reasons I don't totally understand but is probably related to background processes.

    About a month ago, I repaired a friend's Mac SE, and he gave me his 15" MacBook Pro 2007! That was the computer I had when I went off to university. Oh, how I love that keyboard. It feels amazing. The keys blend together without the holes in between, it's a joy to type on. Now I'm upgrading it with a dual USB 3.0 ExpressCard 34 adaptor and a new battery, and I'm wondering about buying a 4 TB Samsung 860 EVO (or two, one for the optical bay). That would give it more capacity than my main laptop!

    I'm still procrastinating the SSD upgrade, because I wonder if new 2.5" SATA drives will be released with even more capacity, e.g. 6TB or 8TB. It seems like Samsung often schedule product releases in November, so if I haven't heard by the end of the month, I'll probably just order it. If a new 4 TB M.2 drive comes out then that would be nice too, for my main laptop. There's also the possibility of a dual M.2 to SATA adaptor, but then the M.2 drives need to support SATA and I think the 2TB Intel 660P doesn't.

  5189. Dopamine Fasting 2019-11-08 18:52:12 basq
    This is something I came to slowly realize in the search for repairing my attention/depression issues. So far I've been getting good results. It started with giving up amphetamines (adderall, vyvanse), when that didn't do the trick, I removed alcohol and caffiene from my diet. The benefits I experienced led to stop smoking marijuana as well. That one was the toughest to give up, the anhedonia was torturous. It was like my brain forgot how to make dopamine. I couldn't enjoy any activity.

    It's been 38 days since I stopped smoking, and it seems that things are starting to improve. I'm able to work on my creative endeavors again in multiple short bursts. I've also massively cut down on porn consumption (from daily to biweekly on average, but trying to get rid of it all). As well as halved my newsmedia consumption (an avg of 10 hours a week down to 5, another thing I want to get close to zero).

    I've been reading a lot more, mostly philosophy (stoicism, daoism), but also worked through some other self help books as well as some science fiction. Still playing lots of games but, Im using it as my support system for the time being. Eventually I want to get even games down to just a very select few titles.

    It's am ongoing process, tempting to want to rid myself of everything but that would be setting myself up for failure, too overwhelming. Must ease into things. the benefits have been manifold, discipline, concentration, memory, emotional control have all improved, which cascade into fitness, eating better, getting work done, less procrastination, and my favorite: more time. Bill Burr said "a year sober is the longest year of your life" and it's true, the clock passes so much slower, which is great, life is starting to feel plentiful again.

    Anyway, I digress. But what I did notice is that is all comes back to dopamine. Some activities seem to give it more sustainably, others supernormally. And by limiting supernormal stimuli, we should expect to see positive effects.

  5190. Immediate brain plasticity after one hour of brain–computer interface 2019-11-09 00:11:42 drawkbox
    Yeah but learning or completing tasks give a bit of dopamine so maybe learning in short bursts becomes addicting through successive iterations.

    When you work, you have large tasks, you break them up into smaller tasks, you learn along the way, and you get fueled by dopamine to continue. You learn and use your knowledge to work through tasks that are standard and dynamic in terms of change. Easier to do large projects/tasks by breaking it in small tasks rather than one big task. Lots of 'getting things done' or todo management plans gamify the dopmamine hits into small tasks. Each task can remove or add more work depending on how you complete them or how much you think about them to optimize or reduce work. There is weight to each decision but also forward movement and tasks being completed which gives dopamine.

    With online communities you are both learning and teaching on each iteration (comment/post) which when you post is a task being completed. The process is pretty standard and easy to repeat and focus on your points. The learning part is new information you get, the teaching part is formulating your response and refinement. Repeated actions like this refine and polish your ideas and understanding of the world. All of that is probably a dopamine hit combined with a bit of social aspect that may increase it. The impact of that task is low so it is easy to attack repeatedly, much like an addictive game cycle. There is little weight to each decision but also forward movement and the appearance/feeling of tasks being completed which gives dopamine.

    When you are sitting in front of your big project with all the tasks and smaller tasks that have real impact, next to the addicting short burst communities with all sorts of new and old ideas and discussions from learning about space or politics to jokes and memes with low impact, the online communities/information/learning can outweigh your work/project as the former seems to become a bigger draw if you aren't careful. It is almost easier to feel like you have been doing things posting on reddit/HN until you break out of a focus state and realize that is taking from your work time, but easy to slip into due to the amazing breadth of information and topics, where work is just focused usually.

    Both situations your brain is probably in plasticity states and getting dopamine from the learning and teaching short tasks.

    It is probably best to have multiple projects you are working on one serious and one with more open creative mode so that procrastination is at least on work during worktime and addiction to distractions is limited. Creating addicting game cycles to give dopamine hits and repeated addictive cycles is very evident also in social media or online discussion, like the little reddit notification. You can easily go spend 15 minute breaks from work and end up hours into a reddit/HN/social discussion.

    The plasticity of the brain in internet discussions also has our mind in a receptive state, so that is why online misinformation/disinformation is probably so able to propagate as well. The brain is open to new information and marketers/propagandists probably love that state to manipulate.

  5191. Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill available time 2019-11-10 08:22:59 gdulli
    I have a strategy based on the inverse of this. Sometimes there's a task that I know I'll spend too long deliberating about, or stretching out by getting on and off task due to procrastination. So I leave it until that last minute, that way I can't waste time by spending more time on it than I should.

  5192. Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill available time 2019-11-10 11:30:48 dghughes
    I remember this law when in college taking project management. I have a terrible habit of working until the deadline is imminent (submitting via dropbox/email/electronically is terrible for people like me). I wasn't really procrastinating since I started early as soon as the assignment was given. But I would keep writing, rewriting, refining, deleting until my report was a monster.

  5193. Makers, Don't Let Yourself Be Forced into the 'Manager Schedule' 2019-11-12 02:57:20 gwbas1c
    Without knowing much about your situation, this could indicate either poor culture in your company, or poor management. In other words, is this really a sign that you should get another job (or another assignment under someone else)?

    That being said, assuming you like your job / manager:

    > I’ve broached the topic lightly with my manager but don’t want to come across as whining, so I’ve generally just been trying to push back on meetings in the friendliest way that I can.

    Don't broach the topic lightly. Be very direct. "I have too many meetings, and I need to reduce them. As a result, I'm doing too much work at home. This is a problem for my family."

    See where that goes. Before you discuss this, though, there are some things to consider:

    Some people hold meetings as a form of procrastination, or as a way to feel important. It's important to figure out which of your meetings are these kinds, and decline them.

    It's also worth looking at how to hold an effective meeting. When I worked at Intel in 2005, "effective meetings" was part of onboarding for all new employees. It gave us a lot of tools to pushback on bogus meetings, including a clear culture of declining bogus meetings.

    It's important that you set some clear boundaries / limits, and not give in at all. (Even if this means finding a new job or assignment with a different manager.) What that something is, really depends on your relationships with your manager and peers. It could be that you decline meetings, (as other people suggest,) or it could be that you demand better planned meetings in order to attend. What's important is that you set some clear boundaries, and leave if they aren't respected.

    Finally, if you don't get much support from your manager, and you still like your job, I suggest bringing the problem up the chain of command.

  5194. Show HN: Avoid editing while writing your first draft 2019-11-12 05:02:10 robbrown451
    All I can say is, I am old enough that I remember when writing rough drafts, by hand, on paper, was how you did writing. If you changed your mind right after you wrote something, it was awful because you had to squeeze it in between the lines or in the margins or draw circles and arrows and such.

    I hated writing then. It was just painful. I procrastinated any writing assignment till 2am the night before it was due.

    Now I love writing. Writing is often something I do when I'm procrastinating something else. (ummm, that would include right now I guess)

    I'm not a linear thinker and forcing myself to do it that way would just be a way to make me hate writing again.

  5195. Ask HN: What is your ML stack like? 2019-11-13 07:51:50 MrSaints
    We are currently experimenting with workflow engines for orchestrating different components, e.g. data ingestion, data preprocessing, feature engineering, scoring, automated decision making / escalation. Namely, Argo for offline processing, and bulk processing; Zeebe, and Cadence (trying both out) for online processing, and business logic / application services.

    We don't yet have a polyglot architecture, but we do have the requirement of running distributed services (partly because there are certain components of the pipeline that needs to be run on-premise), and we have found that workflow engines / orchestrators definitely makes it a lot easier to reason about the wider architecture / have a bird's eye view. It works for us. No need to handle callbacks, events, queues, etc. We also do have the potential to run a polyglot architecture.

    We tried out Celery Workflows, and struggled to get it "production ready", so I'd advise against this for complex workflows. We also found the visibility lacking.

    We have yet to fully try out Kubeflow, and MLflow. What is not quite working at the moment is creating, and deploying portable models. And I don't mean simply pickling, and storing an artifact.

    Leveraging containers (Docker), and slapping simple anti-corruption layers (e.g. simple web APIs) has also helped. We have a more consistent way of deploying, and isolating code without having to rewrite much.

    We want to look into using Nuclio, and/or knative to ease the process of deployment, and to empower the data scientists to deliver without much engineering expertise.

    Others have mentioned using base classes or standard interfaces for their models. We tried this too, but it didn't work. The generalisation early on was met with conflicting requirements, and broke the interface segregation principle (not that it matters too much, but it can be confusing to not know precisely what is being used or not used). We figured it's much easier to procrastinate any abstractions. Let the data, and it's flow do the talking.

  5196. Ask HN: What do you do when have free time? 2019-11-13 14:43:39 mihemihe
    I have been doing the same during the last 20 years approximately, getting home and:

    - Browse internet (Reddit, hacker news, or whatever site that was popular back then) - Gaming - Learning some IT stuff, either related to my job or not - Coding

    Few months ago, I have started to get out of the screen and doing something else because that way of living was literally killing me. I got extremely lazy, a bit overweight, atrophied muscles, back starting to bend, procrastinating more often, having brain fog more often, not having enough social life, losing communication skills because of not having contact with other humans.

    I started running, going to the gym, doing weights, pinging friends to go visit them, reading books not related with IT, going to organized running events during weekends, cooking, and other activities, going to smoke outside the house/hotel and definitely allocating some time for my old past-times(internet, gaming, coding, learning). This has completely changed my life:

    - I feel more energetic, sleep better and wake up fresher. - I reached my ideal weight - I am getting my muscles toned and increased flexibility - I have have found joy on doing things not attached to a keyboard and mouse (like cooking) - I have improved the relationship with my friends. - And in general I am happier than before.

    I do not know how old are you, or if your question was intended to look for fancy things to do in your free time, but, I can tell you honestly:

    Please, DO NOT stay sit in a chair after work in an isolated environment for the next years to come. Hit the gym, reconnect with friends, look for alternative hobbies, and reduce the time dedicated to the screen. Your 20-years older self will thank you.

    The only thing I have not been able to achieve is stop smoking. Many tries, no success, but I hope I will achieve this by the end of the year.

  5197. Google plans to partner with banks to offer checking accounts 2019-11-14 03:47:43 jdgoesmarching
    As a Gsuite user for 4-5 years, it's funny when I run up against Google services that work for free personal accounts but not my paid account.

    I've been meaning to migrate to Exchange/o365, it's in my backlog of projects that I'm procrastinating.

  5198. Wait Wait Tell Me: The Psychology of Loading Screens 2019-11-15 08:08:41 IIAOPSW
    I have the same issue and my only active addons are procrastination guard and adblock. It happens at startup when there are no tabs, but I frequently have between 10 and 20 tabs.

  5199. If you're busy, you're doing something wrong (2011) 2019-11-15 17:13:01 TeMPOraL
    I have a bit of that, I'm "busy" even when procrastinating. I think I developed this as a defense mechanism in my teens - when I seemed busy or said I was busy, people bothered me less with random nonsense and "win-lose delegation"[0]. I had huge problems saying "no" to people when younger, so whenever I felt overwhelmed, I would instead present myself as super busy to avoid paying the social costs of refusing a request for assistance.

    --

    [0] - asking me to help with something which would take them a small fraction of the time and effort it takes me. Wasting an hour of someone else's time to save yourself a few minutes is something I consider an extremely disrespectful thing to do.

  5200. If you're busy, you're doing something wrong (2011) 2019-11-16 00:29:15 qzx_pierri
    This article spoke directly to me! I’m in college right now completing a fairly difficult class, or so I was told.. A lot of my classmates tell me the class is so hard, but I think it’s easy so far. I asked most of them how they study, and they all tell me the same thing: They skim through the textbook AFTER hearing the lecture, and cram hard before the test.

    I do the opposite. As soon as I wake up in the morning I read the book for one hour, then I stop. I do this every day, weekends included. I also read the chapter before the lecture so it’s still interesting, and any questions I have, I can ask the professor during the lecture. Once I finish the chapter assigned for the week, I split this session into 30 minutes of creating Anki flashcards, and 30 minutes studying those Anki flashcards. I score significantly higher than the rest of the class.

    I just learned how to do this at the start of the semester thanks to commenters on HN, and it has changed my life. This also deals with my attention lowering after about the 1 hour mark of reading, but the concept is still the same. Before, I would procrastinate on reading, and spend most of my days playing video games. Now, I spend most of my day playing video games, but it’s always a very relaxed, guilt free gaming session because I already know I read for an hour. I hope I’m not rambling here.

  5201. Ask HN: Do you write tests before the implementation? 2019-11-16 00:38:56 corodra
    Procrastinating and having your attention pulled in multiple places are two different problems. You acknowledge it's easier and want to do the dishes immediately. But when you realize your two year old is painting the walls with poop or filled the toilet with all the toilet paper and tried flushing, resulting in a flood... Everyone can agree, that takes slightly more precedence than dishes.

  5202. If you're busy, you're doing something wrong (2011) 2019-11-16 00:51:52 techopoly
    I had a similar experience in college. In the classes I did best in, I studied for consistently throughout the week, working out problems and reading the book on my own. Then, when test time came, I still studied, but I largely understood the material already.

    After a calculus class ended for the semester, I had the professor tell me that I was the only student that understood a certain basic concept of the class. I don't attribute that to me having a masterful intelligence, just that I happened to be diligent in the class and figured out a system based on seeking to really understand the material instead of just pass the tests.

    The classes where I heavily procrastinated, I had more trouble with, or at least much more stress. There was one class where I procrastinated and then speed-read 300-400 pages in the textbook the days before the midterm, and aced the midterm...but that was really a freak exception to the rule. It probably did me a disservice, thinking I could do the same for other classes and still succeed.

  5203. Ask HN: Do you write tests before the implementation? 2019-11-16 01:25:50 hombre_fatal
    > So, I'm just confused in general why people wait.

    Really, though?

    It's simple procrastination which is always illogical.

    Present-self buys temporary comfort at the expense of future-self.

  5204. If you're busy, you're doing something wrong (2011) 2019-11-16 05:15:16 BBalzagn
    Can you expand on your process? or provide the original HN posts that helped you form this process? I've struggled with conceptualizing a proper routine for approaching work/study and incorporating it into my life properly sans dreading it/procrastinating the work.

  5205. The Power of Shower Thoughts: Trusting Your Mind to Work in the Background 2019-11-17 23:23:46 1_player
    I would expect the opposite instead. I don't know him personally and this is conjecture based on what I've read about him, but his being totally immersed in a particular subject, to the extent of going to a thinking retreat in a cabin, is the best way to reach those Eureka moments.

    I've written in the past about this, let me copy an old comment of mine:

    "Let me share a tip that might work for you as well then: some times you will procrastinate heavily because you're have a hard problem with no solution in sight. You'll want to make some semblance of progress, but you just can't sit down and concretely work on it.

    It's by design! Your subconscious keeps working in the background, thinking outside the box until one day out of nowhere you get the solution right before your eyes.

    I'm not sure it's possible to think outside the box if you're not procrastinating, since you need other types of unrelated input for your brain to make a different type of association and reach a conclusion from another perspective.

    I'd like to read more about this phenomenon but has been one of my best tricks up my sleeve in my career. Recently I've been trying to write down a complex piece of code, the corner stone of my application critical to the whole business. I've spent weeks on that problem, tried and failed to design a working solution, spent hours reading papers during working time instead of writing anything, browsing HN mindlessly, until after 2 months, out of the blue at 4am looking at cat pics on reddit I found the answer. And I'm now enjoying this newfound wave of productivity until my next hard problem"

  5206. Thousands flock to Wikipedia founder's 'Facebook rival' 2019-11-20 01:37:57 tekkk
    Well can't say I'm not curious, but €90 a year is a lot of money.

    To pay that for just another service for procrastination? Maybe I'll pass. Although I definitely support the idea.

  5207. Thousands flock to Wikipedia founder's 'Facebook rival' 2019-11-20 01:56:26 aiscapehumanity
    Procrastinating is a weird word to use?

  5208. Show HN: Hide Likes Everywhere 2019-11-22 08:06:38 thisBrian
    It seemed pretty clear that the GP was saying if the platform already shows points/likes, hiding them only from yourself is a disadvantage.

    With that said, I believe it can function similar to all those no-procrastination tools; allowing those that want to stop the feedback loop of likes to ween themselves off of it. More of a personal growth tool than a societal solution.

  5209. Average product lifespan of Google products before it kills them 2019-11-23 07:40:32 tzs
    > I love that you sent them Rokus. Most companies would just tell them they are out of luck and to go buy something.

    Amazon did something in between those two when the Prime Video app on some Sony Blu-ray players lost support. I'm not sure if they lost support because Sony was no longer interested in pushing updates to those players, or Amazon was no longer interested in writing their app for them, but for whatever reason they were going to stop working.

    What Amazon did was sent users a coupon, good for the next two months, for $25 off on a Fire TV Stick, Fire TV Stick 4K, or Fire TV Cube.

    For quite a while during that two months, Fire TV Stick was on sale for 24.99, so with that coupon was essentially free if you didn't procrastinate too much.

  5210. Launch HN: InsideSherpa (YC W19) – online courses to train then hire students 2019-11-23 13:02:28 taylanu
    [1] I went through the JPMorgan Virtual Internship Experience, and honestly, at first, I watched the videos, got interested, then closed out the tab. I delayed and procrastinated for weeks before truly diving into it.

    Over two days on and off in between classes, I got personal support from the team at InsideSherpa and completed the program. The guides were incredibly helpful, and I felt like I learned a lot from the modules. It was great seeing a finished product in the end with a live price ratio graph. Highly recommend the program!

  5211. The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius 2019-11-23 21:47:09 loopz
    Indeed. There are studies about grit and determination over time being strong indicators for possible later success. In any endeavour having some unknown value, overlooked by others, there will be periods where you feel all alone, experience some disinterest or need to grit through some necessary activities/work in order to push forward. There will not always be happy feelings about what you do or even why you do it, though such feelings will be more on the level of superficial aversion and procrastination. In activities and studies with heavy competition, that competition will be extremely hard to beat. Both may be overcome by grit and determination, while those with natural abilities or superior training, often give up earlier due to various unrelated reasons.

  5212. End of a Decade 2019-11-25 13:26:04 thundergolfer
    There's a lot of.. weird stuff in here.

    - The idea that Apple, Amazon, and Google entering into healthcare would be taking healthcare services "away from centralized gatekeepers." What?

    - Two lines about Climate Change in the whole post, and the 2nd is "We’ll remember this as the decade of unfortunate procrastination." That's quite the understatement.

    - "We’ve also had more equal access to the good parts of economic growth." This needs explanation. Who is "we"? What are the "good parts" and the "bad parts" of growth?

    - "Everything has gone from centralized to distributed." No, not everything. In many important ways the opposite has happened. eg. corporate conglomeration.

  5213. Writing an Interpreter in Go – Thorsten Ball 2019-11-25 22:24:28 azhenley
    Highly recommend this book. After reading it (and the compiler book by the same author), I started my own compiler for Knox, a Go-like language. It has been a fun project, but I made some bad decisions regarding the type checker and how I store the AST, so I'm currently procrastinating fixing those. You can check out the source here:

    https://github.com/AZHenley/knox/

  5214. Older IT Workers Left Out Despite Tech Talent Shortage 2019-11-26 09:19:28 Iv
    My skills are still up to par :-) But that's because my skills are not in using a specific library or in a specific technique. I was lucky to have engineering teachers who were very adamant that engineering was about understanding, learning, problem solving and the ability to adapt to new tools.

    It is almost reluctantly that they taught us a programming language, knowing it may become obsolete by the time we finish our curriculum. But they spent a lot of time explaining notions in algorithmics, architecture, mathematics and electronics constraints that I could easily get into the new techs as they arrived.

    Maybe I was not clear in my previous message. No, computer vision is not less relevant, quite the contrary. But a lot of the techniques we used to have, and where I was kind of pretty expert, were replaced by much better DL models.

    I saw that in a very direct way. In a previous job (I am a freelancer) I had to make a classifier to judge if a robotic gripper worked correctly. Did not look too hard. I got a few hundreds of OK/NOK cases, fired up my OpenCV custom program and started hacking. I found some good parameters, found that by extracting some blob and computing the diameter/area ratio I could make a good classifier for most cases and managed to get a decent classifier for a huge class of the remaining samples.

    After 3 days of work, I had a classifier with a 80% accuracy. That's pretty good for that amount of work. But in the end the client decided to go with deep learning. "Oh, they'll be back" I thought, pretty sure they would find out it is just hype and they did not have enough data. They did not come back.

    Two months later, a client asks me to evaluate some deep learning techniques and pays me enough so that I can spend two weeks getting up to speed in it. I fire up all the tutorials I can find (FastAI classes are very good for people in my case) and one of them is doing transfer learning using VGG. I thought about the previous problem I had and thought that I would give it a go.

    First run, no tweaking of parameters, no normalization, ugly scaling, no change in the model, I got 87% of accuracy. Using a tutorial anyone can do in 3 hours outperformed what I did in 3 days with (what I thought were) valuable and hard-earned skills.

    I know specialize in deep learning but still retain a lot of very useful knowledge from classic computer vision and robotics.

    CS is a field were experience is less automatic than in others. Experience can actually be a drag for an old engineer who stops to learn. We are in a Faustian pact with technology: we are surfing the wave a bit in front of the others but the day you stumble, you are going to fall back-first on the cutting reefs.

    My main advice would be to always learn and read new things. Reading tech articles, trying new libs, new frameworks while at work? This is not procrastinating, this is staying alive.Take time to understand new tech in details. To go deeper than just "going by" requires. Don't understand why SSDs require new kind of databases with different constraints? Well maybe you need to take a dive into database design and IO bottlenecks. Don't understand why Facebook pushes for a new type of float for parallel computing? Time to dive into IEEE 754 and brush up your maths skills.

    And yes, this is engineering work. Your employers will often see engineering like a bit of black magic. They are not sure how it works, but they want it. Staying up to date is a part of this magic that they need without knowing they need it. But at one point, you'll be the one your boss turns to (trying to hide his confused look) when asked by a client if you can support Kulisch accumulation and will be very happy that you read about it during your work time.

  5215. Emacs: The Editor for the Next Forty Years 2019-11-26 23:07:54 k33n
    Oh Emacs. A graybeard I respect got me to try it about 5 years ago. I used to walk by his machine and think "wow, in a movie about a hacker, this is what their computer screen would look like". I also thought Magit was pretty damn cool because it made interacting with Git extremely intuitive (once you're comfortable with Emacs).

    In the years since first picking up Emacs, I have probably spent 100 hours or more configuring it, reconfiguring it, refactoring my configuration, and other things that wasted my time I'm not going to make the world a better place by configuring my editor. I'm going to do it by shipping code.

    I'm a recovering terminal junkie. I had a problem. I was bored with my work so I wanted to challenge myself. Maybe I even enjoyed procrastinating a little.

  5216. Ask HN: What to do when ghosted halfway through an interview process 2019-11-26 23:43:27 blowski
    There can be all sorts of reasons for this, many completely outside your control, and possibly outside the control of your recruiter.

    In one of the first situations where I had to hire someone, I got caught up in politics during recruitment. I kept procrastinating on the difficult conversation I needed to have with somebody I interviewed. I’m not proud that I effectively ghosted somebody, but the whole thing made me feel so rubbish that I wanted to stick my head in the sand. Another time, somebody told me they’d called all the candidates - turns out he only called some of them due to an innocent mistake.

    In your position, I’d make clear that you’re worried about losing other offers, so you need a response by end of Thursday or you’re going to withdraw your application (or something like that). See if you can also go through the generic company address, in case somebody’s off sick and not dealing with emails.

  5217. The Zen of Weight Lifting 2019-11-27 03:30:56 neogodless
    This is something I'm pretty sure I'm missing right now.

    Since I got started in cross country running in high school, which included just the most modest of weight training, I've been interested in it. I'd often have gym memberships, and dabble with the various machines, trying to cover muscle groups.

    Eventually, I joined fitocracy.com when it was young and full of active members. It was there that I learned about Starting Strength, and where the programming rewarded logging barbell activities much more than running or using a machine. Before long, I had bought the Starting Strength and began teaching myself the movements. I began with little or no weight, and using videos I took of myself to improve my form. I also paid more attention to dietary intake, and used If It Fits Your Macros (IIFYM) to design my daily goals for macronutrients.

    The results were manifold. Of course I got stronger - barbell lifts done right are so much more efficient and effective than any chaotic routine, or even somewhat organized attempts with machines. I was visibly in better shape. But I was also naturally more confident, more in tune with the world around me. As the article mentions, I was seeing how my own decisions were affecting my life, and I would direct myself in other areas to zero in on decisions within my areas of control and concern. My energy increased and my focus improved on the job. I was able to find a healthy relationship that continues today.

    However. I lost my way. Eventually the habit was interrupted and was never fully restored. Today, I'm distracted, procrastinating on a task I've procrastinated for too long already. I'm irritable and I don't want to waste my day at the office, but I'll go home, and I won't make good use of my time their either. I'll snack too often and grab unhealthy things.

    Of course I'm not saying that this one habit will fix all of your problems, but it is a bit of a foundational habit, and it can leak into other areas of your life. And, of course, strength is helpful! You can move furniture and chop wood and have the bad posture on your office chair you were going to have anyway, but with a stronger back, you'll find yourself injured less often. So I recommend it, and I hope I can take my own advice!

  5218. I'm not burned out, I'm pissed off 2019-11-27 21:42:39 tempguy9999
    People always do the right thing and don't dither, don't procrastinate, always evaluate the long term consequences? Sure they do.

  5219. Ask HN: How do you cut down on HN? 2019-11-28 08:39:33 z3t4
    What we call procrastination might not be a bad thing. It makes you relax and gain energy for a task. I did however have to quit Facebook... With HN I get energized and inspired, while Facebook was just a time killer, and often made me feel bad about myself. I do however feel bad when I get downvoted - sometimes when I think my comment was the most constructive comment on the topic. I think instead of downvoting arrow there should be a select list with several options like "I don't agree", "this is spam", "you are trolling", etc, in order to give some feedback both for the poster but also for fine-tuning HN algorithms and polices. Upvoting should also be a select box with options like "I agree", "helpful", "interesting", "save for later", etc.

  5220. Domes are overrated 2019-11-29 06:39:43 jacobwilliamroy
    It is a moronic argument. Try building a self-sufficient city on earth first. I think space colonialists will be surprised just how difficult it is.

    Solving interplanetary space travel is the most expensive form of procrastination I have ever seen.

  5221. Ask HN: What has made you a better problem solver in software engineering? 2019-11-29 09:09:26 muzani
    Scientific method. I'm not being presumptuous.

    When coming across a problem, I type out all hypotheses on a notepad.

    Microphone doesn't work on app? Is it this device specifically? Is it the file system? Faulty recording code? Null pointer somewhere?

    Then I find the simplest, hackiest way to (dis)prove the hypothesis. Be sure to narrow down the test as far as possible.

    What a lot of people do is just bash random things, often the simplest hypothesis, repeat that same thing for half an hour, do something else, then repeat what they tried earlier. Or in somewhat tougher problems like pathfinding, where each hypothesis takes an hour to test, a lot of people get intimidated and procrastinate.

  5222. McMindfulness: How mindfulness became the new capitalist spirituality 2019-11-30 07:57:06 toyg
    Embracing mindfulness practices literally saved my business this year. It has turned me into a machine, my productivity has skyrocketed. I work alone and from home most days, procrastination was a massive issue - but now just clearing my head twice a day through a simple routine ensures I never shy away from anything.

    I am not interested in the religious aspect, as much as I respect the fact that the practice as we know it evolved through the ages thanks to Buddhist and Hindu monks. I don’t see a problem with it: one doesn’t have to be Christian to appreciate Latin calligraphy, or to be Muslim to appreciate algebra.

    This said, the critique against corporate entities coopting the practice is predictable and inevitable. If any human technique or technology can be put to good use in order to make money, it will be. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use it. A pen can be used to write a novel or a prison sentence, it doesn’t mean the pen itself is bad or that we are somehow “betraying” the intentions of the original inventors of pens.

    (Edit: i also don’t think I could ever really meditate with other people... I bet most of these corporate congregations actually achieve very little and are just another social occasion for the people involved).

  5223. Urbit 2019-12-02 00:52:32 huevo5050
    From https://urbit.org/blog/a-founders-farewell/ :

    "Urbit's internal opacity persists for two reasons, one good and one bad. The bad reason is just laziness. The good reason is justified fear of premature explanation, which like premature optimization ruins the annealing process.

    When you don't know exactly what you're doing, preserve as much ambiguity as possible. For example, a name that means something is a commitment to one specific explanation; a name that means nothing is no commitment at all. A cryptic name is productive procrastination; it lets the hard problem of naming get solved later, and hence better."

  5224. We ran the numbers, and there really is a pipeline problem in engineering hiring 2019-12-05 16:25:31 iovrthoughtthis
    Perhaps. My experience of people comfortable in, and enjoying their job is that they are good at it and do it, usually quite socially.

    Procrastination or “wasting time on instagram” would be better described as a symptom of dissatisfaction or discomfort.

  5225. Busyness leads to bad decisions 2019-12-06 00:37:46 hippich
    My procrastination works as such filter. If 10 weeks later I still care about it, it is probably something important. Doesn't work that well for security-related issues (where 10 weeks might be too late...)

  5226. This Will Make You a More Productive Procrastinator 2019-12-06 05:31:45 toyg
    This does not really work, at least for the pathological procrastinators. I know because I’ve lived most of my life like that. It made me pretty good at side activities that will do little for my wellbeing or my financial and social success. Using the author’s example: if you read a lot but you only get paid to write, sooner or later real life will show you the bill. Yes, all that reading might come useful here or there, but the value/time ratio will be abysmally low - and at the back of your mind, the negative feeling of having wasted time will reinforce a downward spiral of negativity and self-hatred.

    I think I turned a corner on this issue recently, but I don’t want to preach and everyone is different. I just want to say: if your procrastination is at chronic levels, you have to accept you’re powerless, seek professional help, and sincerely commit to the solutions they suggest. It can take very little to fix, but it’s often impossible to do if you don’t admit to yourself that you’ve lost control.

  5227. Ask HN: With ADHD, how did you become an effective software developer? 2019-12-06 06:03:20 adhddev
    Backstory: I'm a senior engineer at one of the world's top 10 tech companies. I've had ADHD (and some kind of light Asperger's) my entire life, to the point where I couldn't concentrate on anything the first 12 years or so of my academic career _except_ for certain subjects that really interested me, like math.

    Some things that works well for _me_:

    1) Good noise-cancelling headphones. I'm extremely sensitive to noise in the office.

    2) Repetitive, monotone music. My productivity rises by 2-5x if I listen to hours and hours of repetitive techno sets. It's like I'm micro-dosing on LSD or something and the code is just flying out of my fingers.

    3) Not getting disturbed when the headphones are on. Communicate with your team that headphones on = use Slack for communication, because you are in The Flow State

    4) https://selfcontrolapp.com/ to help prevent procrastination

    5) Martial Arts with sparring. Could be anything like MMA, BJJ, Muay Thai, kick boxing, boxing, wrestling, some types of Karate etc. Helped me a lot. Not only the obvious (getting ripped/in shape, confidence boost, positive effects on the brain from exercising) and blowing off some excess ADHD energy, but as an introverted nerd you learn how to keep stable eye contact and you stop being irrationally afraid of conflicts. It has made me much calmer as a person, and I don't have any burst of rage anymore. Cannot stress enough how much this has helped my career and at softening the symptoms of both ADHD and Asperger's.

    6) Healthy sleeping patterns & diet. Without this, I can fall asleep in meetings (and have done it numerous times).

    7) If you work at a company where you have the ability to skip meetings you deem are unnecessary - use it! The less bored you are, the more likely you are to be able to focus and not procrastinate, I think.

    8) I like getting out of the office during lunch, just to get some air/sunlight/short change of environment. Feels like I'm less bored when I get back to my desk.

    9) If I'm taking on a bit too big of a task, I try to break it down into subtasks because otherwise I get bored and start to procrastinate. I need very clearly defined units of work to work efficiently.

  5228. Stress That Doesn't Pay: The Commuting Paradox (2004) [pdf] 2019-12-06 13:25:00 ycombinete
    In my own experience with working from home, there are some insidious trade-offs. Especially if you are not closely supervised, or are your own manager in any way. I’ve spent the past 5 years working from home.

    Social isolation is by far the worst part of it. We are social animals, and phone calls and voip meetings actually don’t cut it. If you (well At least if I) spend much time physically alone, I am lonely.

    This causes all sorts of little problems. Including strain on your romantic relationships, as your SO becomes more and more central to your social world. As you can imagine, this is a recipe for countless problems. A kind of inertia appears, which makes it less and less appealing to leave the house. You want to see people less. You end up mixing up your work and leisure time (why are you working at 8pm? Why are you playing computer games at 10am? It doesn’t matter that’s why.)

    There are ways to mitigate these of course. But they’re mostly just tricks. Like working in a coffee shop, or going for a walk in the mornings.

    I think it comes down to the type of person you are. If you can get up every day, and crush work completely alone for a few hours, then use your extra leisure time alone productively, then keep an active social life (one good enough to compensate for the hours spent alone at home every day), then there are no trade offs. I am not. I’m easily distracted, I procrastinate, and mostly couldn’t be bothered to go out all the time to meet people.

  5229. This Will Make You a More Productive Procrastinator 2019-12-06 23:38:31 Lorenz_Duremdes
    Yeah, I definitely agree that it's very situational. I guess everything has its exceptions too.

    I definitely agree that professional help can well... help. There are some things beyond our control. I used to procrastinate because I have autism, which made me quickly feel overwhelmed about what to do with all that school stuff and such, and therefore leading to procrastination.

    So yeah, I got therapy for that and it helps so far.

  5230. The Czochralski method for growing single-crystal semiconductors 2019-12-09 20:13:59 Tade0
    During my school years every child in Poland knew that name because growing a salt crystal using this method was part of the 6th grade physics curriculum.

    I failed because I procrastinated and apparently you can't grow such a crystal overnight.

  5231. 2020: Things You Should Read to Become a Better Human and Developer 2019-12-10 19:02:55 schwurb
    Improvement treadmill can be seen as a subtle form of procrastination.

  5232. Ask HN: Any unusual book that helped you in entrepreneurship? 2019-12-11 09:28:18 duelingjello
    Not really. One realization is that doing and seeking gradual excellence can be a better teacher than reading (or other forms of un/intentional procrastination). If you happen to learn from someone else's mistakes, that's great. Make lots of survivable mistakes while try to get the fundamentals right... which means you're doing and learning. Learning is the most valuable.

    Attitude and schlepping that translate into sales and delivering sh%t cures all. There's lots of annoying and mundane stuff to do, and some things you'll always forget, but it all adds up and you'll get better over time (especially by keeping searchable notes; I have a terrible memory).

    Of the books by actual billionaires who have BTDTBTTS , I'd read Felix Dennis' ironically-named How to Get Rich for fun. It contains more of a meta autobiographical attitude insight through stories instead of cargo-cult practices, business theater or phony shortcuts. Supposedly, he claims he was Sir Richard Branson's roommate at one point. Too bad he passed from too hard a life from too much hookers and coke.

  5233. Ask HN: Any unusual book that helped you in entrepreneurship? 2019-12-11 11:45:19 ironschool
    Have done a lot of mistakes already and learnt a lot too. But a mentor is the best if you wish to progress in the positive direction. Lack of it, obviously cannot be filled by books, and you try to seek advice in books hoping that someone in the same shoes happen to write how he/she got success can help you as well.

    Finding a mentor is definitely not the easiest thing as well.

    But I totally agree, any form of procrastination is bad (even reading).

  5234. The Ketamine Chronicles, April 2019 2019-12-11 15:23:37 narag
    This place seems a little less infuriating taken into context, much in the "zen" spirit of the article that you quote.

    Ten years ago I used to find tech news from other forums. The two more popular were Reddit and Slashdot. Both had unfortunate trends that made discusion tiresome to follow. Reddit had those pun threads in which everybody seemed to compete to be the funniest guy in the room while Slashdot was the church of the Free Software and Saint IGNUtius.

    It was as if in any conversation that you tried to have, a bunch of laughing teenagers making jokes, or a bunch of quasi-religious zealots took over. Hacker News on the other hand was the forum for YC startup founders, with a practical approach to the same subjects, so it was a welcome change.

    Ten years later it has been slowly degrading. It's full of self-serious young people that instead of making tons of jokes, frown upon any attempt of humour and, instead of the classic FSF zealotry, we have the usual offline causes, trying to shame everybody into thinking "the right way". If you take this place as some kind of contest to defend the best ideas, you're going to be sorely disappointed. Such place doesn't exist. It's enough that there's a place where interesting ideas are at least presented as articles and some comments.

    About the drugs discusion, there has been a couple of topics here that may explain the caution some of us have. One was modafinil. A few years ago a bunch of articles were posted telling wonders about it. A guy said that he had learnt quantum physics in an infamous article, other guy that his procrastination problems had disappeared thanks to the drug.

    https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Aycombinator.com+modafinil

    You'll see that recent comments that appear in the search were starting to be negative. Modify the search to show last years results. There is none. That was a fad, people spent their money because what do you expect in a site like this where everybody wants to be more creative, smart and procrastinate less?

    Similar things are being said now about hallucinogens. Most repeated line is that the experience is life changing. I dropped an acid more than 30 years ago. It was spectacular, but I wouldn't call it "life changing" and I haven't had the desire to repeat since. I don't feel like I have the right to recommend against it because "do as I say, not as I did" doesn't seem like honest advice. But I wouldn't tell anybody to do it, specially after I've seen three acquitances to lose their minds because they abused LSD.

    Ketamine seems very promising. But it's illegal, unless you want to spend big dollars in it. The problem I see is: should we recommend a drug that will probably be acquired illegally and taken in unknown sets to a bunch of people that might be desperate to find something to cure chronic depression, burnout or blocking? I'm sure you understand what could go wrong. I know what I would do, but I know myself, I don't know what's in the minds of everybody reading HN, so I would be very catious to create false hopes and real risks.

  5235. Learning at work is work, and we must make space for it 2019-12-12 09:04:53 haihaibye
    Procrastination is a powerful motivator

  5236. Music for Programming 2019-12-13 00:02:28 DoofusOfDeath
    It depends on what my current task is.

    If it's something tedious, i.e. robotically making some kind of change throughout a code base, then my attention span can handle the additional load and the music may help me not procrastinate.

    But for anything involving serious thinking, all forms of music I've tried are too much of a distraction.

    I have ADD, which may be a factor.

  5237. Experiments in Constraint-Based Graphic Design 2019-12-13 10:03:29 egypturnash
    > What if the figure design were changed slightly, for example the circle was to be inscribed in the rectangle? With Illustrator, it requires recomputing all the positions by hand; with Basalt, the change is one line of code:

    Hi. I've been using Illustrator as my main art tool for most of twenty years.

    1. Draw a circle. Give it a stroke in some color.

    2. Open the Appearance palette.

    3. Using the button at the bottom of the Appearance palette, add a new stroke. Make it another color.

    4. Select this stroke and add effect>convert to shape>rectangle, relative sizing, add 0pt in X and Y.

    5. Add effect>distort and transform>transform to the stroke. 70% in X and Y.

    6. Open the Graphic Style palette and make a new style. Give it a name.

    7. Visit the Appearance palette's menu and turn off "new objects have basic appearance".

    8. Select the Graphic Style you made, draw some circles using it.

    9. Turn off the Transform effect in the Appearance palette; hit 'redefine Graphic Style' and watch every circle change.

    While your later examples like "make a little graph constrained to a shield" are more complex to make, there's still ways AI could help you do this stuff - you could maybe make a pattern brush with a circle for the end and corner pieces, and empty space for the main body, pile that on top of a plain stroke, and quickly drag some points around until you had a shape you like.

    Eventually your examples get out of the territory of things I'd consider sane to do automatically in the tools AI has. But it can do more than you think.

    okay enough procrastinating back to drawing my crazy comic in AI :)

  5238. The Society of the Spectacle 2019-12-16 21:19:02 iliketosleep
    Good point, but beyond internalizing those ideas, you also really have to be on guard these - the technologies in question are ubiquitous. They are almost inescapable and are designed to get you hooked. It's easy to say look something up on reddit and then dive into tangentially related material which ends up turning into procrastination.

  5239. Show HN: I Found the Way How to Control My Productivity 2019-12-16 23:55:25 Tom_Dau
    Greetings, my name is Artem, and I am a Product Owner. Throughout my career, I have been concerned about my efficiency. I understand that this problem is not unique because many people are familiar with the feeling of constant burnout and the pressure of an inexhaustible stream of tasks. These factors affect the workflow, plunge into the procrastination doom loop, and ultimately reduce productivity. In this case, I wasn’t able to activate my inner potential and successfully achieve my goals at work and in life. Even when I thought that I was effectively managing my time, in most cases such management was diminished to the accomplishment of minor priority tasks and simulating violent activity.

    Similar activities led to:

    the inefficiency

    stress increase

    lack of career growth

    the impossibility of enhancing the internal potential

    trampling sensation

    Realizing this, I tried to find ways to increase productivity by diving and testing various methodologies. Also, having shared my problem, I found a team of like-minded people with the same pain-points, and we decided to create an application that could help us.

    At first, we tried to increase productivity through time management but often didn’t achieve the desired result. The catch was that productivity isn’t about time management, it’s about attention management. Our attention is the most valuable resource we have. We should audit it daily and make sure it reflects your purposes.

    We dreamed about a tool that can manage not only time but also focus, attention. Show how, and on what actions people spend time during the day, and whether these actions are productive or not.

    Our team asked this question and subsequently took up the solution to this problem. We set ourselves the goal of finding a way to manage current and over priority tasks with maximum efficiency, completely dependent on the psychology of a person, person’s needs and behavior. 2 years passed and, finally, we have found it.

    Now we would like to share it with you. Based on the research, the first step on this path is the unification of time management, as well as the definition of norms and rules for the effectiveness of each person’s actions.

    Our team was inspired by the work of Cal Newport, who outlined the basics of his ideas in several books, in particular in: “Deep Work — Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World”. However, we decided to dive deeper by projecting his theories and parallel studies in the field of human labor into everyday workflow and to implement a tool for calculating these norms. Having developed our algorithm, we succeeded in measuring how deeply and for how long a person can plunge into his Deep focus during the day, i.e. give maximum efficiency in the process of fulfilling intellectual or creative tasks, despite such distractions as parallel tasks, corporate culture, authentic business processes, and so familiar to us Social media, communication with colleagues, etc.

    Thanks to your participation, we create analytics of intellectual labor to determine the individual capabilities of each role and its standards. These standards help to establish not only a personal balance in the work but also a balance in the relationship between the contractor and the employer. We believe that we are creating a product that is useful both for self-management and for teams.

    The product that currently has:

    multivariate scenarios of time and efficiency tracking

    real-time analytics of all actions

    accurate and easy to read reporting

    proof of work

    personal metrics of Deep Focus (KPI & AMP (Autonomy Mastery Purpose)

    API integrations with the most popular and familiar task managers

    time management as a habit

    embedding in business processes

    Our tool suggests periods of rest and indicates periods when it is worth to focus because the key to productivity is the balance between effort and break time, between deep and shallow work. We are positive that our daily activities form habits that impact success. In the future, based on the data, we would like to classify all roles according to Newport’s Deep Work Scheduling Philosophy (Monastic/Bimodal/Rhythmic/Journalistic) to accurately identify the most effective periods for each person and the best time of interaction for teams. Also, we will determine the appropriate type of workload for each role. Our team wants, knows how and builds a smart application that already helped us and we are convinced that will help you.

  5240. Book Review: All Therapy Books 2019-12-17 02:37:44 OscarCunningham
    Claim that their form of therapy will change everything:

    >The good news is that anxiety, guilt, pessimism, procrastination, low self-esteem, and other "black holes" of depression can be cured without drugs. In Feeling Good, eminent psychiatrist, David D. Burns, M.D., outlines the remarkable, scientifically proven techniques that will immediately lift your spirits and help you develop a positive outlook on life.

  5241. A small Wisconsin company stored thousands of people’s CDs, then vanished 2019-12-17 16:06:16 pontifier
    I'm in Madison now. Nobody is actually in charge, but all the CDs are still at the storage facility for now. It's truly an impressive sight.

    The person answering the CDreturns2u email address has collected some money from customers and is paying 3 of the last employees to slowly ship media out. He's overloaded with requests and is attempting to answer each one in order, but has several hundred still in the queue. Even sending all requested media back can't solve the whole situation here though. There's just too many disks and not enough time.

    I met with one of the creditors and the landlord, and have a meeting scheduled with the other major creditor. Nobody wants to see the CDs thrown away, but the landlord wants to be paid. I've proposed a plan to move all the media to my facility where I could store it as long as needed and would handle all the returns. I'd also work to restore digital access for media still in storage.

    There is still hope. Maybe even the start of something better? I've been procrastinating on the launch of Crossies.com for far too long, but it looks like fate is forcing my hand.

  5242. Ask HN: How do you keep your notes organized? 2019-12-17 23:28:30 johnwalkr
    Finally, a topic on HN where I can be somewhat of an old-timer.

    For my first 7-8 years as a professional, I used notebooks. I was taught in mechanical engineering school to use notebooks with bindings and write notes about everything to cover my ass in case of a legal issue. I developed a simple system:

    - front front to back, write notes from meetings, brainstorms or anything

    - from back to front, write todo lists.

    - Actions from meetings are noted in the “front” notes with an arrow in the left hand margin but copied to the “back”. Normally I never refer to the front unless I forget why I made an action

    - For actions: checkmark completed, cross out cancelled and crossout with an arrow “moved” actions

    - when my actions page fills up, I simply cross the page out and “move” unfinished actions to the next page (from back to front)

    - when the notebook is full I “move” actions to a new notebook and start over.

    - the act of physically rewriting actions is a great tool to understand what you’ve been procrastinating on and what you can drop without much consequence

    When I moved to a new industry that doesn’t put people at risk, therefore no need to cover my ass legally, I switched to the equivalent system using markdown notes and Todoist. I thought it would be great to be able to search previous notes and see statistics. After another 7-8 years I realized I never ever searched my previous notes and missed being able to thumb through notebooks. I got advice from a mentor that taking notes in a book is more professional/ less distracting in a professional setting. I also missed the exercise of manually copying/ consolidating/culling actions. I found myself mindlessly postponing Todoist actions to tomorrow or next week. However, I work in a larger team now and need to delegate actions.

    So I developed a hybrid system which has worked well:

    - notes in a notebook, written from front of the notebook to back

    - actions have an arrow in the margin

    - each day I add all actions to the most recent page of actions. This is no longer from back to front but “inline” with the rest of the notes, so I get a chronological sense of when the page is filled and actions moved to a new page. Actually, I move to a new page whenever I feel the urge to prioritize something, which goes to the top of a new page. If I have a tough day ahead of me, the first thing I do is start a new actions page and follow the order without reconsidering it. If I have a really tough day I will add “check email” as an action and put it far from the top.

    - at the end of each workday, for any case where other stakeholders are involved, I type meeting minutes and duplicate actions as tickets in our system

    - whenever I move actions to a new page I close tickets corresponding to my actions and follow up on others actions

    - if I don’t have my notebook on me, I use notes on my phone temporarily

    I don’t actually manage to keep things consistent daily but whenever I make a new action page I tend to update everything. And I find it much less mental load to update tickets based on written notes (I trust a written check mark and tend to remember why I made the check mark) than to update tickets based on emails or comments or whatever (they are usually a rabbit hole)

  5243. Challenging projects every programmer should try 2019-12-18 03:32:38 tripzilch
    > Personally, I’d muuuuch rather work on a mundane problem that immediately improves someone’s day than an issue that is in and of itself more interesting

    Don't get me wrong, helping people is great and I do in fact find it one of my greatest motivators, especially for things I would otherwise consider boring (or indeed, mundane).

    But something this is in and of itself more interesting? If you wouldn't rather work on that, doesn't that mean it's just not interesting enough? :)

    I guess everybody is different. Even though I have found that helping people is for me probably the strongest motivator there is, if there is one thing that can make me procrastinate on that, it's problems that are in and of itself more interesting :)